Note to Phone Manufacturers
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I want a phone with no external buttons. If you have to put external buttons on it, at least recess the bloody things! Perhaps two: one to shut the alarm clock off, and one to snooze it. The same two could answer the speakerphone and reject it.
Other than that, forget the convenience bullhocky and give me a phone that won’t activate the camera, the music player (which I don’t use) the FM radio (which requires a clunky plug-in earphone to work, so I don’t use it either) the video recorder or the freakin’ keyboard lock whenever I pick it up. If you must cover the thing with buttons, at least give me a way to deactivate the damned things!
Technology creep is a function of the creeps who do the design. Just because you can do something is no good reason to do it. Give the thing to some real people to test, not just a bunch of phone geeks, and listen to their suggestions. I’ll bet you’ll be amazed! I love the cameras and stuff, but y’know what…I can open the phone if I need to use them. They do not need to be instantly accessible. Bet it would make your design chores a lot simpler, too.
And I don’t want to hear about your bloody iPhone, either. I don’t need a phone to surf to blinkin’ Saturn, I just want a communication tool that works on my agenda, not its own.
One Comment
teddgcm
July 2nd, 2008
at 6:18am
I agree with you completely. As a tech rep for ATT, I come across this issue allot. Most of our customers are people who just want a phone and could care less about all the extras. Jitterbug has the right idea here. It’s a simple phone with simple functions and makes calls. It even has a dial tone when you open it. There are allot less “Power Users” with cell phones than companies like to think. All the extras are simply a way to drive up the price, they know that 90% of users will never open the camera function more than once, at least on purpose. Sometimes I think they add the buttons in a manner that will facilitate unintentional use, thus charging the customer for accidental usage.
Actually, I have an N75, and use the camera and video recording capability a lot. I just don’t like having any functions designed so that they can be operated accidentally. There’s no excuse for it, except your suggestion that it’s a way to foster more use and charges. Hardly makes sense in the case of my phone, though, because the only kind of call you can initiate from the “outside” is a voice-dialed speakerphone call, almost impossible to do by accident. While I tend to agree with you about things like inadvertent dialing because you forgot to lock the keypad on a candy bar, my mistrust of my own paranoia would have precluded mentioning it. Since you did, however…
What really used to get me p.o.’d was when my candy bar would dial 911. Thank goodness you can disable that now.
With a smartphone like the N75, there’s really no reason for not having a menu item to disable external controls. The OS would certainly handle it…but it doesn’t, and my phone is unlocked, with the Nokia firmware upgrade. Maybe now that Nokia is acquiring Symbian…….