OT but still techy: Stupid Cell Phone Features

mpm hath wroth:

Think of today's cell phones technology as an excercise in ecological wireless. The rapidly diminishing quantity is available airtime and channels. Rather than use price increases and reduced free minutes to increase available capacity, it's done with increased compression and a switch to half duplex operation, both of which cause a corresponding decrease in quality. This will improve your "ability to place a call" but you might the call bordering on unintelligible.

The march toward mediocrity is well documented. Commodity products are by necessity targetted at the GUM (great unwashed masses) which neither appreciate nor are willing to pay for quality. Mediocrity sells, while excellence is relegated to the specialty market. This is readily apparent in the commodity cellular handset market, where price point is far more inportant than feature mix, especially since most features are pure software which costs very little to add. Once you have a real computer in the handset, all things are possible.

Do you have a calculator? Do you use all the features and functions? When was the last time you used a hyperbolic or transcendental function? Written any calculator routines (macros) lately? Yet, I suspect when you purchase a new calculator, it will be price and the feature list that will drive your selection.

Even the test equipment industry has the feature and option problem. In the past, HP-IB was offered as an expensive add-on. Few users ever needed HP-IB capeability, and only a small percentage ordered the option. Yet, it became the most commonly specified option on bids. One company I know had a large lab full of HP-IB equiped test equipment, and never used it.

Feature bloat sells well. Which would you buy? A basic phone that only does what's necessary, or a feature infested duz-it-all? Most people would buy the duz-it-all because they *might* some day need one of the myriad of features. What I've noticed is that the basic phones only sell to users that have been burned by a feature phone, with its multiple bugs and interactions. I know as I've been there with a buggy cell phone.

If you read the reviews on various electonic devices, it's the feature list that predominates in the review. If it's a fairly techy review, they might throw in a few performance specs and tests. I just read through a few issues of PC Photo Magazine trying to find something useful for a prospective D-SLR camera purchase. Lots on features and functions, but zero on performance tests. It's the same story with computahs, entertainment electronics, and automobiles. Features sell well, even if they're never used.

Incidentally, purchasing a basic cell phone, with a minimum number of features, does not guarantee call quality. The simple phones and the pricy PDA feature phones all tend to use the same RF and baseband processing chipsets.

Late at night, by candle light, D from BC penned this immortal opus:

Around here they'll practically give away the phone if you buy it post-paid but charge you hundreds if you buy it pre-paid. The same model. Wonder why, huh?

- YD.

I am sure you know the answer to this.

The line of credit worthy-ness is drawn between those whom can be milked, and those who know better.

I think the Net-netural folks have been trying to say this all along, but the market wants everyone to believe it isn't so.

My Verzion anual membership has just ran out. So my 1000 minutes after hours is now gone. My included hours is only 550 and after hours calls haved killed that.

So I now need to get with the program and "signup" again or be run over by overages.

Isn't marketing wonderfull.

donald

I don't know of any phones that have an actual countdown as you'd prefer, but many of them have cumulative call timers. Not quite the same if you don't have one-second billing, but generally close enough (and you can always get the exact numbers on-line).

I definitely use Bluetooth -- it's a nice feature. I could live without a camera, and still think they are somewhat gimmicky, but a lot of people are clearly in love with them.

These are all software -- doesn't add any perceptible cost to the phone.

Depends on the type of equipment... prior to USB/Ethernet connectivity becoming a ubiquitous option, at least on "display" devices such as spectrum analyzers and VNAs HP-IB was generally the easiest way to get a hard copy of the results.

I would agree that things like HP-IB on power supplies, multimeters, etc. would generally only have niche application in, e.g., automated test setups. However, I've been told that for every piece of test equipment design engineers end up using, though, generally the test and manufacturing guys end up buying several for automated testing...

They sometimes even help a product retain its value better -- in the case of cars, the depreciation for fancy options like leather, sun roofs, etc. seems to be less (percentage-wise) than depreciation of the "guts" of the car itself.

Of course, you have figured out the motivation for the lack of such a feature.. :-)

T-Mobile, dial *646* and it reports minutes used, both week day, and weekends, as well as the bill closing date. Sometimes its 12 or so hours behind, but never much more than that.

I guess that means yours doesn't offer such a thing?

John

If you want feature control, follow the money.

I could write an email to my phone provider :) How about something insane like ...

Dear Phone Provider Which phone models generate the most phone call revenue? Thank You...

If I get an answer, then I just don't get those phones :) D from BC