Are you really going to buy new phone?
I was an happy Palm Pre (one) user, I bought it with the idea to develop Javascript useful applications to simplify my own tasks, but I never had much free time to really start it. Suddenly, the touch screen started to work badly, becoming every day more unusable.
The time to look for a new phone has come - I though, so I've started looking for new fancy models, diving among specifications and lurking details everywhere.
I never paid too much attention to collegues or friends models, they've always seemed to me too much big, but I had to face it; now, what the hell: I need a mobile phone, not a mobile phone and a bag to put it in, they are almost all that big and won't fit my pocket!
The Pre measures are 100x60x17 millimeters, has nice but weak sliding qwerty keyboard; it's not perfect, but it fits my needs: where those fucking keyboards are now? "Keyboard? It's touch baby, no need for an old junky keyboard and bulky buttons".
Uh? So under the rain with an umbrella on the other hand I'll open the bag, take of the glove I'm wearing, put the glove in the bag or between legs (up there, yep!), take out the mobile phone, maybe take it out also from its case, unlock with thumb, select the application or filling out the number hoping that the touch won't miss a shot, clean a raindrop, touch the wrong option, retry…?
Are you kidding me? Sometimes, walking, I meet people frozen with elbows on stomach trying to type messages without errors: they don't seem happy and it's not even a nice view!
Why I'm so upset?
After I've dimissed the Pre, I've reactivated my N80 (95x50x20 mm), an old model released in 2006 (six, years, ago); I was surprised: the hardware is a bit slow, but I can browse everything with one finger on few buttons; all the apps installed cover almost every need:
- Phone calls
- Messages
- Addresses
- Calendar
- Maps
- Notes
- Voice Recorder
- Calculator
- Clock/Alarm
- Photo and videos
I can also browse the web, but the screen is too small and I don't mind. I'm able to use it with a winter leather glove with one hand. So what are the benefits over the Pre or other recent touch mobile phones?
It's touch! It's cool! It has tons of apps you can download! It has Facebook! You can browse the Internet like a normal PC!
It's the average answer I got, and I prefer not to ask which sites they're staring in -more or less- 4 inches.
Make a step back and think about the word "usefulness": the mobile phone is not just a device to make calls, and I'm not a fanatic about "buy just what you need and take the most cheap or you'll be damned!", we're not talking about this here (but maybe you'll be damned anyway): it's multi-functional but it's the idea of function that is gone to be miserunderstood.
To write a message is a function: you can write stupid or good ones; to take a note is another: you can save it on a file or over the Internet; and another one is a timed notification: you can hear it with a creepy beep or a loudy mp3.
The useful function are those actions by themselves, innovation is not the better way you can do them, but how they integrates with your life, and integration means to automatize your own process avoiding the need to think about them, it's freeing your time.
What did the industry do during these years? Selling always the old crap in the nicer boxes that I love; but the marketplaces are just full of clones that could add something to the user experience, but don't make a new phone more useful then the old ones, just more funny.
It's all about fun
Take a five minuts video, make a thumb, publish on your social site automagically and share it to the world on you favourite social site: I beg your pardon, are you a journalist?
That's for sure more exciting then to watch the annoying holiday movie of friends and relatives, and has drammatic social implications too; but it cannot be called a useful function for what I've just said. You're just having fun, but that fun it's not mine: I prefer to make the video then edit it and publish in front of a big monitor.
Anyway the device that can handle all this must be powerful and here you are the reason of new models: they let make the "not useful" possible.
Now, I don't use the term useless because it's false they are: I'm happy I can take better photos, but it didn't change the way I take them: unlock the phone, touch and slide pages, find the app, select it, shoot! Oh, I've just lost the smile of my cutie while I was looking at the smoothly animated interface…
Why wish for them?
Then there's even a pure psycological view of the subject related to the appearence of the object: new devices are cool, that's it. And don't read this as a granny that tries to teach the real important things in life: appearence is important and if you're proud to carry on with an 80's DynaTAC because it just let you make some calls… good luck!
Appearence is design, design is human effort to improve ergonomics, usability and much more; it creates the style of the environment you live in, making it more comfortable, unique, and it becomes recognizable over time making the history: for instance Brionvega still looks good, you recognize it as obsolete but get immediately the idea of that time.
But again another miserunderstanding occurs: the appareance becomes a status symbol and the mobile phone the "scepter of power" or just something that let you feel to be accepted like a pair of branded shoes; so you need it even if you don't use it.
How many application do you use day by day?
I'm not too much in, but -just for instance- I heard about iPhone related to Steve Jobs, Angry Birds and long (more or less violent) queues outside Apple stores.
Is iPhone just a status symbol? No! It's a pieace of history and design, for external appearence and user interface, but don't come telling me the new release it's life changing and you feel the urge to have it: it's desire to possess, it's a disease.
What do we need?
I'm going to make calls and send old plain text sms messages as I've always done since I got my first 5110. The best I used for this purpose has been the Siemens SK65: still good looking, sadly too big, but with the most comfortable keyboard I ever used: chatting on IRC and walking going home from work was a breeze.
Today there are tons of models, but few have unique features: the Xperia Active has the ip67 certification, the Xperia X10 Pro has a nice sliding qwerty keyboard in a decent size. I'd like to go for geocaching or record my running sessions in the district, but it will ends like the programming experiments with the Pre; so better to think about other kind of devices like the SmartWatch or just stop and accept it: there's no need for new mobile devices, there's the need for new software.
We are so one-way minded that the way we divide software never changed: games, production, finance, lifestyle (?!?), sports and other junk are the standard categories we think about. Maybe they are, but not at the very first level and are usually misleading.
Software should be divided in informative, interactive and device enhancements.
You'll have software to just retrieve data and view it, other to manipulate data, other just to personalize the device with Hello Kitty stuff.
The one we require is the interactive and the purpose of interaction should be transparent to the user.
The most fascinating example I found of what I'm talking about is the JITWatch of Martin Frey: it shows perflectly how to solve a concrete problem without making it seem a problem and let you to live your life without thinking about it.
Still convinced you need a new phone? Go for it, but buy the one you'll have most fun with, you'll spend your money for the real value they can offer today.