Surur's Journal: AJS - a geek that understands gadget lust

Re:Third time's a charm... (Score:3)
by ajs (35943) on Saturday November 06, @06:26PM (#10742382)
( http://www.ajs.com/~ajs/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 24, @02:33PM )
Can I get a phone that is just a phone please?

Not trivially, no. There are many reasons for this. First, "just a phone" is a term that is in flux. Certainly 15 years ago, that meant a device that was attached to a wall either directly or by a short cord, and converted your face-noise to analog signal on a copper wire.

So, what you're saying now is you want a wireless phone-like device. Then you say you want to block numbers... well that's not really a phone-like thing at all. Certainly not a phone-like thing when measured against what phones have done for the last 50 years!

You're asking for a new device. While your wish list is nice, to ignore the wish list of the vast majority of other customers would be neglegent on the part of the management of the cell phone manufacturers.

No I don't want a crappy digital camera on my phone.

And yet, the idea of camera phones has caught on like wildfire, and is one of the single most popular modifications to the basic cell phone since user-downloadable ring-tones. I'm not saying you're wrong not to want this, but to act as if the industry is going off half cocked and ignoring the customer is putting blinders on to who the customer really is.

No I don't want a crappy music player on my phone. No I don't want a crappy web browser on my phone.

Granted, implementations of these features have been lame to say the best.

What the world really IS waiting for is a decent, way to manage contacts. Now that phones are portable, we NEED a way to have our numbers move with us as trivially as that note-pad that we used to keep by the phone pre-cell. Replacing a phone should not be traumatic, but because of the proprietary formats involved it IS. You usually need a for-pay version of Outlook on Windows just to read the data from your phone. This makes no sense.

I WANT A PHONE THAT IS A PHONE. Jesus christ.

Once again, define phone.

--
Aaron Sherman: Mushroom Pics! [ajs.com]
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