The Dell Streak.
I can see, if you’re a night watchman, or if you have some other job that means you have long wait-times, there may be some desire to watch a movie designed for the biggest possible telly on a handheld screen instead…
Personally I consider a movie a waste if it doesn’t have neat costumes, so that’s kinda lost on me…
But…there has to be a happy medium with the consumer, and Dell, a company I actually like a lot, may have gone just a shade far.
What do you think about screensize and personal electronics?
My own desire is for a phone large enough I can see the buttons (I’m very far-sighted, and can’t see close-up things except as a blur) and read the time without my glasses. I also prefer it to fit in a neat side pocket in my purse and to have a fliptop so the screen doesn’t get scarred up from the hundred other objects I may shove into that pocket with it…and I want it small enough to fit in the purse pocket but not so small it gets lost. Credit-card size is the smallest I ever want, personally. The in-ear ones for the car, maybe—but only if you get a reasonably-legible control unit to set it up and some way to set a: Go ‘way I’m busy response.
I don’t want it to take photos and play music. I sure don’t want it going to the internet. I don’t text. I just call people, maybe a call a week. Some weeks several, especially if Jane and I are on a shopping trip and need to find each other in Walmart. Many people really do use all that functionality and power to them: I just don’t want it being turned on by accident, which is my major gripe: I’ve had my phone stuck on speaker phone at some really bad moments, and I have to flag a passing teenager who can see the keyboard and ask them to shut it up.
And being told I have voice mail or text messages—heck, I never set it up to receive them, because I just barely keep up with hundreds of e-mails. [Thank you, Lynn, for reducing that down to only 20-30 a day.] And I still get them. Mostly from the phone company.
I figure if somebody wants me badly enough they’ll e-mail me. I do check my e-mail. My ideal phone would have a message that says, if someone texts it: this phone just receives regular phone calls. Sorry! That’s all, folks! I would also like a per-month price based on just phone calls. 😉
What are your own preferences? Just curious. I know OSG (who has professional reasons to want to be contacted) loves her Droid. But it’s sure crazy how wild this market is!
Oh, yeah, cell phones. I don’t have one. I use a land line, and not wireless either. I just had to replace my message recording device; my old one apparently was destroyed in a power surge. The old one had a nice little tape recording device that was fine for me. I had to hunt hard to find a new recorder that did not have more features than I wanted and would work with a regular wired phone. The new one tells the the phone number of the caller before it will play the message; I still have my caller ID device as well.
But cell phones; I really only want one for traveling, mostly for the ‘in case’ situation of trouble on the road. I really like not being reached when I am not at home; I like controlling when I have to answer the phone or talk to someone. If I had a cell phone I would like one that just sent and received phone calls – no texting, no cameras. I would like it to be no more than 5 inches long when folded, with a flip lid. I would like a screen big enough to see the phone number I dialed or the number calling me, and no larger; I might have trouble reading a small screen, but I could bring the phone closer to make out the details if I needed it. I might have a little trouble with small dialing buttons, but I would not use the phone a lot, so I could deal with the need to be careful what button I punched. I hate touch screens; they are hard to manage in a hurry.
I want a basic cell phone, and I want the cheapest possible service, because I probably would make no more than 5 calls per month, and would hope to receive less. Only trusted people would get the cell phone number, to be used only in emergency situations.
I won’t start on what’s happened to the Ipod; I have a mini that’s wearing out, and the replacement appears to take and display videos, play the radio, and who knows what else. I just want to play my chosen music in an easily portable device.
Your pattern is fairly well like ours. Jitterbug brand is a tolerable answer, that I’ve found: you pay heavily up front for the phone and then your monthly charge is lower.
As for a good music player, I got a Creative MP3 player that does pretty well: plugs into my computer like a flash drive to receive new songs or recharge, and it cost me about 60-80 dollars. Size of a Bic lighter. I skate with it, have dropped it more than once, no issues. It does have a radio, but that’s ok: that feature doesn’t work. 😉
I like my Tracfone. 3 1/4 inches, flip top, no camera, no bells and whistles (although it does receive texts — on those rare occasions someone sends one). You can’t get funky ringtones, which is a disappointment, but other than that it’s great. No monthly fees, you pay for minutes and service time, and then you just use them up. I think I figured out that it costs me about 23 cents a day to have it.
I love my iPod Nano. At 8 gig, it has 3/4 the storage capacity of my iBook Indigo from 2001…
It *would* be cool if it had a radio though. My car radio is awful, so I have my 20 year old Sony Walkman hooked up to it. (I wonder sometimes, is it actually *possible* to break something by Sony? (Cue posts about broken Sony products. 🙂 ))
I’ve had to upgrade my phone every time it needed replacing. I had a basic PCS flip phone, that’s now gone, I replaced it with a flip phone that had a camera, but not much else. This phone is not a flip phone, is’s the thin, flat phone that LG calls the Glance. I’ve tried to block all of the services I don’t want, such as internet access, I don’t download ringtones, but will on occasion send a text when I think a voice call would be inconvenient to the receiver, but I still want to get their attention. I do occasionally take pictures with that phone (CJ, did you get the picture of the Hershey’s Kiss Tree?), and I use a basic ringtone, I put the phone on vibrate when I’m somewhere that a ring would be too conspicuous, and I use my Bluetooth headset while I’m driving. I’m not addicted to the phone, I use it because my parents are up there in years, and they can contact me wherever I am by dialing a local number.
Hey! I use the LG Glance, too, and for the same reasons. No frills, minimalist. But I do love ringtones. My default has Yoda saying, “Your phone, ringing it is. Press the button you must, and fulfill your destiny.” I get a lot of sharp glances when my phone rings in public! 😀
I did indeed! Thank you, Joe!
I’m an old geezer (I remember when there were wood-burnin’ computers, sonny! He, he, he), and I’m not really with the convergence of mobile devices. When I’m out and about, I’m not really interested in watching video, unless I’m sitting down. And I hate, I hate, I hate the small keyboards or — ugh! — the iPad style touch keyboards!
I don’t do texting, so my needs for a screen on a cell phone are minimal. In my ideal world, my cell phone would be no larger than an ear piece, voice actuated and controlled; for all other needs I’d prefer a very light, thin 8-1/2 x 11 (or A4, that works, too) tablet full computer. Okay, the tablet communicates with the cell.
My ideal world is about as likely to exist as Pratchett’s Discworld. 😉
I am young enough I’ve never had my own land line. Just cell phones with a brief run of calling cards and pay phones leading up to them in the late early 2000s. That said I can’t stand them really. Especially texting or anything to do with iPhones. More times than I can count I’d be out with friends and notice silence descend…finding that everyone is looking at their devices and pecking away while I just stand there waiting for them to snap out of it. IMO if you are out with people BE WITH THE PEOPLE. Not with your phone. I went on a date to see Star Trek with a guy and probably broke his shin with the number of times I kicked him for checking his phone and missing stuff during the movie. He’s addicted to it. My phone is pretty stripped down. And I refuse to return text messages so people will get the hint not to send them to me. And everyone thinks I am nuts for not wanting an iPhone, but I really don’t. I love being disconnected.
Oh, my friend got his DX and did all of the hoop hopping I said to do so hopefully that will register as a hit to your store at some point in the future. He even asked what book of yours I thought he should start with which resulted in a two hour long email I had to compose. *sigh* He didn’t know what he was getting into.
😆 Sweetbo, thank you! And I approve your BE WITH THE PEOPLE! campaign. Electronics is lovely, but respect the people you’re with and show them some love!
AMEN!!!!!!
I have an old Samsung flip phone I bought from a co-worker a few years back. Friends know not to waste time calling my cell phone. It’s either off or I forgot to charge it. I use T-Mobile’s prepaid plan and I haven’t found another I like better. I’ve put the $100 in refills on the card, so this year all I had to add was $10 to roll my time over. Last time that was over 300 min. unused from the previous year. The cell phone VM even says to call the house. If this phone dies, I have the older phone that was lost in the back seat of my car for a year. Similar style. I changed phone numbers when I lost the old phone. Now, I just have a backup.
I’m most liable to look at my purse and wonder why it’s playing music. It’s rare that the phone is actually on.
I’ve got a Samsung flip phone. It cost $30 with a $30 rebate. My only requirement is that it must have GSM for when I go down to Oz and replace the SIM card with a local one down there with a local number. I use it more when I’m there than I do here in the US. It has a camera (used a couple of times) and we’ve got all the other bells and whistles turned off and don’t get charged for them. We also have a friend on our account and she just pays us what she owes every month. It’s cheaper for her that way and because we share a dog calls between the 3 of us are free.
We’ve kept our land line because the cell towers go out during storms, as do the cable provider’s equipment. We also have UVerse on that line.
I tell you, here we are, the proponents of the future whacking features off our cellphones… But I think we’re between technologies. If I were designing it…the phone would be…
1. something I can USB or wifi into my computer, with software that lets me use the keyboard that’s really big enough, that I’m used to, to customize the thing.
2. I’d like to be able to tell it, with simple drag and drop on my computer pad, not all this hunt-and-peck—these are my People. I want a separate ringtone for each, preferably their own.
3. Hype the size of the print: screw the pix if you have to, just give me text in at least 20 point size. I want to know the phone number they’re calling from, and if I punch this-here-button, put this person and his number in my phonebook: don’t ask me stupid questions. If they’ve got that feature blocked, hang up. Now. And never accept another call from that source. BTW, move all these numbers to my house phone memory.
4. If they text me, give them a nice cyber voice saying: This phone does not have that feature. KTHXBAI!
5. if they voice-mail me say, It’s hopeless, friend. Voice-mail is not saved. Call back later or call this number and leave it on the answering machine.
The only thing I want to do with my phone and can’t is transfer my address book to someplace else for safekeeping. However I’m not going to have a monthly fee to do that when I would only need it every month or so.
I strongly resisted the urge to get a smart phone the last go round. The idea of ubiquitous internet it a bit appealing, but the price just isn’t there for me yet. What I really want on my phone is a normal USB connection and Wifi.
I have been playing around with Google Voice for voicemail. Sold a car recently, and I tell you, being able to hand out a number with a easily customizable blocking feature was great. It will even do a really bad computer transcribed voice-to-text message. Not great for nuance, but usually gave me the gist of the message and caught the phone numbers they left pretty well. And a log of all the calls was great for keeping straight on who had called when.
I am sorely tempted to change my voicemail message to something like, “This is my personal secretary. If you don’t give me a good reason to call you back, I am not going to. Leave a detailed message, and your e-mail address.” I hate the, “It’s Jim, call me back” type of messages.
Phone calls make me stressed beyond all reason. It must be the lack of any visual cues.
I have seen commercials for Jitterbug, a minimalist phone service for those who don’t like all the technological add-ons. And it has huge buttons and numbers. I am sure you could google it and find out more.
That is one we’re considering. Combined phone service for 2 of us would be about 55.00 a month to cover all we normally do, including nationwide service, so you’re ok on the road. The catch is the phones are 99.00 each. They’re not that pretty, no pretty pix, but a nice big readable number.
DH has signed me up with his cell phone package; he gets a discount rate because he also supplies phones for all his employees, so it’s cheaper than anything I can get by myself. I asked for (and got) the least complicated phone possible, but it still has a camera and can connect to the web, or at least it can if I pay the surcharges. I don’t text and the only people who ever text me are spammers; agree wholeheartedly about wanting to diable that function on my own phone! The only customization I got was a downloaded Star Trek communicator chirp as my ring tone. I also insisted on a flip-open phone, so it wouldn’t turn itself on and off involuntarily, or phone people by accident. Cell providers keep trying to add bells and whistles; whatever happened to simply letting us phone someone?
For starters, I’m old; 71 last birthday. And love my Droid. I do text, and like the option; it’s leave-a-message easy and most of my family will pick up a text before turning on the computer. I put the Kindle app on, but haven’t used it yet. The problem I have: I got the Droid in June. A couple of weeks later, my younger daughter got the next generation, the Droid Incredible. Last week I drove by the Verizon store and the ads in the show window were for the Droid X. I’m obsolete already.
There are so many things I can do with the phone: keep my calendar, be reminded of appointments, maintain contact lists, check the weather, see if there’s any “new” news, play a game while waiting at an airport (my son-in-law loves Sudoku), look at my bank balance, take and send a picture, and on and on. My grandchildren do much more. We don’t call as much as text, because we are time-zones apart and it’s handier than email and less disruptive than a phone call. No need to interrupt dinner or a shower to respond to a text.
I’m surprised that so many science-fiction aficionados are so un-enthralled with smartphones. I like having one tool that does the job of many (yes, I also have a Swiss Army knife in my bag!) and am already wondering what I’ll get when my next 2-year renewal rolls around.
I’m in my 20s and an all around super nerd and people in my own office think I’m weird for not being into smart phones. My thing is that I enjoy being disconnected when I can be. I work at an ad agency using computers and tech all day and a lot of my hobbies include computer stuff while at home. I’ve had a computer since I was 4 (my first love, a Commodore 64) and they’ve always had a place in my life. But I have a saturation point and when I am out and about I don’t want to carry all of that with me. The other side of things people don’t seem to get is that I don’t really like consuming things. I don’t have any interest in buying apps and that is the big thing about smart phones. The cat piano thing going around…cute for about five minutes and annoying for the rest of eternity. I’ve spent my life creating stuff on the computer, not consuming. I don’t think I’d know what to do with an iPhone. My friends who have them just accumulate annoying apps. It is designed to entertain and lots of people are entertained by it. I just seem to be immune. I know some other people like me, but most people seem to be sucked in by them. For me they are almost anti-nerd. Or at least my type. At least nerds are getting rich off of making them I guess. 🙂
A Jitterbug certainly sounds like the sort of phone you want!
It’s not the sort of phone I see myself ever using as I love text messaging (though I could do without the pictures and music and everything else, thank-you-very-much!), but I can’t think of anything else that fits the description of what you’d like in a phone.
Quote from the awesome show Futurama: Hermes, “They have phones in booths now? Finally, I don’t have to lug this cell phone around.”
http://youtu.be/acfS00qJRZc
http://youtu.be/dikaQjMO388
I think I like simple phones because a) my laptop already does most things and I live with it and b) the rate at which I drop, abuse, or lose track of my phone is pretty scary if I were to have anything on it which would be a security problem or just not something I want to have out and about in the hands of randomly curious people. My computer is far harder to get at and I would never lose it—but a cell phone? I’ve left them all over the map. I always get them back, but it can take days, even weeks, before I think of where I’ve possibly dropped it this time. (Once it was a casually visited furniture store, and it was of course, dead battery.) Now and again my mum would call me and tell me someone was looking for me about a lost phone, because they’d call her, even though she was halfway across the country. I’m just prone to lose phones, mp3s, and glasses, chronically.
Nighthawk, I’m with you. I LOVE-LOVE-LOVE my Droid and can wax rhapsodic about it for hours!
Carolyn’s correct — there are very specific, critical professional reasons I need a Droid. Those reasons extend far beyond the requirement that I be able to be contacted. The Droid is a computer that has quickly become a part of me in ways that no other phone or PDA ever has, it is so incredibly useful and intuitive. Making & receiving calls is only a tiny fraction of my reliance on it.
Thanks, OSG, glad to meet a fellow Droid-ite!
I only need contact-ability for work, everything else is personal. Pretty much everyone in my family has smartphones, mostly Droids, and we’ve found we keep in touch better. We send texts when we think the other person may be asleep or busy, in fact we send texts to ask if it’s a good time to call. Pictures on-the-spot are a way to add immediacy to “what are you doing today?” I appreciate my Droid, too, because I’m older and can remember: long-distance calls only if someone had died, balancing bank accounts by hand (no calculators), winding up the alarm clock at night, gradually losing touch with friends and even family because letters just didn’t keep the relationship going, paper maps that never wanted to fold up, driving directions scribbled on bits of scrap paper, appointments forgotten because I didn’t look at the calendar….the list goes on and on. I can’t imagine how much more inconvenient my life would be if I had to go back even a couple of decades. (Let’s say 25 years; I bought my first computer, an Osborne Executive, in the mid-80s and never once looked back to the “good old days.”)
nighthawk, you are so right! I love being able to get driving directions, or find a sushi restaurant in the area, being able to check a calendar in the store so I know whose birthday cards to buy and send out…
I bought a Tracfone several years ago when I broke down on RT95. I lucked out that time as a friend came by, but it made me very aware of living alone. I keep it in a pocket and on when I am outside, working alone. I don’t bother with any bells and whistles. My main problem is remembering to charge it. The one option I did get was double minutes for the life of the phone. Even that options has gotten cheaper. last winter when I set one up for a client I think she paid $25.00 for a Tracfone with double minutes for life.
This is a memo I sent out a couple years ago. Think it sums up how I feel about cell phones pretty well…
Dear friends, family,and clients;
I think cellular telephones, though convenient, are a detriment to society, civility, and the art of conversation in general. If you wish to contact me on one I implore you to please follow these simple guidelines.
In General:
1.Unless it’s important, don’t. Email is fine and preferred. It gives me time to answer you fully at my leisure.
2.If you have a bad connection or no time to talk, see #1.
3.If you have called me and have call waiting; ignore it, or don’t bother calling me back.
4.Multi-tasking, don’t. If you can’t give me your undivided attention, don’t expect any of mine, unless it’s a matter of life, limb, or impending doom.
5.If you plan on talking for more than 10 minutes, please inform me beforehand, so I can stop what I am doing and give you my full attention.
At My Residence:
1.Please turn the ringer off and keep conversation to a minimum. This also goes for activities I am attending or invited to.
2.Do not drive up to my residence and call me from your car or honk the horn to get my attention. It will, but not in a pleasant way.
Thank you, and if you get unexpectedly disconnected in the future consider yourself warned.
Sincerely,
Doug Kosik
Kosik Consulting & Contracting