Nerdposeur's Journal: Cell Phones - How about some real features?

Huge personal gripe: cell phones try to do too many things. My cell phone wants to play games, take pictures, surf the internet, etc etc.

What about call management? I had one phone that let me group all my contacts into Friends, Business, etc. Then I could put it on, for example, Vacation mode, and it would send work calls directly to voicemail. Beautiful! Why don't all phones have this?

And as long as we're grouping contacts, why can't I used tabbed browsing to scroll through the lists? With a little joypad, I'd click left and right to see the list of Friends, Business, Musicians, Church, etc. One tab, of course, would be All.

Or how about the ability to send a "calling card?" If I call someone and they want to save my number, they have to key in my name. I should be able to hit a button and send them all my contact info and name while we're talking.

And what about if I don't want to be disturbed, except in case of emergency? My phone should have an "emergency call only" setting, so that if I'm asleep, someone will get a message saying, "Hey, I'm probably asleep. If it's an emergency, press one and my phone will ring; otherwise, leave a message." Then I don't get woken up, other people don't feel rude, and important messages get through. Bingo!

In general, more people are using cell phones as their only phones and their only phone books. Managing our contacts and controlling who can call us when are logical, important needs - much more so than the ability to download pop songs as ringtones.

Then, of course, if we're going to add "non-communication" features, the first logical thing is a dictaphone, to leave myself voice memos. The device already has a speaker and internal memory; a dictaphone is obvious. Still, not all phones have this.

And if I AM going to have a camera and whatnot, I should be able to USE the phone as I see fit - I.E., download those pictures to my PC. My current phone will snap pictures, but to get them off the phone I have to e-mail them to myself at 25 cents a pop. Sucks for the customer, great for the company.

I do have my own silly wants, of course. One "fantasy feature" - online management of my voicemail. Generally not important, but personally, I'd like to be able to UPLOAD my voicemail greeting as a .wav file rather than record it over the phone. I've got a bunch of professional audio recording and editing stuff, and could make a darn cool message with sound effects and music if I wanted. But the only way to use it would be to play it back through my speakers and hold the phone up to them, which sounds terrible.

They're already storing my voice as a digital file on their network. Why not let me edit the file directly? It's MY voicemail.

(whew) I guess that's about all for now.