In Spain (and I’ve seen them in France as well) one of the things the cellphone companies finally learned is to make “gramps models”. Big keys with enough space between them to be able to hit one at a time if you have big farmer’s hands and Parkinson’s, they call, receive calls, no camera, no mp3 player, no memory card, no bluetooth or any other color of tooth, no calling people when you say their name out loud (given the normal speaking volume for many oldsters, the phone bills would be astonishing with the voicecall)…
They don’t get advertised on TV but you can bet they’re sold.
Actually, it’s perfectly possible to sell simple things to high-end users. Consider Naim as a typical example of (absurdly)expensive audiovisual equipment - their devices have very few functions - and the argument given is that the devices have already been optimised for your best experience - they don’t need a large array of knobs and dials to tweak them - they’re pre-tweaked already.
I need a “communication device” that can withstand temperatures ranging from -20 to +105 Farenheit and function equally well at the extremes as well as the middle of that range. A battery that lasts more than a day even with several calls. Resistantance to moisture such as sudden downpours and puddles. Readable in lighting conditions ranging from moonlight to sunny noontime. I would like to be able to dial/use it with just one hand. It must survive being sat on/stepped on without damage. Being able to survive being dropped from an airplane is also nice (my first cellphone did not survive that experience).
I will take durability and ease of use over more features.
Currently, my phone is almost impossible to read in sunlight, which makes text messaging useles about half the time I’m making calls. It would also be useless for texting under such conditions, since I wouldn’t be able to see what I’m typing. My command of English is excellent - although a picture feature might be useful, I’ve managed 40+ years without it so far. The buttons on the phone are small enough that it can be difficult for me manipulate with chilly hands, and small enough that they can be hard for me to see. Granted, I don’t have the best vision in the world but it is corrected to 20/20 and so I doubt it’s just me having that particular problem.
So take this “communication device” crap and toss it - I want a freakin’ PHONE. One that’s not a fragile piece of crap.
In magazines targeted at senior citizens they advertise the Oyster phone by Kyocera. I can’t seem to find a decent site advertising it online, but next time you’re in your dentist’s office pick up one of the old people magazines and look for the ad. One of the best features is that the keypad buttons are very large.
Okay, I don’t know about the temperature issue, but my Blackberry does the rest of this. It has a holster which has (so far) protected it from falling off desks, out of my car, into the washer, etc. It’s had a whole cup of hot tea spilled on it. It can be used with one hand. The volume control is a little wheel on the side (you didn’t say that one, but I love that feature). The screen can be extremely bright or very dim and is controlled by a button on the bottom, and I can use it for days between charges.
Remember: to most marketing people, anyone over 50 is already dead. They don’t care what older people think, unless it’s about laxatives, vitamins, or other medicine.
Sure there are people who would buy a stripped down phone over a model with features, but they are a very small minority; most people want things filled with features that they may never use (one secret of Microsoft’s success: the software is stuffed with features. In Excel, for instance, it’s unlike you’d ever use more than a dozen of their functions, but there are hundreds).
In addition, by putting, say, a camera and a music player in the phone, you get customers who want a camera but don’t care about the music player, and those who want a music player and don’t care about a camera.
Ultimately, though, it’s due to the fact that people love a lot of features when buying (it makes them think they are getting more for their money), but find the features frustrating once they own the device. It’s the same sort of thinking that makes SUVs so popular: “Well, I won’t use that function often, but if I need it, it’ll be there.”
Don’t you see? You’ve just made my point for me. Everyone seems to be complaining about features. It’s not the features you should be griping about, but the implementation thereof. You already have a phone, so I’m not buying that as a true complaint. There are other tools/features on there that you will or will not use… easily ignored if you don’t need them. You think you’re griping about those features, but what you’re really griping about is the implementation.
You said it yourself: You want these features, but you want a phone made out of kevlar and asbestos, which has a screen that competes with the luminance of the sun. That’s implementation. And that’s been my beef. Fortunately for me, your complaints don’t align with mine, so it’s much easier for me to find a phone on the market that works for me 98% of the time.
It would be nice to think it possible to design a phone that had advanced features that were easy to use, easy to find if you wanted them, but not right in your face when you don’t want to use them - so it looks like just a phone until you want it to be a camera, media player, web browser, gaming platform, or whatever.
But it’s not going to happen, because:
-Phone manufacturers want to wow you with the features and they want you to wow your friends with them so that they will all go out and buy the same model so they can be outstandingly unique, just like everyone else.
-Phone carrier companies want the phone manufacturers to pack in the features because those features encourage people to carry and use the phone and/or those features encourage you to consume more billable network bandwidth, furthermore, when you upgrade your phone to take advantage of the latest must-have feature, they get to tie you into a new airtime contract, which is lovely.
-A sufficiently large salivating customer base exists to demand ever more features.
Something like the iPhone (or, more likely, whatever the iPhone turns into) might actually be the way out of it for many people - because the features -all of them - would just be applications - eventually we might see a device where lots of people buy it but don’t bother connecting it to a phone network.
In spirit of the OP, here’s what’s pissed me off about the latest batch of cell phones:
The crap I’d like to use is buried under 9,481 menu functions and icons and groupings and “yes or no?” dialog boxes that have to be navigated by two buttons that have a line on one and a picture of an atom or some shit on the other that once I get to the camera function and take a picture I want, I don’t know how to go about emailing it thru the phone to another person. Once I hit the 8,324 page manual, and dig up the info under a poorly written, and obfuscated category, I realize I don’t have the right data plan to use the damn feature after all. So now I’m hit with bottlenecks and roadblocks that don’t allow me to even use half the frikkin’ functions on the phone to begin with because some idiot suit in a tower somewhere decided, we’ll hook 'em with the features, then screw them up the ass when they figured out they need to pay extra to take advantage. Just make a phone that does what it says it will do, and simply, for an easy to understand fixed price, and I’ll be happy as a nice over-consumer should be.
Where can I buy the Australian distribution rights for these phones?
The number one complaint I get from our customers is that “I can’t see the screen” on the phone, followed by “I can’t see the numbers”, followed by “cellphones are too complicated”.
We sell a lot of no frills phones to old people, and I can see their point- all they want is a phone, with a large colour screen and large buttons. Someone will make a fortune marketing to the old folks, especially in another 10 years or so.
I have one of those. My only complaint with it is it doesn’t hold a charge for more than about a day and a half, but I only carry it with me when I’m driving to work so I just have to be better at remembering to plug it in when I’m home. It’s a good, easy to use little phone, and since it’s pay-as-you-go and I hardly ever use it it only costs me $20 every three months to keep it activated.
Why is everyone in this thread ignoring tremorviolet’s post and what was going to be mine? Jitterbug is a company dedicated to selling phones to people that don’t want any fancy features and they seem to be doing well. Buy one if you are serious about wanting such a thing.
Exactly, it’s not as if you’re forced to use the camera. If you don’t want to use it, don’t engage it. Phones are so cheap to makes these days, that all the fancy features come by default. Just don’t turn the camera on if you don’t want to use it.
Right, it’s like asking for a knife to cut some rope, and someone hands you a swiss army knife. They immediately rebuke it because it has a can opener, a screwdriver, a saw, and a fork as well. The knife is still there and easily accessible. I can’t see how these other tools make the knife itself any less usable for the task at hand.
I don’t want text messaging. I don’t do text messaging, and nobody who I want to communicate with does text messaging. The only text messages I get are spam.
I don’t want a camera. Where I work, cameras are forbidden in all buildings for security reasons, so if you have a camera phone, you have to leave it in the car, while phones without cameras are allowed in at least some buildings. (Camera phones are being banned in some other environments for security or privacy reasons, as well) And I’m not interested in exchanging pictures or videos with anybody. I have a sinking feeling that, if I did have a phone that could do those things, I’d be bombarded with pictures and videos I’m not interested in seeing, probably from the same people who forward crap to my inbox. And I’m sure some company will use this feature of cell phones (if they haven’t already) to send obnoxious ads to phones.
I’ll take “being able to survive being sat on/stepped on without damage, and being able to survive being dropped from my hand onto a concrete floor, such as damn near everybody has in their garage” (my last cell phone didn’t survive that experience).
Oh, and can you make a phone where I can tell it not to beep periodically if there is a voice mail message or a missed call? It’s bad enough if I get woken up in the middle of the night by a call- it’s worse if I have to get up and find the phone to keep it from beeping, or else the beeping won’t let me go back to sleep. It could just display “New voicemail message” on the screen, and I could deal with it when I was actually looking at the phone… I have gone through the menus on my phone, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to shut off those beeps.
You should ask Swallowed my Cellphone how they taste, first…
A buddy of mine has one, and has let me play with it. It’s just a regular, if slightly larger than average phone until you open it up. It has a full QWERTY keyboard, speakers, color display, and all that sort of stuff.
I was about to say it’s a very cool phone, but I like the term someone else used upthread: communications device. He uses it to make phone calls, sure. But he also texts, emails, and sends pic messages with it.
