Why can't a mobile phone just be a phone?
posted by Heath Buckmaster on July 12, 2007
I remember my very first mobile phone. It was a popular brand of device that could do nothing more than place and receive phone calls. The quality of the calls wasn’t all that great; it was heavy to hold in my hand; it barely fit in my pocket; calls were dropped randomly; I, and the person I was talking to sounded like we were placing the call from the bottom of a dry well. But it did place and receive calls - and when I got that flat tire on the way home from work, it was nice to be able to call a friend to come help me.
Funny how little things have changed. Today’s devices still have voice quality issues, the Pocket PC I use barely fits in my pocket (so sometimes I pull the SIM out, stick it in a slimline phone I also have, and go out on the town), calls are still dropped randomly no matter what carrier you have, and now the people I talk to sound more like Optimus Prime* from the Transformers*. Granted, he’s got a very cool voice, but still.
But the pocket PC’s, smartphones, and flip/candybar/pda phones of today go way beyond placing and receiving calls. You can send text messages (with flip or slide out keyboards), pictures of funny bumper stickers you see while driving, and videos of bands or concert performances that you really aren’t supposed to be recording, to anyone around the world - while at the same time playing Sudoku or solitaire, blogging on your favourite social networking site, listening to your latest music download, checking your calendar for the next day, and browsing the internet with your wi-fi connection at the same time. It’s amazing how much multitasking can be done with such a tiny device. But I really don’t want or need all of that.
We can add 50 new features to a phone but we can’t stop people from screaming into it because they can’t hear how loud their voice is. How long has full duplex been around, I ask? And why do I still get static during a phone call when I’m not even moving around? A phone used to be so that you could have a conversation with someone as if you were standing right next to them - it was about verbal communication over distances. When I talk to my friend who is 3 feet away from me they don’t randomly stop talking, and their voice doesn’t suddenly fill with static. I can hear them clear as day.
Why can’t my mobile phone just be a phone? And I mean a good phone that does that one basic thing well. Three cheers for the people who can get a high score on their wireless version of Bejeweled* while sending a text message to 83 people at the same time letting them know that they just got a new haircut. I just want to be heard when I’m calling AAA for a tow truck if my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Where is Alexander Graham Bell when you need him?
** Yes, I do use text and picture messaging, and I do check my calendar, play Sudoku, and browse the internet over my wi-fi connection from my Pocket PC. But I’m not happy about it. :-)
* Transformers and associated character names are trademarks and copyrights of Hasbro or Hasbro’s licensors. All other brand or product names are trademarks of their respective companies.
Comments (14) (closed)
tagged: cell phone, mobile phone, pda, phone features, pocket pc, smartphone, technology, transformers, wireless
Comments
Jul 12 | Lord Volton said:
The call quality on my first behemoth cell phone was much better than my current phone with lots of extra bells and whistles.
I think part of it is using cheaper parts that are simply not up to snuff. And most likely bandwidth issues.
Similarly, VOIP has been terrible since its inception and continues to offer terrible quality to this day.
Maybe Silverthorne will make the processing of voice better, because I agree there is a still a long way to go when it comes to voice quality on cell phones.
Jul 15 | Edwin Mehlman said:
You make me realize how I am blessed with a pretty good cell service, since I really can’t relate to your issues with call quality, but I cannot criticize the feature-set of modern devices. I can offer up a culprit or two…
First and foremost, you might blame Star Trek.
The engineers at Motorola who first got the cellphone ready for prime-time freely admit that they were inspired by Jim Kirk’s flippy communicator. “We want one of those” they said, so they went and did it.
Secondly, you should blame Star Trek.
The “PADD”s used on-screen inspired the Newton - the first PDA.
Thirdly, you can blame Star Trek.
The software engineers behind early digital media tell how they loved the way Geordi LaForge could summon music from thin air, in his quarters aboard the Enterprise. MP3 codecs and cheap players were on the way.
Then came the convergence. Cellphone + PDA + digital entertainment.
Credit is also due to the vision of the US DOD who gave us GPS - the cellphone’s latest trick.
PDA-Phones in Europe become more powerful every year, and the processors and operating systems are coming along rather nicely.
I hope that your cell service is able to improve your call quality, but I like to appreciate the features my phone gives me too. Possibly the issue is one of perception, in that we still see the device primarily as a phone.
Jul 15 | Michael Molin said:
Hello Heath,
I think there are two things needed to make a cell phone the device that people really like to use on the go - compact size and comfortable interface to access and work with information as easily as the PC platform and Internet provides it. Still we don’t have them together - the market delivers only the first one. There is a need in a cell PC platform and Mobile Web development. Exactly, a standard hardware platform for the Mobile Web sites and applications as the PC platform is for the Internet. The first one is an essential requirement for the success of the second one - any progress has to be based on something real. Take a look at my project and ISN forum’s thread for details.
Michael
Jul 16 | Heath said:
LV: I think that’s the sacrifice some companies are making. I would just be happy if people could hear their own voice while talking on a cell phone - that would minimize the yelling and obnoxious behaviour in public places.
EM: funny you mention that, when I saw the iPhone* for the first time, I thought it looked like the lcars interface from Star Trek*. Pretty slick - I’ve been wanting touch panels for my house for ages - only for the geek factor…it still has to be functional.
MM: you’re spot on when it comes to a comfortable interface. If a person has larger hands or fingers, it becomes almost impossible to push those tiny little keyboard or phone pad buttons on most phones. phone calls take longer to enter, and text messaging is nearly a nightmare.
Jul 16 | Michael Molin said:
Yes, that’s one of the reasons why I started to work on my project more than two years ago. The most important thing, of course, the fact that more than a half of people speak and write using non-Latin alphabet and there is no space for international layouts on the keys.
The standard keyboard key has the contact area width of 12 mm and when the keyboard is shrinked this parameter can’t be less than 8 mm for comfort typing. So, we would have a device with 80 mm width for the 10-key row. In order to get this parameter the only solution is to divide the layout of this row by two.
It’s logical even because the standard keyboard is designed for typing by two hands and we need the system for one-hand typing on a standard cell phone with the width of 53 mm. And the term “typing” is supposing that the width of the three keys is 54 mm. So, even this dividing is not enough.
Nature helps to get the comfort typing - honeycomb. That’s the Compact QWERTY Keyboard, the base of my project. Next step for the comfortable interface - two connected touch-screen UIs. For an example of the interfaces nowadays, the screen area of iPhone is two thirds of that one the Cell PC Platform is providing.
Michael
Jul 17 | G.T. said:
I want a cell phone that I can use to TALK, I want to hear the person I am talking to as he/she is next to me; I don’t want limitations, I don’t want to worry about minutes, about roaming, about price, about …
I want phone companies to invest in voice quality; I want people to hear my real voice when I am talking not something altered because of reduced voice quality, I want the phone to be smart enough to filter out the noise around me; don’t understand me wrong, I want a smart phone too, a phone smart enough for voice communications not for games and web browsing :-)
Jul 17 | Heath said:
MM: Maybe one of these days we’ll all have data ports on the sides of our heads that offer direct computer access in a sort of virtual world - think Seamus Harper on Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda. Either that or maybe we need small Bluetooth implants in our minds that allow direct wireless communication with other people and devices. Passing an exam in school would be a breeze if your neighbor wasn’t encrypting their thoughts :-).
GT: Exactly. That’s what I use a phone for 90% of the time. My home phone has no other features than to transmit my voice. I can’t play games on my land line, and the only thing it does that I consider fancy is caller ID.
Jul 17 | Michael Molin said:
Neural networks or brain activity is based on multimodality every time creating new protocols of communications according to its new structure or a thought. This chaos (the disordered formless matter supposed to have existed before the ordered universe) of reality is the highest order. As for devices, USB is a standard now for PCs, UWB - for cell PCs in the future.
Jul 17 | Michael Molin said:
BTW, in my second comment - “read news and write using non-Latin alphabet”. Speak using alphabet is like VOA news with slow articulated English ;)
Jul 27 | Mailmanorama said:
A mobile phone can be just a phone. If you let it.
I never wanted a mobile in the first place, but now that I have a one I feel insecure without it.
But up to this point I’ve resisted the many temptations of the newer phones - no camera, no bluetooth, no mp3, no games, no video. I rarely text and everyone who calls me has the same ringtone.
Just because mobiles now come with bells and whistles doesn’t mean we have to use them all.
That being said…I wouldn’t mind having a pink and silver cell phone ;-)
Aug 10 | Heath said:
mailmanorama: I agree - in this day and age if I don’t have my mobile phone with me, there’s something missing, almost as if I’ve forgotten my glasses, my keys, or my wallet.
I do have camera, bluetooth, mp3, games, video on my phone, but I use them rarely. Text messaging is a big one for me, and I use one ringtone for everyone as well.
My problem is that if I don’t need the bells and whistles, I’m still having to pay for all of them, because nearly every new phone out there comes with them whether you want it or not.
I haven’t seen a recent phone release that’s actually just a phone.
Aug 11 | Michael Molin said:
I believe that soon the phone functionality will be added to watches (for example, Sony Ericsson’s MBW-100) with Ultra Low Power (ULP) Bluetooth headset and extra pack for battery and GSM radio attached to a jeans or trousers belt. This would be really comfortable. As for me, I want a compact-as-a-cell-phone computing device for working with information on the go and plus using it as a remote control and keyboard with a mouse (trackball) for a big TV screen at home.
Aug 14 | Heath said:
Maybe for those of us who wear glasses, that bluetooth watch can connect to a bluetooth module on my glasses and display things within the lens.
Sounds pretty futuristic, but I think the technology exists today - and since a phone is no longer a phone, why not add the feature?
Aug 19 | Michael Molin said:
Also I like this design: a (car) key charm as a battery and GSM radio extra pack with microUSB for charge. And address book is stored in the watches’ memory (for example, Casio Databank series).