Did cell phones get hypercomplex overnight when no one was looking?
There are six or seven questions about complicated cell phone interactions today on Fluther. And this isn’t the first day where I’ve looked at the front page and said “Cell Phones? What?”
Are there just a spate of cell phone users who are all having issues at once? Or has the market shifted while I wasn’t looking to be much more “it’s a computer in my pocket” heavy (IE, iPhones, Blackberries, whatever that Google Robot Cyborg OS is called, etc).
Are people now trying to use their phones as laptop replacements?
Are phone companies just imploding?
<crazy>
PEOPLE WAKE UP WHAT IS GOING ON WITH PHONE ISSUES? IS THIS LIKE THE HAPPENING!?!?!
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Android! So cute!
and no. You’re just old.
iPhone = Don’t know what I’d do without it. Although, I do agree. There’s many questions about cells on the basic same subject. just search it!, lol.
@aphilotus lol.
Am I the only one who doesn’t find cell phones particularly complicated? I’ve figure out the iPhone by myself; I didn’t need a 500-page “iPhone for Dummies” and I’ve had pretty much no problems. Weird.
Also, I think you and I are the few hold outs with simple phones
@DominicX um, no. They’re generally fairly intuitive. I think he’s just referencing the highly specific, app-based data acquisition/specialized interactions that can be accomplished via phones these days. Anything more specific than the general “time, place call, recieve call, send/receive small chunks of data” is interestingly “complicated” in the scope of portable device history. I mean, we each received our own first phone just 5 years ago, and at that point they were slightly more portable, lucky-if-lit, dialing machines. I’ve had no problems. Additionally, @aphilotus and myself are some of the more generally technologically skillful folks to be found.
@DominicX same here. Touch and go, is my theme on that subject, but I don’t think @aphilotus is talking about the complicity of the use of them. Just the aspect of how complex the have become, I.E. being able to do just about anything. I could be wrong though. We still have yet to hear feedback from @aphilotus.
You’re being summoned @aphilotus ;P
Did cell phones get hypercomplex overnight when no one was looking?
Some of us were looking.
@Axemusica I mean specifically the complexity of how it gets used, not the ease of use. My cell phone is three or four years old, and just does voice and text messages. I guess it can MMS too, but I never use that.
But apparently on iPhones and stuff people are expecting their cell phone to also be a web browser, and some kind of hosting service, and have specific interfaces with like ten different webthings, and be able to push and pull content across the internet/telephony/real world in the same way that, you know, huge stacks of RAID servers used to do.
I mean, I know the iPhone can do this stuff, because I’ve played around with one at a friend’s house, but when did the rest of the market catch up?
And when did some large minority of the population switch to such heavy usage of what was seen a year or two ago as gimmickry?
@aphilotus don’t know when, but the market has been trying to catch up ever since the first release of the iPhone. According to many on this site some are comparable to the iPhone now. I myself don’t find my iPhone at all gimmickry. I’m not used to the current area I live and my iPhone lets me find places to go, how to get there, what the address and phone number is. I rarely actually use the web browsing though, due to many apps that access the info I already want are much quicker at the task, but I do use it for somethings. The damn phone can do just about anything. It’s perfect for when you need that certain thing no matter where you are.
Oh and just recently MMS was released for the iPhone. It used to be a big turn off for most, but it finally has it.
@Axemusica
Not to mention the iPhone can be a piano and a flute.
Can your phone be a musical instrument?!
@DominicX Yes, I have the ocarina. hehe, I love Zelda. >:)
My first response if one were to ask this would be : No, you just got old.
@aphilotus
…. I would only add that the smartphones have the power ( RAM, CPU ) to perform some selected PC functions in a graceful way in the palm of your hand.
They are shirt pocket/purse-enabled for personal convenience.
All software is heirarchically-organized like your PC in ‘folders’.
Rule 1: hide what you do not need in hideyholefolders
Rule 2: do not purchase any app you are really not going to use very often
Rule 3: practice practice practice all the tactile heuristics of the device and all the ‘shortcuts’
I guess with the rise of “smartphones” public perception has just shifted to see cell phones as full-on computer-things, worthy of building specific apps for. Maybe I just don’t quite get it because my own phone has such a stupid, broken, crippled OS (its an ATT Nokia phone). What happens in just a few short months… I guess?
I don’t see why anyone considers it to have been a sudden change – it has taken place over nearly a decade. The smart phone to conventional phone distribution is slowly moving toward smart phone – that is all.
@DominicX, yes, our non-smart phones can be used as musical instruments, but only in pairs and only in a strange experimental, sound art sort of way. :P I’ll try to get video of that feature at some point.
@DarkScribe I don’t think he really considers it an overnight-sudden change. He was mostly remarking on today’s surge of smart-phone related fluther questions. Consider these visual time lines
Fear not!
Cellphones for techophobes exist:
http://www.jitterbug.com/
Remember to be smug when announcing your phone doesn’t do anything.
@Axemusica: Anytime Babe..
BTW, have your seen that Jitterbug model that doesn’t even have a numerical keypad??
I hope I get taken out by a passing bus before I need that….
@Noel_S_Leitmotiv Oh I’m not technophobic. I just seemed to have missed a couple of months of buildup, and suddenly I find that smartphones are much more prevalent than they were, like the middle of a sea change.
i’d chime in but I can’t figure this stuff out! Remember the notes we wrote in gradeschool? “if you like me check the box marked yes”
I like small and fit in my pocket and not die if I drop it or get caught in the rain with it. That is my complaint about iPhones, Blackberries and similar products. They are too big and fragile. I have solved the problem by carrying my boring old jitterbug like phone in my pocket and my laptop in my backpack. If I don’t take the lappy I stuff the handheld GPS and iPod into the backpack. At least then I have what I need and my shorts aren’t falling off from all the weight in my pockets.
I hate my new phone, I wanted one with a good diary/organiser so the guy in the shop showed me one that does have a great diary/organiser and camera and I went with it. The problem is whoever designed this phone forgot that it’s primary function is a phone and it really fails here.
It’s this phone
@rooeytoo I’ve dropped my iPhone quite a few times yes my heart did skip a beat and use it in the rain. So, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.
@rooeytoo Certainly the relative fragility really is a big draw back. I’ve dropped my phone over 100 times and it has sustained relatively little damage (just a handful of surface scratches,) and has yet to develop functional issues as a result of the abuses. I wouldn’t trade this little phone in for anything (except perhaps a new version of the same.)
@Beta_Orionis – I am notorious for killing phones, too many to list. I have cracked faces on iPods – classics and nanos. I live in a rough place and they take a lot of abuse so I fear a touch or an iPhone would not have a long and productive life with me. Besides it is too big for my taste, I like small so I have a tiny samsung phone and a nano. I would carry a shuffle but I like to watch movies on it.
@Axemusica Edit: I was mistaken. It was not the defender. I really wanted to purchase the waterproof variety for my dad, who has a habit of killing phones via accidental pool submersion, but they haven’t adapted it for the 3G. Alas.
@Beta_Orionis the links I provided were for the 3GS, so go treat your parents. ;)
@Axemusica – I have a huge clunky satellite phone for when I go out of regular cell phone range, which here is about 2 steps out of town. Nope I like small and cheap, then when I accidentally kill it, I just chuck it and get a new one! But thanks for the info.
Speaking of waterproof, we were out fishing the end of the wet last year, got into a school of barra, we were catching them so fast it was unbelievable. Then it started to pour, it was coming down so hard you could barely breathe without inhaling rain and the fish kept biting. The rain lasted about 10 minutes and then stopped as abruptly as it had started and so did the fish. It was then in the calm we thought about our phones because we were drenched ourselves. You guessed it, 2 dead phones, thank goodness the camera was in a waterproof bag. But it was worth it, I would sacrifice 2 cheap phones for an experience like that any day!!
no
the development shifted AWAY from phones per se
and on to other nonsense that in no way makes a PHONE better
because it’s cheaper to give the customer shiny beads and OVERSELL
than it is to upgrade infrastructure
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