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Mobile Phone Users Struggle With Hardware Adoption
Ian Lamont writes "A Google executive speaking at the Emerging Technology conference has described a problem that mobile phone carriers and manufacturers have been struggling with over the last few years: Users aren't taking advantage of many phones' hardware-based features. Rich Miner, Google's group manager of mobile platforms, stated that 80% of mobile phones being sold today have cameras on them, yet the number of people who actually know how to use them or get the images off the phones ranges between 10% and 50%, depending on the model. Miner listed several reasons for this state of affairs, including bad UIs and small screens, but added that the participation of companies with software expertise — including Google — would help increase usage of such features."
There are still real phones. Just google for Motorola F3. It's a real phone w/o any multimedia crap. The only extra is an alarm clock which I consider to be useful. And it has a display which I can read w/o my glasses.
There is another goodie: the battery life time is enormous simply because it does not have that extra useless crap
tglx
Mod parent up. I have a nice, feature rich BlackBerry, but the Verizon crippled the coolest features: Bluetooth will only communicate with a wireless headset, and the GPS is disabled until you fork over an additional $10/month (even 3rd party apps like Google Maps can't use the GPS until you pay Verizon).
Evidently Verizon is notorious for this kind of thing, but I didn't do my homework before buying the phone.
Sometimes it's the goddamn cellular provider. Take Sprint, for example. At one point I had a Sanyo Katana on a Sprint account. Using the camera in the thing is painless: getting the damned pictures off was more complicated since the bloodsucking cell provider wanted a $15-$30/month "data plan" so that I could email my own pictures to myself. Fortunately I discovered MobileAction.com and bought myself a USB cable, and was able to grab images from the phone into my PC. Of course, Sprint has the firmware crippled so you can't download anything into the thing (other than phone book entries and I think schedules) unless you use their paid service. Want to dump a ringtone into your phone? Maybe use the phone for data storage? Copy some pictures into the phone so you can display them later? Forget it ... Sprint wants more money. Not worth it.
... and greed.
If the phone providers actually let their customers use all cool features of the phones they sell, maybe this wouldn't be such an issue. I think a lot of people would use more of their phone's capabilities, they just don't want to pay their provider any more juice money.
It gets back to the three most basic human emotions: greed, fear
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
90% of the people never have a NEED to take a picture with a cell phone.
I rarely use my cell phone, but I have found it to be quite usefull in the times I've needed it.
A few examples include: Pictures of someone parking so close to me, I need a can opener. Pictures of a jobsite for collaboration. Pictures taken of a co-workers car after being broken into. Pictures of a car wreck moments after it happend to show "who's at fault", etc.
I'm sure they're are may other uses. But using it as a tool to CYA has proven invaluable to me.
Life is not for the lazy.
I have a Sprint PCS phone, made by Samsung, with a camera, GPS, voice dialing, and web browser. All those features suck.
The camera has a max resolution of 640x480, which is tolerable, but that's not the default resolution. The default is 120x80, and the phone resets to the default when powered off, and sometimes when connected to a charger. So taking a picture isn't a casual affair; I have to plow through menus to reset the resolution, or risk getting a dinky picture.
The GPS isn't enabled, because Sprint requires I buy a package with tons of stuff I don't want to enable it.
Voice dialing has very slow response. My previous Motorola phone was much faster, and that was five years ago.
The web browser blows up on many sites, and connecting to Sprint's network interface usually takes at least 30 seconds of "connecting".
So I just use it for voice calls, and take an occasional picture.