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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.
There are several wristwatch cellphones available now.
That's because reading a flickering CRT with the Windows 95 Hot Dog Stand color scheme makes you want to claw your eyes out, and people don't have the sense to keep a document on disk until a final version is made. Also, in meetings, staring at a laptop is rather impolite. E-ink advances and will solve these problems; you only have to wait for the generation that is used to paper to retire.
i cant stand wearing watches, they make my arm feel all weird. (and they interfere with work gloves, but thats another matter) and since i don't cary my phone at work, (crushed 2 phones in my pockets in 2 months, construction industry is not a phone friendly environment) so i've actually become quite adept at telling the time via shadows, sundial style. (accurate within 10-15 minutes, which is close enough for my needs).
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I'd think any true geek out there would appreciate the mechanical complexity of a quality watch (read: not quartz). Granted they are more jewelry like than actual time reference objects, but when you get out of the low end you can appreciate a lot of fine horology!
-Xen
Some modern phones still do not keep the time when out of service. A friend of mine has a cheap Samsung phone which is an example of this. It has always baffled me that a phone with a camera, games and a whole lot of other unnecessary rubbish can't even tell you the time when you go behind a mountain....
My phone keeps the time just fine when out of reception. Likely better than an old pocket watch. What kind of brick-phone do you have?
I know that my phone doesn't keep accurate time even with reception and even though I'm just a few miles away from NIST. At the moment it's only off by 10 seconds, but it's been as bad as 3 minutes. My wristwatch, on the otherhand, is guaranteed to be accurate within a 5 second drift over a full year (and it's not a fancy watch). I wouldn't be surprised if the phone manufacturers know that they can get away with using crappy crystal oscillators and just re-syncing the time regularly.
My phone is CDMA and it only stores the time in memory, so if you reset the phone it forgets the time and tries to get it from the network, but as long as it's on, it'll remember (even if you lose service). It's not a bad deal, since my phone can stay on for several days and I'm usually not out of service that long.
Funny story. My dad's girlfriend had a good Seiko watch. It wasn't the proper dive watch but it had a bezel and was good to 100 metres depth or so. They were diving in (I think) Papua New Guinea and after they came to the surface the watch started to hiss and splutter, then the face flew off at high velocity. Good thing she wasn't looking right at it at the time.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I think there are basicly two types of phones (some are user configurable) Ones that get time from the network only, and ones that keep there own clock.
The nice thing about the network phones is the time is always accurate to the second and resets based on time zone when you power it up after a flight or when you cross a border. Every phone like this I have owned eventually looses track when out of range.
The other type seem to have an internal clock and have to be changed after flights and such.
My Kindle however, seems to use the network when in range but keeps track itself when out of range.
Actually, the problem that I have is not so much when out of service, it's when too close to the wrong tower...
I was out of town and in another highly populated area (Knoxville I believe) a while back. The city is right near the boarder of the next time zone and what I found that kept happening is that my cell phone would update it's time according to which tower it connected to, often times the one in the wrong timezone. I had to shut off it's auto syncing and let it drift on it's own during that period.
I've also found that there are certain towers that just don't sync time, or don't do it well. In these times I'm glad I've got a watch on. I'll also have to agree with the grandparent... I can flick my wrist and check the time in under a second. It takes a good 10 seconds to fish my phone out of my pocket and unlock it, esp if I'm in a car and the pocket isn't at a great angle for phone removal.
-=JML=-