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Anti-Smartphone Phone Launched For Technophobes
geek4 writes "A Dutch company has launched what it calls 'the world's simplest phone,' targeting users who are sick of new-generation models. Only capable of making and receiving calls, John's Phone is dubbed the world's simplest mobile phone, specifically designed for anti-smartphones users. It does not provide any hi-tech features. No apps. No Internet. No camera. No text messaging. All you have to do — in fact, all you can do — is call, talk and hang up."
Is it me or does £60 to £80, or about $95 to $127 dollars seem extremely overpriced for a phone with essentially no features?
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
What happens when it comes into contact with a smart phone?
And for children buying their first phone!
No contact list either. For all those who say "I just want a phone!" or "does it make calls, hardy-har?" this item will surely fly off the shelves.
Personally, I still count the basic flip phone with only the dial pad and menu button as a phone that just makes calls, because the menu interface is so cumbersome that using any of the extra features are a huge PITA. Even making calls from the contact list hurts. It's easier to just memorize numbers.
If you can only call, talk and hang up, it doesn't appear very useful to me. Listening would be a nice addition, and receiving calls as well...
My prayers have been answered!
All I want is a phone that can send and receive calls. If it has good battery life, durability, and good sound quality, I could see getting one to replace my Nokia 6010. After 4 years, the battery is going, but otherwise I'm quite happy. Just a couple of days ago I dropped it from a meter and a half onto a tile floor with no harm done. Try that with a newer phone.
I would, however, like to have an (electronic) address book, alarm, and rudimentary calendar. The ability to text would be nice too. So maybe I won't be getting one.
...speed dial with enough memory to store ten numbers...
Whoa whoa whoa....what now? What's all this fancy schmancy wizardry again? I'm expected to remember some arcane, complicated button combination simply to dial a phone number? It's always the same: you get something working just the way you want it, and some damn hot-shot wiz kid has to come along and make screw it all up.
I imagine old people will enjoy 3 weeks of battery standby time and not being pestered by SMS spam.
I think even the now disappearing "basic phones" have some sort of phone book/directory function. That's not mentioned in the summary. Also, I see it has no display of any kind. That is pretty bad. Even if this were an "anti-smartphone" there should be some sort of confirmation of the numbers pressed. That's just silly.
And as far as aesthetics go, the think looks more like a remote control than a phone. They should style it to look more like an old style hand set and then just make it flat and shorter. The shape and size can still be basically the same but with contours that remind people of a speaker for the ear and a mic for the mouth with two circular areas. And it would help if it were actually a little bigger so that the microphone actually reaches the mouth.
After all, people who would want such a phone would likely appreciate having the mic closer to the mouth.
Is there a reason they designed the phone to look like a remote control or a weird pager? At least the other phones have some added capabilities to make up for the uncomfortable form factor. They might as well have put some more thought into making it comfortable to use in addition to ease-of-use.
I also like the idea of being listed in the White Pages as "John Doe"
Oh, wait--
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
The chintzy paper phone book it provides doesn't count.
They should have included a standard electronic phone book plus speed dialing, but I have no complaints besides that. If it'd had a proper phonebook, I'd have no trouble recommending it to my in-laws.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Funny, I seem to recall TV ads a few years back for a series of phones — "Jitterbug", as it was called — that effectively did just this. Complete with the "old person afraid of smartphones" use case example. Though with screens (just to see the numbers as you dial them).
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
I don't get it, they claim to have made a phone that is as simple as possible... and then they do include speed dial. Why did they ruin the perfect phone?!
No, wait...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If they pulled all the crap out of it but did some serious engineering to optimize range and durability I could get them 10 sales instantly for our site people. We would probably pay TWICE that price. All they want is to be able to make calls on the edge of cell coverage after the phone has been knocked around in dusty environments and operated at -20C. New crappy phones often don't last a year and range seems to get worse with each new generation. They would fall in love with the things if they were water resistant as well...
I want a portable rotary phone dammit!
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
How about for people you don't need extra stuff/crap and just want a fucking phone? I'm a Unix/Windows SA and systems programmer with 4 computers at home (Windows and Linux) and have managed everything from Crays to PC - so, hardly a technophobe - and I still use my Qualcomm QCP-1900 from 1998. It cost me $200 with no-contract and my service is still $15/month (no contract). The thing still provides 6 hours of talk and two-weeks of standby.
Sure, text and web might be nice - sometime - but I don't really need/want to be that "connected" all the time.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
According to TFA, the phone has a THREE WEEK standby time!
Man, I'd almost give up my smartphone just for THAT.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
That's not mentioned in the summary.
Therefore it must not exist. Sorry to disappoint you, but the phone does store some numbers. RTFA, /. regardless.
[...]there should be some sort of confirmation of the numbers pressed.
Back in the day before they started sticking screens on everything you knew what number you were pressing by the sound it made. It was practical then and can be again.
I agree though that it should look like an old handset if it's going to act like an old handset, and it's hella overpriced.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Futhermore, compare this to the Motofone (admittedly also awful to use) which sold for about half 3 years ago.
I agree with the concept of doing away with touchscreens and apps and so forth as not everyone likes/uses them (my favorite phone ever was the Nokia 6210), but why make it look and be useable like the awful cheap-ass China audio remotes (lookin at you Bose!).
I firmly believe there is a market for the concept, but my mom would not like this at all, 'nuff said.
Dumbphone?
If I pay a hundred bucks for simplicity, I don't want no fancy speed-dial. Kidding aside, the perfect no-frills phone already exists, it's called the Motorola F3 and has an e-paper display which is readable under all lighting conditions, big keys and hands-free mode. It runs forever on one battery charge, it's quite thin, it is comparatively rugged because it was designed for the inhospitable environments of third world countries, and it's one of the cheapest phones in existence. If you really just need a phone and can do with very limited SMS capability, then the F3 is about as good as it gets.
A jitterbug cell phone is what they should have been shooting for:
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/2045/jitterbugcellphone.jpg
It's a basic phone with oversize numbers on the screen, louder than normal speaker, and big buttons, generally geared towards the senior citizen market.
The only problem is the jitterbug isn't a model you can buy (itself based on some Samsung phone iirc) and use on any service but rather an overpriced prepaid service (and I'm not against prepaid).
So basically it's a phone from like 10 years ago?
A Motorola Profile 300e from last century (1999).
They might be on to something, if they changed most of the build materials to wood and put a hand crank on the thing they might open a whole new market up in the Amish community! :D
check out the Mp3 Garbler I built!
Speed dial, memory, mobility! Those are pretty cool features for a featureless phone. I used phones for years without that sort of fancy stuff...
there should be some sort of confirmation of the numbers pressed
Like on your old rotary phone or early (displayless) touchtone phones?
and fuck you.
I love technology. I'm surrounded by it. I build it for a living.
But I want my cell phone to be little more than a battery-powered radio transceiver. If it wants, it can store a few numbers, and show me if I have a message waiting.
All this extra nonsense is just bullshit. And it's getting damn hard to find "just a phone" lately; people look at you like you're from another planet when you ask.
That doesn't make me a "technophobe."
I think even the now disappearing "basic phones" have some sort of phone book/directory function. That's not mentioned in the summary. Also, I see it has no display of any kind. That is pretty bad. Even if this were an "anti-smartphone" there should be some sort of confirmation of the numbers pressed. That's just silly.
You mean like all those phones made between 1900 and 1989 that only clicked or beeped? Even then you had to have your ear to the speaker.
For years and years and years we used phones that didn't have any sort of confirmation of the numbers pressed. Shooot, I've got one on my desk right now that I just have to hope and pray I dial correctly without being able to double check myself.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
Too basic? Then this phone isn't for you.
It's not meeting a small set of needs, it's focused on folks for whom anything digital is tedious and who already have a nice pen-and-paper system of information management.
I know folks who (unlike us geeks) literally get ill at the thought of digitizing paper records like an address book, since every digital implementation sucks in various ways and sync never works perfectly... plenty of data loss horror stories too.
Personally, I'd prefer just having my old brick Nokia or Qualcomm phone from 2000 in terms of capabilities... SIM-based address book, simple call history/redial, minimal to no ringtone selection, and a way to mute and lock.... guess this phone isn't for me either.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Sorry, too much buttons and switches for me. I'll stick to my iPhone :)
Isn't there already a simplified phone that works better than this one? It even has catchy commercials.
I think even the now disappearing "basic phones" have some sort of phone book/directory function. That's not mentioned in the summary. Also, I see it has no display of any kind.
The phone has a display for incoming calls. The address book exists in the form of a pad of paper on the back of the phone you can write on.
I'm serious.
Check it.
In the UK at least, SMS spam is illegal. Possibly so in the rest of Europe, where this phone is being produced and likely sold.
If you collide a smartphone and an anti-smartphone do you get a big explosion of energy? We need a new power souce that doesnt create CO2...
I wouldn't call this a phone for technophobes. Not all of us are married to our cell phones. (Although some have gotten divorced and paying spousal support to them.)
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I've *never* wanted all the fancy features. POTS-emulation is fine by me.
A rotary dial?
Seriously, I've always wanted to have the equivalent of Maxwell Smart's shoe phone ... with this attached to my shoe I could nearly have been there if only they had made it rotary.
There are cell phones for kids that only have 3 or 4 buttons which are programmed for speed dial or 911. No ability to arbitrarily dial any number. i.e. They can only dial their parents.
Seriously -- what's up with the Cartman buttons?
Those can be useful mnemonics (especially for young/old users).
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Just because you used to do it does not make it a better idea--after all, we (well, not me personally, but we as a human collective) used to program with punch cards in machine code.
Also, using a smart phone form factor for something that is anti-smart phone seems pretty dumb...
In the US, we already have such a phone, called a Jitterbug, and it is aimed at the geriatric market...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
My only complaint about the phone is that it does not have rotary dial. If one is going to make a useless bit on ancient technology, at least make it ancient.
here is what I want in an anti-smart phone. I want a small rectangular form factor. I want a battery that will last a week, and talk for a couple days. I want one button to end a call and turn off the phone. I want to import a list of phone numbers. I want to say who i am calling and confirm it from a screen, or choose from a screen. Voice recognition for phones numbers not in the phone.
The reason we have smart phones is that once you have the tech in to make a phone easy to use, like a touch screen, voice recognition, etc, It is not much more of a leap to just make it a computer. We don't have to, it is just the expected feature bloat.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Seriously. Have these people ever met any kids?
I am 36 and I know how to use my Android smartphone properly, but my 11 year old nephew found a simpler to get at a particular feature that I had NO IDEA ABOUT within about five minutes of being handed it for the first time.
if it didn't look retarded and had an electronic contact/phone book.
Really? Are you 100 years old? I am 40 and I never knew anyone who could recognize the tone or rotary system clinks to the corresponding number pressed.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Even my grand dad uses SMS. This phone will evaporate...
Poop in a can, equally relative to anything on this planet except for the fact it can tout "Simplest Mobile Phone" as a badge.
okay, for the 2nd time, mods, although I do not use a slashdot ID, this is "informative"
The device does have a screen on the top, it shows the caller id.
From their website:
"Screen on upper side:
The screen is located on the upper face of the phone. On the left, this icon displays the reception. The more dots (max. 5), the better the reception. Also on the left, this icon displays the battery strength. This icon will display when the battery is nearly flat. If the phone remains inactive, the sleep setting will automatically activate. "
Capitalism never ceases to amaze me in it's creativity. Someone could buy a second-hand semi-smart phone for a 3rd of that price but because they cant/wont learn some basic features like clicking on an icon they get charged half the price of an iPhone for what is, essentially, a keypad.
America, Home of the Brave.
look at the top of the phone
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
I got one of those just by not paying much for a phone
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
My grandparents had a HandleEasy326 about 4 years ago. Big keys, 4 buttons for stored numbers and a display. (Would only show the dialed numbers). No sms, no camera, nothing else. You can't dumb down a phone more without taking away the basic phone capabilities! And if that sounds still too complicated, when my grandpa finally was in hospital, he had a cellphone without numberpad, just three colored buttons for three stored numbers.
That should count as even simpler as the one mentioned in TFA. And it was 3 years ago.
bickerdyke
I'm 26 and I can recognise DTMF tones with close to 100% accuracy.
Then again I have perfect pitch and have played with phones since I was a little kid.
It's a neat trick to be able to tell people what number they just dialed if they have a cell phone which has keypad sounds corresponding to DTMF. Comes in handy too as a ham radio operator with a bit of a hacker mindset listening to people controlling FM repeaters with DTMF touch tones too. :-)
If you're seriously considering this phone, especially paying extra for it -- have you seen it? RTFA.
Let me put it this way: Why would you want a phone without at least an address book? I'm with you that it's gotten out of control, but why would I want a paper address-book stuck to the phone, so I can take it off the back, flip through it, and manually type that into the front? Every time I want to call someone, I'd have to do that.
Or I can press probably fewer buttons than it would take to actually dial the number, and only have to remember the person's name.
Yes, I do "just want a fucking phone." But this isn't just a fucking phone -- the paper addressbook does indeed scream "technophobe."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If you are paying extra to have not have the features because having the features and ignoring them is some kind of problem, then, yes, you are a technophobe.
If it wants, it can store a few numbers, and show me if I have a message waiting.
This one can't. It has "speed dial", but if you actually want an address book, they give you a pad of paper.
Really?
I agree there's a lot more nonsense than we need, and I would like a phone with fewer features. But this looks like it's worse at being "just a phone" than my current phone/camera/etc.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
But you don't have to pay for each mistaken phone call that you make...
... would you want a phone that couldn't send or receive SMSes? I'd prefer to have a device that could not make or receive phone call, and only did SMS.
Working in a phone shop, it grates at my nerves the number of times I hear "I just want a phone" - not because I think everyone needs every feature under the sun, but because we HAVE one, the Samsung E1081T, and people still can't bloody use THAT. It's as if as soon as a device has more than five buttons (three functions) people have some complete logical breakdown. I base this number o a TV remote, having power, volume up and down, and channel up and down. Some people don't ever touch the numbers on their remote because they're afraid of "blowing it up". My idiot customers can't seem to grasp that even though it's mobile, it's still a phone, and if you want to dial a number then just start pressing buttons.
The other customers that piss me off are the ones who have about the sam level of technological ability (i.e, that of a retarded chimpanzee with both hands cut off), and are adamant they must have an iPhone. I try to talk them out of an iPhone, point them at something more their ability level, or at least at something GOOD if they want a smartphone, but they seem insistant on wasting their money, who am I to stop them? I just serve seven hundred people a day and know exactly what everyone needs (even though it's a menial customer service job exposing me to the scum of humanity, I pride myself on never having had so much as a bad comment leveled against me). The thing is, these customers BARELY know how to get to the dialer, and I see them later carrying a fucking NOTEBOOK, an old-school address book and dialing manually, as if the contact list is some kind of black magic!
Back to topic, if you're tech savvy and want "just a phone", then get a chap Samsung. Or a Nokia smartphone, Symbian is so dated that you might as well only have a dialer and a contact list. If you're not tech savvy, or buying for a grandparent, you are beyond help. Even the phone from TFA is too complex for you. Technology is not that fucking hard to use. My mother has Multiple Sclerosis, so she's half blind and not very dextrous or strong in her hands, you know what I gave her? My old Samsung Galaxy i7500, and she has NO problems with it.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
We knew what number we were dialing simply by knowing what the hell we were doing, actually.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I tried to teach my grandpa how to use his cell phone, so I programmed in my number, showed him how to access it, and told him to call me. He pulled his reading glasses and an index card out of his pocket and dialed my number manually.
He literally wants the old Bell phone that he can carry around with him. It's what he's used to, and he's not going to learn how to use anything newer than his VCR.
All I want in a cell phone:
Phone
Clock
Alarm
Qwerty Keyboard Text Messager
Camera (nothing spectacular)
MP3 Player (simple, no non-sense UI)
Bluetooth
3.5mm jack
Minimalist UI
Put every other bit of effort and weight into battery life!
If they want to make a simple phone, get rid of the damn proprietary battery and charging system, and make the phone run on a single ass-standard NiMH rechargeable AA cell. It becomes trivial to travel with a pocket full of spare cells, and recharge them all at the same time with a cheap 4-cell charger. The phone would also be able to recharge its single cell internally like a typical lithium powered phone, of course. And you could use throwaway AA alkalines in it in a pinch.
I'd buy a phone like that immediately if I could find one.
Why not just buy a used cell phone that is actually 10 years old, rather than a brand new one for 4 times the cost that works exactly the same as the 10 year old one?
I'm looking for the opposite. A "smart phone" without the phone. The phone part is still the major expense that I don't use. My wife and I have pay as you go cell phones that cost us less than $20/month combined. I can't justify $100/phone for talk just so I can have a smart phone.
It does have a display
Both for incoming and dialled numbers
It is on the top edge of the phone.
On the one hand, I can see this being useful for people like my aunt, who have an "emergencies only" cell phone. Easy to understand, no frills, no chance of accidentally going online. I can also see it being useful for those who just don't want to bother with all the extras that are on phones anymore. Even my "dumbphone" has a camera, a media player, texting, and online capabilities, and I don't really need or want all that (Except texting. You can't take away my texting).
On the other hand, I can't help but feel that pandering to an already technophobic crowd only makes their fears seem more substantial (to them, at least). With technology changing so incredibly rapidly, it doesn't seem like the best course of action is to put them in a bubble and tell them it'll be okay, we won't let the bad bad digital phone hurt them. Technological advancements aren't going to go backwards; at some point these people are going to have to learn something new.
Mixed feelings.
If I wanted affordable phones but would be willing to shell out that amount of cash, I would buy something from DealExtreme's cellphone category: Sure, their <40 dollars costing phones are probably a lot less durable than that one... But you could buy two or three of those for the price of this and each of those phones would have better features. For example, you could buy this, this AND this and still be below 120 dollars (shipping included). Even if one doesn't work and the other one breaks quickly, you still end up having paid about the same amount and with a lot more advanced phone. If they all work, great. Give others away or have a backup in case that you lose or break your phones.
I would never pay that much cash for a phone that doesn't even let you see who is calling (there is no display). I understand that it isn't in mass production so I could pay some $40 dollars for it mostly to support the concept but the current amount... It wasn't long ago that we aimed for fully functional and durable laptops that would cost that amount. Granted, the OLPC ended up costing about twice that but stilll... I understand that not all people want to pay for GPS, etc. if they don't use them but there is keeping it simple and then there is "stripping away all the features and still keeping the price high"...
The ZTE Blade, right now available only in the UK from Orange, costs £99 ($157) without a contract.
It has an 3.5" 800x480 AMOLED display, capacitive touchscreen, 512MB RAM, a 600 Mhz CPU, 3G, WiFi, GPS, Accelerometers, a 3MP camera, microSD up to 32GB and runs Android 2.1 (first 2.2 ports are available).
"Normal smartphones" will be down to not much more than $100 within the next year and these things will have a hires touchscreen and run Android.
This is not to say that there isn't room for dumb phones, mind you. But price is not the problem.
It's probably getting to the point that I've said this enough times for Nokia to owe me some of their marketing budget, but anyway: the 1100 is the perfect basic phone. Better (monochrome) screen than the Motorola F3, better battery than the older Nokias on which it's based, dirt cheap & near indestructible. There's a damn good reason that it's sold quarter of a billion units.
Lot's of posts saying it should have some addressbook, or some display, or that it's too expensive.
When I saw the motofone announced, it fit all my needs for a minimal phone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE_F3
not to mention it looks better!
Takes a bit of searching to find them for sale, but it looks like one can get them for $20 new:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5394928&SRCCODE=GOOGLEBASE&cm_mmc_o=VRqCjC7BBTkwCjCECjCE
It's a good idea. My brother in law has to retrieve voice messages for my mother-in-law. He wants to get her one. I'm sure there are many like him.
Actually, I _like_ paper notebooks. They are much faster to write something _fast_.
They included a pen and notepad for an address book. Let's not get too serious about this, it was created by an ad agency. Just let them enjoy their free slashvertisement ok?
I am a v1ral sig. Plse c0py me and h3lp me spread. Thank y0u?
I think that every time I buy organic vegetables!
on the Sprint network (CDMA). They have nothing comparable; when I tried to upgrade my ancient Nokia, the Sanyo clamshell I thought will do (in the past, Sanyo has produced very high quality mobile phones) ended up being returned - very bad radio chipset, dropping calls like hot potatoes.
Why oh why do so many people think that if you want just a phone means you're retarded and / or a luddite? Given the way consumer products have been evolving for the past 10-15 years, a new phone with many features at a lower price point usually means a crappy phone, where the main function (voice calls) has been sacrificed in quality to make room for all the sh*t touted as features (yes, I definitely want a shoddy 3megapixels camera with a pinpoint sensor and pea-sized lens - NOT!)
Until the persons phone receives a SPAM SMS or notification from the provider and the little envelope appears,at which point the person calls me up to complain: "what is this envelope and how do I git rid of it? I hate this damn phone!"
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
...for the disposable phone.
Watch this youtube video - it explains a lot more about it - including where the phonebook is. Image that, pen and paper! :-)
While web, apps, and other features may not be a necessity for everyone, texting is a pretty important part of communication. If for some reason texting would be useless for a person, this phone also lacks some basic calling features like a contacts list. Lastly, no contracts and cheap prices are good, but there are plenty of other phones and services that offer the same thing. The minimalist look is good in a lot of scenarios, but it seems like there are a few too many features taken away in this case to be worthwhile.
This phone, the firefly, has just 5 buttons: call mom, call dad, phonebook, call, hangup.
http://www.fireflymobile.com/store/firefly/
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Probably manufactured out of Anti-Matter
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Not in South Korea. There they prefer email.
The lack of features IS the expensive feature. Because of that the volume is low
Can't you adjust the volume?
"This phone isn't just anti-smart, it's downright retarded." Then I realized how condescending that would be to retards. This phone is the worst of all: willfully ignorant.
The Jitterbug http://www.greatcall.com/Phones/JitterbugGraphite/ was created for just such people a number of years ago. It is a great phone that is actually practical, ie, no integrated note book, and a flip design to prevent accidental dialing on a phone that does not have a soft key lock. It is far more practical and you can actually see what number you dialed before hitting talk. It is no more difficult to use than any of today's touch tone phones.
It comes in white.
HEEEEYOOOO
seems a little on the low end. I think the Nokia 6310 from 10 years ago had more.
And I have a phone on my desk that has a 5 line LCD screen which tells me what number I've dialed in, what number is calling me, and it has a directory of all the phone numbers at our company to boot. I can click on a contact whose phone number I have in my Outlook address book and have my phone dial the number. I'm sure there are even more bells and whistles that somebody who uses their phone a lot would know about.
Are any of these features necessary? Of course not, but they sure are convenient :)
"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
What's the use of a smartphone if you have to pay out of the ears for a limited bandwidth? Screw telcos.
Dude, I'm 26 and I recognize all DTMF tones (well, except ABCD, only 0-9 * #). I can also recognize pulse dialing, and dial using just the hook.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
A simple phone is needed, there simply is not a good dumb phone on the market. This is an interesting start, but this may actually be too dumb. Paper based address book? No screen?
An iPhone Nano (or android whatever), small screen 1/3 the size of current smart phones. Only application is an address book. No buttons, simply change the screen from buttons to call status to address book. No texting. No apps. No crapware (sorry verizon). Simple, yet still sexy.
I would love to have one for my teenage daughter, and possibly wife.
http://video.adultswim.com/tim-and-eric-awesome-show-great-job/cinco-fone.html
...otherwise this phone is useless!
I thought of the Jitterbug as soon as I saw the headline, but this thing is so basic it makes the Jitterbug look like an N900 in comparison...it's basically a miniaturized Motorola DynaTAC 8000x AKA "Motorola Brick."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Note: It's actually simpler than a Motorola Brick. It has less buttons, and the Brick had an 8-segment LED display.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
How about even simpler? Really all a phone should need is a small, one-liner monochrome LCD screen, one button for answer/call/hangup, and a touch scroller to scroll through names or numbers you'd be interested in calling. Have the numbers be programmable with a PC through the micro USB plug, which also charges the phone. For an added bonus, drop a couple gigs of solid state memory in it to double as a portable data solution.
Make the body out of CNC aluminum or stainless steel, build it to be submersible and droppable, and slap a sapphire lens over the LCD. Then fill the rest of the phone with a battery on one end and an antenna on the other. If you made it the size of an iphone, the range and battery life should be unprecedented. Or you could make it the size of a typical on-ear bluetooth headset and still function as well as or better than a modern smart phone for what it's used for.
Too bad something like that would be dead before it ever got off the ground. Kids these days and their texting. I'll tell ya.
Such phones have existed for long in Japan (see for example on the kddi website. I believe that, with their big keys, they are aimed at the elderly market.
Have you actually used a voice operated dialer? They're slow, inaccurate, and conspicuous. Address book autocomplete is better in pretty much any area you can think of.
True. The lack of technophilia is not technophobia. Some people like new technology only because it's new, other people are smarter and ask "is it better?"
http://www.au.kddi.com/seihin/archive/kishu_archive.html?id=a101k
they need to make a phone where you don't have to talk to people
Here I am with MOD Points but they wont do me any good because a bunch of idiots mod'd you +5 insightful.
Old People? I mean, really, OLD people? Good grief I would love to meet you some time so this OLD person kick your ass right up into the space the should be holding your brain since I doubt you would miss it.
If this phone did not drop calls, lasted weeks on stand-by, gave me 24 hours of talk time and had decent ergonomics I would gladly beat my iPhone AND my wife's Android phone into silicon dust because neither of them is a good phone.
Old People.. The better part of you ran down the crack of your mothers ass.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
They had a simpler jitterbug without the numbers on it: Just a big green OPERATOR button. Found some snaps @ http://www.squidoo.com/SamsungJitterbug http://www.lomist.com/pics/JitterbugOneTouch.jpg It did have a screen, tho, to show the numbers that you'd called to have them enter for you, remotely!
This is the phone I have. And a couple of my friends too. It is so far the very pinnacle of cell phone technology.
SMS spam? I never knew such a thing existed...surely that would be a very expensive operation for the spammer? SMSes aren't cheap (well, when you start sending out millions of them, at least).
I've had a phone capable of SMS since 1996, lived in 3 different countries in that time, and I can honestly say I've never received an unsolicited SMS.
I don't understand this at all. If you buy a (very) low end Nokia you essentially GET a very simple phone: 2G/GSM only, with calling, text and maybe a couple of very simple little apps like a calculator and clock. Cause the screen is small and it doesn't use 3G, battery life is typically 2 weeks or so. And the low end Nokia is a LOT cheaper than this phone.
I mean yes, I know that this phone is in fact even SIMPLER than the simplest Nokia, but not by much. The most brain-dead luddite in the world can use those simple Nokias just fine. So I'm not sure if there is really a market for this phone.
It seems the recent research regarding antimatter is proving to be of use already!
Think of how many revisions they could have released to get the feature list up to where it is now.
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, c1996
"a return to good old telephoning not only dictated by common consumer sense but actually after a while culturally approved as a kind of chic integrity, not Ludditism but a kind of retrograde transcendence of sci-fi-ish high-tech for its own sake, a transcendence of the vanity and the slavery to high-tech fashion that people view as so unattractive in one another. In other words a return to aural-only telephony became, at the closed curve's end, a kind of status-symbol of anti-vanity, such that only callers utterly lacking in self-awareness continued to use videophony and Tableaux..."
SMSes aren't cheap (well, when you start sending out millions of them, at least).
Well, they're practically free for the network providers.I get about 4 or 5 SMS spams per week from mine.
1000 INR or 22$ approx will get you a basic barebones nokia phone with text messaging, some games, alarm clock/calendar but no java/multimedia thing.
If you are okay with no name unbranded chinese phones, you will get one with camera and color screen for around 1400 INR(30$)
Considering electronics are more expensive in India than US for almost everything, I wonder why such phones are not there in the US!
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1872738&cid=34264944
I posted elsewhere before I saw penguin_dance's post. Please see the above link for an excerpt of David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' that discusses this topic, e.g., 'a return to good old telephoning not only dictated by common consumer sense but actually after a while culturally approved as a kind of chic integrity...' more at the above link... Remember, this was published in 1996, so written like 15 years ago. Who had cell phones then?
Before I had read this part in Infinite Jest, I had already given up my cell phone because it wasn't worth the high cost. It's not that I couldn't afford it, just that it's such a ripoff. I'm actually really enjoying being able to focus on my work when I need to, and I can still make and receive calls with skype, email, or otherwise communicate when it's convenient for me. I do borrow my spouse's cell phone occasionally when I really need one, and if I needed it any more, I'd probably get a pay-go, but I haven't had a real need for that yet.
This plain-old phone would make a great pay-go if it wasn't so expensive. Other pay-go phones are cheaper, and almost as devoid of features. In fact, they're probably worse because they place the 'data/web' button precariously so that you regularly hit it accidentally and have to pay the daily rate for web that's totally useless on the pay-go. At least with the plain-old phone you wouldn't be getting hit with 'crappy-interface' surcharges all the time.
The biggest plus is that photos are about the moment; you have a camera on you, and you take the shot.
Only thing about them is that you can't zoom in (optically).
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
In the United States, seven digits is a local call; "1" and ten digits (the first digit being 2 thru 9) is a long distance call including area code; "0" is Operator; and "011" followed by country code and local number is International. Dialing works the same from a rotary phone as it does from a touch-tone landline set or your mobile... how could it possibly be any different? Rotary phones and cellulars just need 0 thru 9.
I deliberately purchased the cheapest mobile phone in the store when last visiting Thailand. About $10 US, if my memory serves well. A slick simple little Nokia.
I use a prepaid card to avoid high charges (calls to me here in Europe are free, only calls out cost money).
The speed dial is brilliant - I call my wife at her work land line with 2 keys, and hangup after a single ring - no charge incurred. I have 3 other good friends on 3 other buttons. Programming is as easy as programming the radio station on the car stereo.
She (or the others) calls me back for whatever it was I wanted to talk about, if it suits the work situation. I can send and receive SMS if I want, but don't bother.
My TOTAL phone bill for last year, including the phone, was under US $100. You can call it a dumb phone all you like, but it's a pretty fucking smart phone as far as my budget goes.
I got a land line at home and schedule international calls for the cheap (or free) rates. All this "convenience" thing costs way too much, and best suits those with the mentality of a spoiled child with a limited attention span, no patience at all, and little ability to plan their own lives. And yes, you can get off my lawn now...
In any phone running S40 (most of the simple Nokia & Motorolla phones) all you have to do is press and hold the speed dial number, and if it isn't already assigned, it will ask you to enter the phone number you want to store (or look it up in the phone book if you want). Easy.
Sorry mistake - wanted to write "was NOT subsidised".
This one is much better. Real retro-real. And it has rotary dialing!
http://www.sqnewton.com
What happens if a smartphone meets an anti-smartphone?
HTTP/1.1 400
hi sir "A Dutch aggregation has launched what it calls 'the world's simplest phone,' targeting users who are ailing of new-generation models. Only able of authoritative and accepting calls, John's Buzz is dubbed the world's simplest adaptable phone, accurately advised for anti-smartphones users. It does not accommodate any hi-tech features. No apps. No Internet. No camera. No argument messaging. All you accept to do ” in fact, all you can do ” is call, allocution and adhere up." web designing company in chandigarh thanks
For years and years and years humans enslaved other humans and bought and sold them as chattels. What's your point?
To me, the anti smartphone is an iPhone. Every time we hear about some "smart" feature, it's either because it has been rejected at the app store, it's against the TOS, or you need to jailbreak the phone to have it.
And the people who use it: Managers, teenagers... The people who think being able to use your brain is nerdy. I.e anti-smart people.
It's ugly, it's too big to fit in a pocket, so not really mobile. What's smart about that?
This one, however... A pretty smart choice for someone who really just needs a plain old phone, but without being tied to the house, and is too old to learn "those new-fangled cell phones".
It is very nice that one has a cellular number, but is not able to receive SMS.
Everyone expects this and people generally do not want to say that they are unable to read sms,
not wanting to sound stupid.
I think phones like these should have an SMS autoreply that says:
Short messages are not received. Try calling. This should be written
in all local languages and in English.
AFAIK no phone yet has this. Alternatively it could be operator service. That
one I have also not heard about.
There's a small monochrome LCD on the top of the phone which displays dialed numbers, and and also CallerID. As there's no on-board phone book, you don't get a name, but you can see the number.
There's also an included mini pen and paper phonebook on the back of the device, for that true 20th century feeling.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Has a real-world battery life of over three weeks. I have one. Best of all was the price: 15 euro, unlocked.
A paper address book is not as crazy as it sounds. I know an elderly woman who really does carry a paper phone book around with her so she can call people on her mobile phone. She hasn't figured out the user interface at all, but she can turn the phone on, type in a number, and press dial. For a long time, the fact that she didn't get a dial tone was confusing, and she would press dial to "pick up" and then try dialing the number, which of course didn't work.
Another friend of mine took to writing down all of her numbers after she wanted to transfer them to her new phone. I pointed out that she could've used the "transfer to SIM" function on the old phone and then "transfer from SIM" on the new phone. She was shocked that was possible, and told me it had taken her hours to copy out the address book to paper and re-enter the whole lot into the new phone, but at least now she had a paper copy she wouldn't ever lose it.
I think it is too simple - although I sympathise with the sentiment.
What I'd really like to see is a phone that that offers me exactly the things that are useful: calls, phonebook, calendar, sms, fully programmable, robust screen, the ability to attach external USB keyboard, network and harddisk, - and nothing else. No half-baked camera, no half-brained games, no semi-useful applications. Oh, and the ability to block SMS and calls from unwanted sources.
And one more thing: a GPS based "location alarm" to remind to go and do whatever next time I come to a certain place.
The only problem is the jitterbug isn't a model you can buy (itself based on some Samsung phone iirc) and use on any service but rather an overpriced prepaid service (and I'm not against prepaid).
If you lived in Europe instead you could just get a phone from Emporia, slap in any SIM card you want and be done with it...
So the kind of phone the article talks about isn't exactly news here.
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
free phone with a cheap voice plan
A "cheap voice plan" costs $40 per month because the big four won't sell a plan with fewer than 450 included minutes per month. I'm on pay-as-you-go with Virgin Mobile, on a cheap flip phone that can only talk and text, because I use maybe a tenth of that many minutes and don't text.
Making SIP calls via WiFi when I'm near an access point (costs a lot less than using the mobile network).
Even if you use only make 40 minutes per month of calls when away from Wi-Fi, you still have to buy 450 at $40/mo because that's what the big four carriers consider their "entry-level" monthly voice plan. Phones with Wi-Fi typically also have 3G, and that means also having to buy a $30/mo data plan.
100 years ago there were no tones, just pulse. There was a time when I could tell you a dial-up connection's speed just by listening to the handshake. I'm too out of practice to do that anymore, but seriously, it's just a matter of learning your environment and adapting. Unless you're tone-deaf, then I guess you're just SOL.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone. Bjarne Stroustrup
instead of progressing where regressing no phone book means that soon everyone will be bringing back the black notebook or carrying pen and paper :/
If that was truem you woudn't acutally own any of those phones. Threa are better phones that are easy to use and get many times more time with their charge.
SO you are either:
A) Stupid
B) Lying.
C) Too old to know how to look things up.
300 hours standby:
http://www.greatcall.com/Phones/JitterbugGraphite/
Thats not true. The phone has always had some sort of confirmation. Wether it's on the screen, the tones, the amount of clicks, or telling the operator the number you want to connected "Klondyke, 555".
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm on a pre-pay plan, so there's no minimum monthly rate
In the United States, one typically buys a phone from a carrier's store or from a carrier's section in an electronics store, and it is locked to that carrier. The prepaid MVNOs tend not to have Android phones, and the major carriers (AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint) don't offer Android phones except on a $70/mo plan.
£
You live in Great Britain. Have you any suggestion for people who live in the USA?
Well look at that, the Commissary is expensive while the cell-mates work under federal minimum wage of 25-cents an hour, and yet Administration bills the State government for $50k or more per year of the Cell occupancy.
No different than phone service companies charging a unlimited-use monthly flat fee of $30 a month and then they violate the contract when they are billed by the network and carrier,
Cell Phones are Prison Phones. Need to jailbreak these fuckers so the cell phone software operates as a peer network maintaned by the people like a mainframe and router in every hand that pays you to travel a different geographical road just to allow repeater service for those of us that lack line-of-sight.
Yes, don't buy a phone from your carrier.
In the United States, that would mean buying from an e-tailer. If I buy from an e-tailer like NewEgg, and I find what I bought to be unusably unergonomic, I have to pay a 15% restocking fee. Besides, due to differences in phone systems (GSM vs. CDMA2000) and frequency bands, the only carrier that works with unlocked phones is T-Mobile, and its signal coverage is the iffiest among the big four U.S. carriers.
Do some research before you buy.
That's exactly what I want to do. But because well-known brick-and-mortar shops don't carry unlocked phones, I have no way to try the screen and input of an unlocked phone before I buy one.
Yeah...
Both of those fit the "elderly people" or "technophobe" description. Both of them more than convince me that it's not really sane to want a paper address book if you can lean to use an electronic one.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I mean it's not for everyone for sure, but I don't go for phones with alot of glitsy features. My first cell had a mono screen, no camera, it didn't do text messaging. It sent and recieved calls. It was to the point and functional. I am not the type though that look at my phone as a camera, a gameboy, a internet browser and such. I find texting to be insane for me since I can say, "Hey, I will meet you at 8" alot quicker with my mouth than texting with my number pad. I like the personal touch of actually hearing people's voice, so I can get tone of voice to tell what that person means much better. It's harder to get confused when someone pops off a joke or if they are serious or whatever. To me, texting seems like a step backwards than digital voice communication though. I look at it like the telegraph vs. the telephone. But of course, everyone is different. Before you go and tell me I must be a senior or something, I'm 28. And what I want in a phone is the best battery life, the clearest voice, and the best reception. All else to me is just a waste.