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Consumers Look For More Utilitarian Cellphones
hdtv writes "The Associated Press has an article about new generation of US consumers, who shun the mobile devices packed with features in favor of simpler devices that get the job done. One would think that as cell phones evolve into cameras, e-mail readers, Web browser and music players, mobile users would be happy with the device that fulfills their digital needs, but according to AP, 'a J.D. Power & Associates survey last year found consumer satisfaction with their mobile devices has declined since 2003, with some of the largest drops linked to user interface for Internet and e-mail services.'"
What always annoyed me about the advances in mobile phone technology is that they never really improved reception. They add feature after feature. You can take and send photos. You can browse the internet, but you always manage to lose signal in the worst possible places. I used to live in a large metropolitan area and would regularly lose signal. I lived *inside* Chicago and I could barely get a signal in my own damn apartment. Is it because of the buildings? Maybe it'll never work right.
I say screw all the stupid features. Just give me a phone that just works everywhere. I couldn't care less if it can take pictures, browse the web, or download movie trailers.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
how timely is this article....
straight from my blog, enjoy:I accidentally deleted a very important voicemail tonight. I was deleting one completely redundant voicemail (don't get me started on redundant unnecessary 'call me back' messages,) and pressed '7' one too many times, and deleted a message I never got to listen to. It was from an important recruiter.
I called Cingular and asked them whether they had a service for 'presshappy' people like myself to 'undelete' a voicemail in case of an emergency, and was brutally told that once a message is erased it's irretrievable. I kindly asked him to escalate my suggestion of having this capability so that Cingular would separate itself from the boys.
Needless to say, this incident was entirely my fault. But it brought up another issue I've been wrestling with for the last few months and I thought to share:
Today's cell phone technology seems to take away from the fundamental functions and add resource-hog features we don't use on a daily basis. These features drain the battery life dry and qualifies the 'cell phone' to an entity equivalent to a high maintenance girlfriend. How about making a cell phone that retains its battery life as long as possible, can store perhaps 50 phone numbers, has the best signal that that kind of a phone can provide, has a super-fast snappy interface, can easily slip in and out from my pocket jeans without me having to stand up, and still works despite all the abuse a device gets from being carried around with you all day? How about a cell phone you can tap on thrice with the tip of your finger while it's in your pocket to shut it up while sitting in a lecture? Maybe I haven't done my research, but if you find something that fits all that, let me know. I will buy you a beer. I will then buy you another beer. I'm talking Guinness.
My behemoth of a Motorola cell phone can pull these these cute numbers:
* play mp3s* interface via bluetooth with other devices
* play movies
* download ringtones, like green days' latest song
* take 640*480 pictures, high quality vga pictures and send them to others
* provide me capability to play poker with other people on some proprietary network, along with being able to download other j2me games.
Why did I get such a phone? Amazon gave me $160 cash money (ok it was a rebate) and a free activation plan. Websites like phonescoop and cnet also gave it a rating of 8/10 or better. Maybe I didn't check the right websites. Maybe I didn't spend the extra 6 hours looking for a practical phone.
When are these Telcos going to get it? Or is some potential startup company sitting on a gold mine?
One day, here's hoping that I will have a cell phone that doesn't decide to change its ring style to silent while it sits in my pocket, here's hoping one day we don't have to listen to 40 second prevoicemail messages before leaving a voicemail. Here's hoping we will be able to buy a practical 'cell phone,' and this middle-of-the-road phase will indeed phase away like a bad fart.
barisInsinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
I call bullshit. I'm not sure what "definition" you're using, but a given interface does not have to become more complex as functions get added. As a matter of face, added features can simplify a given interface. I can't think of something specific atm, but I'm sure you can find an example or two in Cupertino somewhere.
I think the problem lies in the business model of the service providers rather than general ineptitude on the part of phone makers. I for one would be perfectly happy with a phone with a billion unnecessary gizmos, doodad, and whatnots, as long as there's a way to get them out of sight the minute they become intrusive. However, I think a lot of the clutter of most mobile phones comes from the exorbitant pay-out-the-ass-for-data plans that service providers are making a killing on. I doubt it would be difficult to design a phone interface that provides a "simple" mode that hides all unnecessary or obtrusive functions out of sight. But ask yourself the question, would it be as profitable?
I only mod funny =D
I love phones packed with as many features as can be packed. I've gotten a series of ever more complex cell phones and I've enjoyed each one more and more.
But guess what, you're right.
I'm not like everyone else. I've realized for a long time that the compromizes I'm willing to make for the features I want are not compromizes very many of my friends or family would be willing to make. I've gottent to the point that I won't even recommend a phone that I personally love if I think that the phone will be too frustrating to the person asking for the recommendation.
So here's the deal. Why can't you have your simple phone AND I have my complex phone? Is there any reason why one of these should be "better" as opposed to "better for you" or "better for me"? I applaud people making their oppinions known to cell phone providers and manufacturers so more simple phones will be offered. All I ask it that you don't tell them to stop offering phones with the great features I want. Really, we can coexist in peace.
TW
I have no problem with more features, and regardless of satisfaction surveys, going with less features is probably not the answer. Take, for instance, the fact that there are plenty of outdated basic phones available that people skip on because they want something the new phones have. People don't want less, they just want to be able to use what they have. Forget metaphors, forget operating systems, just identify what the user wants most and prioritize.
There are a few things that I'd like to see that might already exist:
- The phone should always be ready for you to start dialing (unless you are editing a field).
- The most commonly used features should have clearly labeled dedicated buttons with one and only one function.
- The call log should always be available at the touch of a single button.
- The address book should always be available at the touch of a single button. None of this hold-down-the-button shortcut nonsense though.
- A camera phone should take a picture instantly with the press of one button. The LCD preview isn't always necessary, so using it should require a total of two button presses.
- Sending pictures should take priority. In addition to a nice transfer interface, internet phones should allow you to email yourself any photo you take immediately after you take it, with only one or two button presses.
So if you haven't figured it out yet, my ideal phone (a phone for someone like my dad) needs at least four dedicated buttons for the most common features (besides the talk/hangup buttons and numbers): Call log, address book, camera shutter, camera LCD preview. I realize many phones have these buttons but they add confusion by being dual use and poorly labeled (if at all). It's time to start adding morebuttons if you ask me. Layout matters too. With the exception of the shutter button, aligning these buttons side by side (like the 2nd generation iPod) would be ideal, but probably wouldn't make the most fashion sense.
It is a rip off here in the US, yes. Unbelievable.
In Europe, you can get decent deals, however. Your prepaid service has a good shelf life, unlike here where you simply MUST buy more minutes every month or they cut you off. You don't get charged for receiving calls (caller pays) and in fact with the service I had you actually got a (very) small kickback when someone called you. The prices were reasonable, and I would prepay roughly $60 and not need to worry about it again for 6 months.
When I came back to the US, I went to try and get service and it was an absolute nightmare. They don't want to just sell you bloody phone service, they want to give you a 'free' (read paid for by you, in the fine print, of course) phone that was loaded with all this crap I don't care about, making it far more complex than it needs to be, they want you to pay at least $60-75 every month, and they're very pushy about it. Even after politing refusing this over and over again and finally getting the simple phone service that I wanted, it's $20 a pop, there are connection fees and charges for receiving calls and every sneaky hidden gotcha in the book. That $20 lasts me barely a week, so when all the crap is added up it turns out to be TWELVE times as expensive as the service I was used to. And on top of that, of course, coverage SUCKS. And when I'm in an area with no coverage at all for a few weeks, I come back, and find that my prepaid phone, with a positive balance, has been turned off - apparently because one is required to add money every month whether you're using it or not, or else you lose it.
This was with T-Mobile, who were reputed to have by far the best coverage in the area I was in, by the way. If the others are worse, I don't understand how they stay in business at all.
So I've just packed my phone away. The cellular companies in this company, apparently, aren't interested in offering simple telephone service at a reasonable price. Until they are, I am not interested in them.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Problem is, manufacturers and providers are offering simple, stripped down, easy-to-use phones. And very few buy them. Just like simple, functional, easy DVD players; simple internet terminals and so on.
...". Just look at the other comments to this story. I want a simple phone - that can also do good email, since I in practice use email more than speech. Oh, and having a radio on it is essential, so I don't have to lug around a second device. For other people, real email is pointless and radio is a waste - but they really want that integrated camera since it's such a convenient way to communicate (was it this part you wanted me to buy or was that one?). For a third person, having a Java VM for a steady supply of small games to play during their commute is critical, though they have no interest in any other function.
One problem is, simple phones aren't appreciably cheaper to produce since most of the differences lie in software, so the simple phones don't get a lot cheaper (and especially so when the phone is offered as part of a package deal).
A second problem is the lure of features. We like long lists of features, _especially_ for technology we aren't too familiar with. After all, since we aren't familiar with it, we don't know what functions will turn out to be important, so better get as much ass possible.
Third, even among us that want a simple phone, there creeps in a "that can also
So, you could not make a simple telephone with mass market appeal. You would have to make a whole series of phones, all with different combinations of features. Which of course in practice means making one or two hardware designs, and selectively disable stuff in software. But then, of course, the users can simply refrain from using the features they don't want; they'r enot going to pay as much for the identical hardware but with less functionality, after all. Which brings us right back to where we are now.
On my phone, I have a web browser, music shop service, IR remote controller, OCR translation from English to Japanese, and probably a dozen other features I don't even remember. I simply don't use them, which suits me fine. It doesn't bother me that I have a set of icons I don't use, since the functions I do use - radio, email and sound player - are implemented well, and since I have them assigned on hotkeys, bypassing the need to ever delve into the interface itself.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Amen to all that - I have an Orange (UK) SmartPhone running Micro$oft's OS and some of the most fundamental tasks require so many menu clicks it's unbelievable:
Set the alarm: Start, 4 (settings), 9 (more), 3 (Date and Time), 4 x Scroll, Enter.
Compare this to my previous phone: 'Settings' button, Date and Time, Enter.
My old phone was also sensible enough to allow opt-out days on alarms so you could have a recurrent wake up for work days that didn't operate at weekends - now I get hit with a 6.30 alarm on Saturday and Sunday unless I remember to turn it off - and then I have to remember to turn it on again on Sunday night or be late for work!
On one occasion I used my old phone to record someone threatening me in the street (I didn't need to use it as the incident calmed down) all I had to do was covertly hold down one button. This is impossible on the new phone as you have to look at and navigate the menus:
Start...9 (More)...5 (Voice notes)...Record
Mind you, my new phone could have also recorded video of the incident:
Click camera button...Menu...Capture mode....2 (Video)...Capture
Not exactly subtle and the act of me staring and operating my phone during such a tese moment would probably have got me clobbered! In any case, the last time I tried to record some video for fun, the phone refused ('Insufficient memory') and I had to reboot it to free some RAM for the OS. Picture the scene..
Click...click...click...click...[Error]...Oh, wait Mr Thug, I need to reboot my phone, can you hang on for about 2 minutes and bear with me as I may need to take out the battery if the reboot hangs.
There was some speculation that Nokia are (or were considering) relaunching one of their more basic models (the 6310i) due to popular demand.
AT&ROFLMAO
There's simple solution - just come to the europe. It's beggining to be pretty common that people here have 3G phones - even when they don't use 3G functions at all. This is simply because they get their cell phone for free with service that is about 30$ or 40$ monthly.
I share a family plan with my brother and mother. The base price is $60 for two lines, costing an additional $8 per additional line. This includes unlimited nights and weekends (which I believe start at 8 or 9 at night), and 1000 "anytime" minutes shared between the three of us. This also includes unlimited calling to T-mobile customers. My mother uses her phone mainly to speak with the two of us, so most of the anytime minutes are split between myself and my brother. This is plenty of anytime minutes and we have never gone over (if it happened, we would upgrade our plan). We also pay $10 a month for unlimited text and picture messaging on all three lines to or from anyone. The $10 price can be used for up to five lines (great deal, it used to cost $10 for 1000 messages on one line.). With the amount of text messaging my brother and I do, this is a fantastic deal (I had months when I used to go over my previous allotment of 1000 messages by quite alot). For my own line, I also pay $6 a month for unlimited data. This allows me to use Opera and Google Local (as well as any other data apps I would like) as often as I want. With the Opera browser, this allows me to basically do anything I would like online from my cell phone while Google Local integrates great with my service and has saved my ass more than once. I love Opera's customizable homepage too, for quick access to the sites and services I tend to visit and use from my cell phone. Outside of taxes, which amount to $1.23 per line and a per-account charge of $7.64, the only other charges are insurance charges ($6 for the only insured phone, through a 3rd party) or one-time fee charges (think 411, downloadable media, etc). Of course, with the unlimited data package, 411 is unnecessary, while the un-crippled state of my phone makes the included USB cord a much more attractive option for downloadable programs and content.
I know I've gone off on quite a tangent, but my point is that some of the optional features are VERY affordable and can be quite useful. Some fairly simple hacking allows me to customize my phone to quite an impressive extent, effectively hiding any features I personally don't use. For instance, voice recording and some very technical settings (the ones that only change when you change providers) don't even show up in my menu system while Opera and Google Local (of which I use one at least daily) are bound to a single click of one of the keypad keys.
It's interesting to note that a friend with the same phone that I own, but with Verizon service instead, had quite a different experience. The most revealing comparison was the fact that pressing the menu key on my phone would take less than a second to bring the menu up, while taking somewhere around 5 seconds to react on hers. This is not a fluke either, as I tested it on another example of the same phone with Verizon service and got the exact same results. I offered to "hack" her phone in an attempt to make it more useable and realized, one hour in, that Verizon crippled the phone to such an extent that it took about 6 hours to upgrade the firmware and settings and still have a fully-functional phone. This, as opposed to the 5 or 10 minute process with T-mobile service, involved an insane combination of flashing the phone with an Alltel package before doing a lengthy series of hex and seem edits. Any other method and the phone would become a paperweight. Verizon doesn't use sim cards either, so her phone isn't useable with other providers or with temporary sim cards in foreign countries. T-mobile not only uses sim cards, but will gladly unlock your phone for you after a couple months of service, allowing use with any other sim card (Whether it's your friend whose phone died or you buying a $20 sim card while abroad instead of paying $.75 or more a minute with your existing service).
Sorry for the Verizon rant in this discussion, but the last 3 years with T-mobile have been amazing compared to the 3.5 years prior to that with Verizon, who did their best to lie and cheat thei
How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
My mother on the other hand, while she shares my family plan along with my brother and myself, uses her phone almost exclusively to call us (unlimited mobile-to-mobile included!) or text message us (unlimited messaging on all 3 lines to and from anyone: $10/month) and doesn't need the features that I use. Her phone cost something like $20 or $30 and does what she needs (calls and messaging) well and easily. Sure, she could have gotten a more feature-intensive phone, in many cases for less than what she paid (either free or money-back) but she knew what she wanted and chose her phone based on that. She's very happy with her simple phone (which also has large characters which help her with her eyesight) although after seeing Google Local and Opera on my phone, she's started to get more interested in how her phone might be useful in special circumstances.
I did my best to avoid going off on a rant in this post, but my points are:
How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
I live in Pakistan and celular access is really cheap here. All carriers offer free incoming calls and free incoming SMS. A couple also offer small kickbacks on recieved calls.
What really rocks though is that you can buy a cheap Nokia phone for less than US$100 up-front, stick a pre-paid card into it (about US$ 2) which has about 60 minutes of airtime in it and when that runs out, your incoming calls/sms keep coming in for another FIVE years (Telenor Pakistan). The most ripoff carrier (Mobilink) here still gives you about six months of free incoming before you need to recharge your phone.
On my pre-paid connection, for about US $4.00 I get about 40 mins outgoing calls to other networks, twice that for my own network. The call rates are also flat across the country so it doesnt matter where I am, the same rates apply. I know the US is a heck of a lot larger, geographically, but in this day and age with the level of connectivity the US has, it should not be such a big issue - the internet does it already! Oh and this US$4.00 lasts about 25 mins if I call the US from my cell phone in Pakistan.
My parents recently went to India for a family visit and told me that its even cheaper there.
BTW, the world's largest WiMax deployment has been signed off on between Motorola and Wateen telecom in Pakistan - we should be getting WiMax across the country soon too!
All thanks to competition, deregulation and some solid support from the Musharraf government.
I bought a Nokia N90 that has those functions, but I'm one those people who actually uses them, and it was an outright purchase so I'm not locked into any plans with a particular telco. I'm currently considering whether to go with Telstra, Optus, Vodaphone, or 3, depending on what their month by month plans* are like. :)
I can understand that a lot of people these days just want a mobile phone to make phone calls. When I go to Murphy's for a beer, I'll sometimes get into discussions with other patrons - Hi Dave, Greg, Jody, Ben, and Brett - about technology, and we all have our opinions, and, to certain extents, we're all right.
Dave has a phone that he makes phone calls with. That's it. He doesn't even use text messaging. It's a nice little phone, and it gets a good amount of standby time.
Brett on the other hand wouldn't have a phone if you paid him, and would throw it on the floor with the intention of breaking it if you gave him one - in front of you too.
But that's them. They know their options, and they've stuck with what they feel that they want and need. I have my portable phone-pc unit, Dave has his calls-only tool, and Brett knows that people who want to get into contact with him will find him either at home or at the pub.
People who complain that there are no options for buying a mobile that can only make phone calls are simply not looking. They're being persuaded by advertising to look at things that they don't want, and instead of asserting their right as a customer with cash to spend, they're either giving in to the marketing, or walking away without even taking a cursory glance, or demanding that the salesman show them, the plain old, ordinary mobile phones.
I wanted my N90, and I got it. Dave wants to make phone calls, and he's got that. Brett doesn't want a phone, so he's ignored the marketing.
There is no reason to lament the lack of any sort of mobile phones these days, only lament the slack-jawed twits who've lost the ability to think about what they're doing, or educate themselves about their options, when they go shopping.
*There are typically three sorts of plans you can get in Australia - the heavily advertised, 12 to 24 month contractual "Get The Phone for FREE! and ONLY pay $30-$200 per month" (depending on the phone); the Pre-Paid Monthly which comes with a simple phone, that may or may not have a low-quality camera; and the Month-by-Month Sim only which is for when you already have a phone.
Te Quiero, Puta!
After using a plain-vanilla Nokia brick phone for several years and being perfectly satisfied with it, it's finally starting to die. While looking at new phones (and new providers), it became clear that the plain phone choices were very limited and fairly costly compared to the other options.
As I started looking into the mid-range phones, they started adding things like cameras. I don't have a camera at all, and don't particularly need one. However, there have been a few instances in past years where it would have been nice to get a snapshot of something (usually for reference, not nec. as a keepsake). However, a lot of providers don't make data cables available, charge a ton for them if they do, or charge you way too much to transfer the picture to yourself via their data service.
Anyhow, while I was at a TMobile reseller, someone next to me was looking through a box for the Samsung T809. Nice slim little phone. Really nice screen. Data cable included. Hell, the thing even uses MicroSD, so you can upgrade the memory. I asked the price, and they said $300 with a $50 rebate. No thanks.
After getting home, I started checking around online and looking at TMobile's service plans in detail. No roaming charges. Good coverage where I travel (added bonus-cell tower a few blocks from my parent's house, which is in a somewhat remote location). I ended up going to amazon to check out their phones. Whatya know, they had the T809 for $150 with $200 in rebates. They were gonna pay me $50 bucks to take the thing off their hands! Not to mention, they were offering free 2-day shipping plus a free moto bluetooth headset. Sold!
While the phone does tons of things that I'll most likely never use, it does work really well. The TMobile coverage is good (which is great, since I live in a basement-it's rented and it's not my parent's : p). I'll never use the mp3 player. Watching mp4 videos is a neat little gimick that i'll grow tired of in another week or so. But the important thing is that it works well as a phone, which is what I really want from a phone service...
I'd just like to add a note of agreement here. I've said more or less the same on a few phone related topics now, but I'll reiterate: basic phones don't get the news coverage that the latest new feature-phone does, but they still exist. You don't hear about the latest model because more often than not there isn't one - basic has been perfected (Nokia 1100 IMO, but plenty of others out there) and it's already cheap. There's nothing more for the media to say about basic, so let them tell us about the latest (perhaps pointless) innovations in the new round of phones.
As there are more people and therefore more potential revenue. Doh!
Look at the population density of the two countries, and that will tell you the density of revenue.
From the ubiquitous wikipedia article let's have a look at population density (Yes, I know the maps are for GSM, but the coverage for anything else isn't much different/any better)
United Kingdom 243
United States 30
So, you could say that as the cells cover a fixed size area, the revenue from each cell is therefore less (on average) in the US. By this rationale, any country less dense than the US shouldn't have better phone coverage than the US...
Finland 15
Hmm, this doesn't seem to support the argument either. Maybe it's 'cos we're using values for the average density? No point putting cells were no one is. Is the US more sparsely populated than Finland in these areas of low coverage?
finland
United States
Probably not. Finland seems to have more unpopulated areas, even taking into account the differences in size and density units. Even though the distances are smaller in Finland (and therefore require less cells in the wilderness), I still think it's fairly marginal to use population density as a supporting argument.
So in summary, I don't think that population size or density are particularly compelling arguments as to why the US is so far behind in phones.
Look at phone interfaces - they're definitely more complex. Just count the number of keypresses (or screens to progress through) to accomplish basic tasks - it's increasing all the time. But that's not real complexity: if you ignore irrelevant menu items then the interfaces aren't really more complex, just more clicky.
But I don't really mind that, because most of the phone interfaces have some sort of "favorites" list to get more quickly to common tasks.
What I do mind is that phone interfaces are becoming steadily less reliable. Interface crashes, slowdowns, sudden poweroffs - they're all now daily occurences, and it drives me nuts.
The obvious answer would be to buy a phone without all the glitzy features, and when I asked for one I was offered a Nokia model for "businessmen who just want a great phone without the gizmos". Uhuh. No camera, no music player...great. But also no Bluetooth. A business phone that I can't interface my PDA and laptop with for dialup? Give me a break - they obviously didn't want anyone to buy it.
No, I'm stuck with an endless succession of phones with more features than I want, shitty interfaces and steadily degrading reliability.
I think that kind of defeats the purpose of having a cell phone for most people though. I'm not saying that you don't have a very good reason for the way you use it (although I'm a little curious about what it is), but your battery life example means almost nothing to me. I've found that battery life is extremely variable anyway. In an area where I get a strong signal, my battery can last for days with the phone always on. Where I live, the battery lasts a few hours. It's pretty frustrating actually, because I live in the middle of the city, where I would expect a strong signal, but I frequently get absolutely nothing.
I want Dave's phone, plus Bluetooth. I don't want a camera, I don't want an mp3 player, just a plain, ordinary phone that happens to also have Bluetooth so that I can connect my iBook to the internet, or synchronize my contacts and calendar without carrying yet another cable around with me.
Unfortunately, such a phone doesn't seem to exist.
/usr/games/fortune
Not to mention the half-arsed way they do all these functions. My cell phone camera is next to useless. It takes blurry, grainy pictures with no detail. It isn't a matter of a low-res sensor, it has to do with the shitty, tiny lens they used so that the phone would still fit in the pocket of some teenager wearing tight jeans. The FM radio (WTF?) in my phone is useless. It won't operate without a headset, because it uses the wires as an antenna. Of course, I use a Bluetooth headset. So the FM radio doesn't even turn on.
/usr/games/fortune
Unfortunately, this is not true. Particularly for the larger manufacturers (such as Nokia and Motorola). They employ large groups of human computer interaction experts that study, design, and test these interfaces. Its incredibly sophisticated in reality.
The problem here is two-fold. The biggest is the overall immaturity of the technology. Symbian has been around for quite awhile, but its base technology is incredibly poor. They've been very slow to embrace modern programming techniques, and the overall quality of their product is quite low. As a result, third party applications end up full of weird little work-arounds that further compromise their stability. This is made worse by requirements (by the symbian signing process) to work in low disk/low memory conditions properly which often destabilizes the OS even further, requiring even more cunning workarounds which inevitably lead to issues under non-standard use cases.
The linux situation is just as bad right now. Motorola is currently using a hacked up version of QTopia at the interface level. Other manufacturers have taken Linux and run with it in their own direction (its not terribly clear what Nokia is planning with Maemo for example). Again, in many cases we have single purpose architecture (the controls and libraries are tested and verified against only a small set of use cases) which leads to more and more issues as these components interact in new ways.
The other big issue is the way phones are currently developed. Nokia (for example) is fragmented into several different 'phone groups', and each group is capable of making arbitrary changes to the base OS. The truly bad UI decisions are made at this level as they face pressure from timelines and mechanical issues. The original UI vision is often compromised for the sake of getting product out the door.
There is a bit of hope, however. Symbian recently released 9.1, and while manufacturers are quite late getting devices out (both Nokia and Sony Ericcson have announced devices at this point) all signs point to an improved experience with this new OS. I expect some more problems for the next 12-18 months as the new Kernel and security model are actually released to users. However, my experiences with this newer technology has been more positive than previous versions. I do question many of their decisions and frusturating problems remain. For example: they do use C++ exceptions now, just wrapped up in their own leave/trap mechanism which means throwing an arbitrary exception object actually brings the whole application down. However, the problems have largely been pushed up a level (the biggest issues seem to be in the UI layers at this point). At the same time, Trolltech seems to be close to bringing out QTopia 4.x which promises to be much more 'turn-key' for OEM's. Hopefully this will eliminate a lot of the Linux fragmentation and create some stability there.
At the same time, most OEM's have recognized the UI issues are going to a MUCH more 'platform-centric' approach in which phone groups must work within the bounds of the overall platform when customizing the OS for a specific phone. I think this will help greatly for future products and should help them to start getting their arms around the complexity of these new devices. I really do think consumers want higher end features, they just want it done in a more coherent (and less bulky) way.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
That's the MicroTac 950 (550 if you had the 7-segment display, 950 for dot-matrix).
Those phones sucked.
I had the super-duper version, the MicroTac Ultra Lite (yours couldn't be a Lite or Ultra Lite since those had green displays).
You forget that the battery wouldn't even last all day (unless you used the inch-thick version) even if you didn't talk on it at all. It didn't have voice mail notification. It had no caller ID. And it didn't have a vibrating ring (but my Ultra Lite did, the first phone that did).
As to the poster who replied, the StarTac was far from a tank, the hinges were very vulnurable and the antennas broke off constantly. They were easy to use though.
I replace my MicroTac Ultra Lite with a Nokia 2185. The Nokia 2100 series. It was much better, had a good address book (for the time), a good display, the battery lasted for two days and it had a readable display for caller ID use.
I never had a Nokia 6100 or 5100, but if you ask me, those were the ultimate simple phone. Small, incredibly easy to use, great UI, good buttons. Antenna didn't break off too often. And the battery lasted for a couple days.
My father had a Nokia 5120 (or 40 or 60, one of the IS-136 TDMA phones on Cingular) until last year. He really loved that phone. And for good reason.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95