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Tomorrow's Cell Phones
bart_scriv writes "Businessweek looks at the future of the cell phone, starting with some existing button-free prototypes and moving on to more outlandish and whimsical designs. From the article: 'New technologies drive many of the new designs. One example: Synaptics ClearPad, a new type of touch screen that will become commercially available later this year. Unlike today's touch screens, which aren't entirely transparent and often not very sensitive — we've all had to endlessly tap one with a stylus to get a response — ClearPad is clear, so it can be used as a sensitive overlay to a cell-phone display. Another innovation likely to change the cell-phone's appearance: flexible displays. An electronic ink screen prototype, developed by Koninklijke Philips Electronics and startup E-Ink, is thin and flexible like paper so it can be worn wrapped around a cell phone. Users can unwrap it to view a map on a larger screen. Eventually, the display could be used to watch video.'"
First?
I don't want a touch screen. In fact, that is the precise antithesis of what I want.
I want a cell phone that has few to no menus. I want to be able to operate it without looking, by feeling the keypad.
I don't care if the screen is even in colour, because I'm not going to be looking at it if I don't have to.
I also want to be able to connect it to my computer as a USB modem.
I have been asking for this for upwards of four years. Can I have that, please?
www.wavefront-av.com
What's wrong with buttons? How would replicating the function of buttons on an easily-dirtied touch screen be an improvement? It really does sound like they are trying to find applications for technologies that are not really needed when trying to make a phone call.
Call me an idiot but I'd expect that most important job of a cell phone is to make calls (and hopefully not drop them). I don't care if it can store roman numerals for crying out loud all I am asking is to let me make and receive calls, even indoors. Seems like that is a feature that no one is interested any more.
"I just want a phone to make phone calls" they will say. "Who wants all those other features? Kids these days...".
It's OK, you don't need to keep telling us, we know and phones for you exist. There is also a large market which wants email, internet, calendar, notes, SMS, video playing, music playback, radio etc on their phone: I certainly do.
Making calls is assumed to work, atleast here in europe where we have basically 100% coverage.
I can't remember when I couldn't have made a call because the service was unreachable, or I was dropped from call due bad signal.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Button 1: Home
Button 2: Parent's cell/work number
Button 3: Other parent's cell/work number
Button 4: Other relative
Button 5: Neighbor
Button 6: 911
Now the kid can use it to call their parents in case of emergency or other problems, (or just need to be picked up after soccer practice). Can't use it to call their friends since it doesn't have a normal keypad. If you want to be paranoid, add some GPS tracking software so you know where your kid is.
This type of thing may also be appropriate for younger children since it is hard to abuse - except by calling 911 when your mommy doesn't answer her phone. But if your child isn't old/smart enough to know that, they probably shouldn't be out of your sight.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
...is price.
I cancelled my family's cell phones because with the price of gasoline we couldn't afford an extra $80/month, Verizon's cheapest plan at the time, for two cell phones. So I cancelled them and we went back to a "land line" via Vonage for $27/month. Yes this is on top of our $50/month for broadband but I'll cancel everything before the broadband connection.
It's amazing how little I miss having a cell phone. Of course I still keep the phones in the cars in case of emergencies - all cell phones will dial 911 for free.
I won't consider cell phone service again until it's around $10/month.
Keep the bells and whistles - give me Third World cell phone prices. If they can have it, so should I.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Service contract.
I'm counting down the days until mine expires on the same network; I think they have the fewest dropped calls, because they have the fewest even connect in the first place!
It puzzles me that people use a "quantum leap" as a term for a large jump, when in reality it is the smallest jump possible.
I think they sell the jazzy camera/music phones with lots of features because they are getting money on all of them. Want pictures? - they have them, and they will charge you to send them anywhere. Music and ringtones - same thing. The phones cost more at the front end (though more than they cost to make? I don't know) but they include the possibility of making more money with the services.
The features you want, while useful, don't allow the cell phone company to make money except when they sell the phone. The lost phone GPS might be a chargeable service, but they might be able to do that now, without other security features. The other features don't let them make money, and I don't know that there are enough providers (because of coverage issues - it seems like only a few big companies have enough coverage to be useful, and others are only useful within a narrow range) to generate a market push to compel the cell phone companies to ask manufacturers to include them. In addition, the price of the phone (the only place they can recoup the cost) might be increased enough to make them uneconomic.
I think the idea is that it is the smallest jump possible that makes it different; in other words, there is a substantial change. I guess you can add as small an amount of energy to a radiating body as you want, but if you don't add a quantum of energy, it's not going to produce a photon.
But you're right, too many people seem to take it to mean a large leap rather than a leap that ratchets up to the next notch.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]