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."

Comments

Cell phone companies to blame?

[modemboy]

Or perhaps it might also involve the locking down of phones by carriers?
If you can't use bluetooth for file transfer because the carrier locked it out, it makes it harder to get pics off. If you can't use the phone as a usb mass storage device because the carrier is worried about you copying ringtones yourself, obviously getting the pics off will be hard.

That said, this "article" contains almost no useful information, so maybe Righ Miner had some better examples than the pictures...

Re:Cell phone companies to blame?

[fiannaFailMan]

My guess is that this article is just flat-out wrong. I know when I plug my iPhone into my Mac ...

My guess is that he wasn't talking about iPhones. I use a Samsung..... something or other and I've yet to figure out how to get photos off the damn thing or how to lose that annoying 'ringback tone' that I had no idea what it was when I got it and now people don't like when they call me. Nor can I manage my image folders, there's no way to rename them or add new folders. And there's no quick way to delete the dozens of black pictures that it keeps taking on the inside of my pocket.

And when I go through the laboriously slow process of reading email on the damn thing, it won't let me see pdf or doc attachments. Bottom line: I hate the damn thing and I'm getting an iPhone.

I don't get it...

[ivandavidoff]

"Google's Rich Miner has identified one of the biggest problems facing mobile phone carriers, manufacturers, and developers: The hardware on the current generation of phones is not being used by many customers."

Why is this a problem? Isn't this like fretting that 60% of Dodge Caravan owners don't use the rear-seat cup holders? Maybe people just don't want to take pictures with their phones.

I don't think that the carriers are "struggling"..

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I admit that my situation is worse than many(el-cheapo-with-contract verizon phone); but I hardly get the impression that the carrier or the manufacturer are struggling to get me to use the phone's hardware features.

Verizon cripples bluetooth on all non smartphones they sell(headset only, no obex etc) in order to force you to buy media from their overpriced store and encourage you to use the phone camera to send MMSes. They don't package cables or software for connecting to computers with their basic phones(or even attempt to upsell you on such accessories). Going directly through the manufacturer and/or with third party utilities, it is possible to connect the phone to a computer, and with a bit of hacking I've heard tethering is even possible.

I don't mean to underestimate the stupidity and willful ignorance of users; but this is mostly the carriers problem. Their obsession with all-data-must-be-transferred-through-our-network-and-paid-for is particularly troublesome. If cell companies sold computers, you'd need a family plan and a SIM card for each of your peripherals. 10 bucks a month would cover your mouse's connection. Depending on how much you used it, you could pay for right clicks at 5 cents a piece, or 5.99 for unlimited right clicks.

People don't care

[Twigmon]

The average consumer is not interested in learning how to user another device. They don't have the time or interest. I use my phone for all sorts of things: creating maps, navigation, photos, music player. A lot of the things I do with my phone are seen almost as science fiction by people like my parents.

The thing is though - if my parents were to spend the time to learn how to use all of their phone's features - it probably wouldn't improve their quality of life at all.

I can't see how more than 50% of the population would ever be bothered enough to learn how to use all of their phone's features even if they were dirt simple to use. It's just one of the facts of life that us geeks need to be willing to accept.

Open source changes **nothing**

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Users don't want features. They want benefits.

They don't care whether these are free and open source or not - all they care about is getting what they want, at a reasonable price.

Taking the camera example, many people don't want to use a crappy (as many phone cameras are) phone camera to take a picture and then download it via a USB cable into their computer, or screw around with SD cards etc. Give them an end-to-end solution where they snap their pic and it automagically ends up in Picassa/whatever. That would make them happy so long as the cost of doing so is a few cents per picture.

Exactly

[Giant Electronic Bra]

90% of the people never have a NEED to take a picture with a cell phone. If all you had to do was point it and say 'Fido, take picture, send to Jane' it still wouldn't interest 50% of the population, they just plain don't need or want to take pictures. If they really DO want a picture, they want a good picture.

So basically there are 2 issues here, one being people aren't all that interested, and secondly the extra gewgaw features on phones really aren't all that great. The cameras are mostly marginal to almost useless, etc.