No Matter were you look these days there is no end of choice of touch screen, full blown wireless and always on connectivity along with touch screens putting you online and far exceeding the basic idea of a mobile phone (that is to call people) but has anyone stopped and thought “What do I really need out of this device?”
The rise of the mobile phone
I actually remember when they first were on the scene and they were large as shown by this picture
As you can see, quite something to carry around but it gave people the chance to be able to ring or take calls anywhere. Used by more the business people (who stored them in there brief case), there were big, expensive and battery life was very bad indeed. Screens were limited to displaying numbers (much like the house phone) and coverage was pretty bad.
Strapping on the kitchen sink
As phone’s got smaller and more people made them, companies started to look at what they could add on to the phone to make it look better then the next one. This started the rise of camera’s, bigger screens, music players, keyboards and so forth. We saw mobiles there were very small but lacked features versus the PDA Like version that bulked out your pocket.
Were are we today?
The phones feature pretty fast CPU’s these days (In relation to mobile phones), high resolution screens (some do 800×600), camera’s that range from 3.2megapixels all the way up to 12 megapixels, they feature storage in the terms of gigabytes and can store many albums of music along with videos. The all seem to have 3G Network for that always on fairly fast connections to browse the web and can connect via wireless for added speed. The final thing is now they feature application you can add, this alone has changed the face of phones – no longer are you limited to what came with the phone but you can add a different facebook program, a soundboard of Family Guy and even better – they feature GPS to allow you to find your way home.
Looking at what people really use there phones for.
In the morning, I check my various sites (Twitter, Facebook, email) and maybe even have a quick look around the web while listening to music from iTunes – I could do this on the phone of course easy enough but I cannot see me writing a blog post such as this on a touch screen for sure.
Work is around the corner, so no time to listen to music from the phone – this is provided by the car in fact. At work I have a full blown computer to go on the internet should I need to, the phone provide more of a way for instant knowledge that I have a new twitter, email or facebook post. The issue here lies in that while the phone provide a way of informing me of information and with the likes of Twitter or facebook were typing is limited to a few lines of text – this is not a replacement for a computer in any form just yet.
Is there way it has changed what you can do?
I can now twitter/facebook on the move, informing people what I am doing and along with this I can use the camera to take a picture of relevance and have it online in seconds. Compare this to other methods – I would carry around a camera, take various pictures and upon getting home boot the computer up, place the memory card in the computer and copy the files across then get to upload them to the various sites.
Thoughts
My point I think I am trying to say is that with a “normal” phone you can take picture, call people, take calls, play music and listen to radio as required and probably the battery life will be 10 fold to any of the latest phones. People survived before but now they want there phone to do everything for them, from telling them how to get to work, providing the music while getting there and keeping in touch in more ways possible with every human on the planet. People have even become emotionally attached to there phones, defending them at any xost saying how much better phone X is then phone Y – I find this pretty amazing to say the least. Maybe people do this because they have not only splashed down a big chunk of money to get the phone but are now locked into paying money per month for the next 2 years of there life?
What about you?
I own an Android, it cost me nothing to buy and I am only locked in for 18 months and does most things well, I know people who own iPhones who swear by them – what are your thoughts on all of this?
