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Ten Things Mobile Phones Will Make Obsolete
An anonymous reader writes "recombu.com has an article examining ten things mobile phones will make obsolete, including phone booths, wristwatches and handheld games consoles. It's interesting to see how many devices have been absorbed into mobile phone technology, and it raises the question: are we better off having everything in one device? The author poignantly concludes that while it's great to have so much power at our fingertips, it does mean that some of us will rely on mobile phones for even basic mental tasks, which is great until the battery runs out." See also Isaac Asimov's The Feeling of Power.
...why have a watch on your wrist when you can fish it out of your pocket.
At least pocket watches kept the time even if you were out of cell service.
THL phish sticks
I have a flip phone that displays the time in large, bold numbers on the outside of the phone and even syncs time automatically. But I still use my wristwatch whenver I'm wearing it, because a) I don't have to fish it out of my pocket, b) it's always right there, unlike my phone which more often than not is out of arm's reach. Not to mention the fact that a watch battery lasts years, unlike the 1 week max the phone battery lasts.
More generally, I thought the lesson the original iPod taught us was that specialized devices tend to do a much better job than multi-function devices because they allow the UI and features to be specialized for a specific task. Phone cameras, clocks, and other doo-dads are great, but work best as stand-ins for the real thing. They are what you use when you don't have anything better at hand.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I have yet to see a phone that can take anywhere near as good a picture as some of the most basic point and shoot cameras.
Computers were supposed to get rid of paper and they didn't. Phones won't either.
Gaming on a phone is awful. Unless that is properly addressed, then the likes of the Nintendo DS won't have to worry and I'm sure Nintendo isn't seeing how many DS units they're selling.
If I am going to do work during my commute it will be on a laptop or netbook, not a mobile. I suspect a lot of people feel the same way.
Decent cameras will never go away because a phone will never be able to match the feature set of the camera....even compact ones, imo.
Watches will always exist, if anything, as a fashion accessory.
It really is amazing how many features they keep cramming into these tiny devices. Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I am hopeful that in the next couple of years somebody will figure out a way to make reliable phone calls with these things.
-Not that we can't benefit from free thinkers. We'll just dramatically reduce the number of them available for all the important things our race needs to accomplish. And, I suppose, zombies need free thinkers to manipulate them, (since they're not much good for anything else), so Free Thought is not entirely redundant. But among cell phone users, it's pretty much a dead issue.
Oh, and if through your muddled thinking, you believe you are taking offense to this, don't worry. That's just the ego programming kicking in. Don't worry about it. You can't do anything about it anyway, except allow it to direct all of your behavior 24/7.
It's amazingly easy to manipulate the perpetually ignorant and dazed. Good thing I'm not evil. Too bad your masters are.
-FL
You keep hearing about the things that phones are going to replace and, at least for me, it's never been true.
I like having a Nintendo DS. The iPhone has not provided a game with the depth of most AAA DS titles. It's lack of buttons is a serious problem with gaming.
The camera isn't as good as any half way decent point and shoot. I haven't gotten a chance to play with any GPS software for any smart phone, but I hear there are limitations (including the need for cell service) that stand alone GPSes don't have.
Even the music functions of an iPhone aren't as good as a regular iPod or (gasp, because I love Apple gear) a Zune.
And yeah, you can use it as a watch, but any fashionable man knows that a watch is how a guy shows off. It's the only acceptable piece of jewelry for the well dressed man.
Even today's best smart phones are just communications devices with varying degrees of success. Occasionally a smart phone is "good enough" in a pinch; photographers like to say the best camera is the one you have with you, which certainly applies to smart phones. But if I know I want to play games or take pictures, I take my DS or my camera, or whatever. Phones haven't and won't - because each thing needs its own UI and software guidelines, no device is going to be able to do it all well.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Early camera phones where painfully bad but strong sales proved that there was a demand for them.
When I got my phone, I bought it because it was the cheapest phone that had the ability to see who's calling without having to answer. It so happens to have come with a camera which I never use because it sucks. Now, are the camera manufacturers counting my sale as someone who wanted a camera? Probably. There's a few other features built into the phone that i looked at and never used because I have no use for them.
That's the thing, there's only so many choices and it's impossible to get a phone that has a feature you want without getting a bunch of features that you don't want. And if you find one, it may not be supported by your cell carrier.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
[X] wristwatch battery doesn't go dead every 3 days
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
Poignant? People tried to say the same thing about calculators in the 50s. Tools augment human capability, they can be a crutch but we're a little far from walking in the jungle throwing spears, aren't we?
The meaning of the phrase has changed.
The phrase used to refer to "a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise."[1]
Now it means, "I'm trying to sound like I'm well educated, but I'm not."
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
People, people, this debate is very simple and obvious.
For any given electronic device of a given size and cost, a specialty device will always do a better job than a generalist device. A portable ipod is (slightly) better than an iphone. A portable game player such as a PSP or DS is also better than an iphone. Handheld GPS systems, same story. A watch is a better time keeping device than a cell phone, with more time related features. A compact digital camera with a bigger lens is much better than the camera in a phone. And so on and so forth.
But the point is, for MOST users 99% of the time, the inferior function on your cell phone, especially a cutting edge phone like the iphone or the Droid DOES THE JOB. You only lose a few seconds pulling your phone out rather than looking at your watch. The pictures taken by the camera on the iphone or droid are more than sharp enough for posting to a resolution limited site like facebook. The iphone has a fairly good GPU, and many small and creative 2d games work great on it, so it's almost as entertaining as the PSP or DS. The GPS may be a little fuzzy, but it's usually close enough to find your way around. And so on.
So, the inferiority of the phone's functions are nearly always MASSIVELY OUTWEIGHED by the fact that you only carry ONE device rather than a whole batman belt worth of them. Size and weight and convenience means that for 99% of users, it's easier and cheaper just to buy a smartphone and use it exclusively for all of the above functions.