Cellphone Industry: I Pit Thee!

The BBQ Pit
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About three years ago I finally broke down and got a cellphone (I needed it for a new job). It was a Motorola v66, it was already unfashionably old, and it was free with my contract. It had a monochrome screen, the battery lasted for most of a week, it was tiny, and it always worked. After two years half of the buttons suddenly stopped working. Of course, by that time it had been dropped, on concrete, tile, and stone dozens of times, so I can’t blame it for finally giving out. The V66 is no longer produced, so I’ve replaced it with a decidedly inferior, too damn big, rectangular Nokia thing. Enough eulogizing, here’s the vitriol.

So far as I can tell, none of the cellphone companies which sell in America are interested in selling phones for fucking adults. I’ve looked everywhere and all the phones for sale are some combination of the following: large, brightly colored, ridiculously expensive or packed with stupid ‘features’ I don’t need. I don’t want something that looks like an athletic shoe from an episode of Star Trek, I just want a fucking phone. I don’t need a radio, MP3 player, web browser, organizer, color screen, removable memory, or camera and I sure as shit don’t need ringtones. I suppose that these extras are the reason why every phone on the market today is bigger than one which was obsolete 3 fucking years ago. Consider, one of the manufacturers recently launched a cheap phone with 2 internal antennas, which are supposed to enable it to get better reception in places with poor signal strength. It will be available only in Southern Asia (where I imagine this feature will come in handy), but I can assure you that it would be useful here as well, if my frequency of dropped/garbled calls is any indication.

Also, fuck the fucking sales staff. I’m thoroughly sick of witless fratboy meatheads telling me that my old phone ‘totally sucked’. I didn’t ask for your fucking opinion, asshole, I asked if you have anything comparably-sized. And don’t tell me that phone x is the same size as the defunct v66 which I am holding right next to it. No it isn’t, I have fucking eyes. Run along, now, kids, and count your fucking blessings that you can play with your goddamn phone all day and call it work.

Finally, a great, steaming spleen-full to the dipshit executives at the cellphone maufacturers. Attention motherfuckers, could you quit dicking with your Blackberries, molesting the interns, and sending your assistants to go buy flowers for your mistresses for just long enough to go downstairs and fire your fucking marketing staff? My admittedly unscientific research indicates that there is a vast, untapped market of fully-employed grownups who want an appliance, not a ‘lifestyle’ dreamed up by a commitee of twits. Build a phone for Christ’s sake! Make it small, durable, long-running, monochrome, and able to place a call in an elevator underground during a thunderstorm (maybe that last is too much, but you get the point). Leave off all of the convergence shit, it’s just more things to break or malfunction. Go ask the engineers what they can design. They hate you, but they know their jobs.

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Of course, I type all that, then I see this thread: Big Ol' Clunky Cellphones. I want one. - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board

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No, no, don’t worry about it! That was just fucking spiffy!

I recently got a pay-as-you-go phone for my first cellphone ever. The kid in Radio Shack just couldn’t seem to grasp that I didn’t need an internet connection, a camera, a video recorder, or a radio, or MTV. I wound up getting one off the rack at Safeway.

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We own 2 Tracfones, one for me and one for my teenage daughter, and for what we need 'em to do–keep in your purse for emergency phone calls only–they rock. The only tricky part is keeping track of the airtime so it doesn’t lapse, but they helpfully send you automated phone calls to remind you the week before it expires, so…

And I swore I’d never get a cell phone, too. But times change, and occasionally it has been a lifesaver to have one, such as picking up the kid at college, get lost out by the power plant, have NO idea where his dorm is. Ante-Cell, I’d have had to drive around campus looking for a phone. Post-Cell, I just pulled it out and called him on his cell, and was no longer lost.

No bells and whistles on it, either, no marketing, no obnoxious sales staff, just a phone.

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I’ve had a couple Kyocera phones with Verizon, and they have pretty simple interfaces. My current one isn’t working that well though; the battery seems fully charged until at random times it runs down very quickly. I’m in the same boat, the newer ones look bad and they’re more expensive. Does anybody know where to find a simple tri-mode phone for Verizon? There are some older ones on Ebay but they seem to all be from gray-market sources and I don’t know if I want to deal with those.

As an aside, ever since flip-phones became popular I’ve always wondered why nobody has made one that looks exactly like the communicators from Star Trek. New ones have speakerphone and voice-dialing functions, so if they weighted the lid properly you could just flip it open and say “Kirk to Enterprise” or what have you. I wouldn’t say that or buy it myself, but I’m sure lots of people would.

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One of the last times I went into a mobile phone store shopping for a new phone, the sales conversation went something like this:

Me: I’m looking for a new mobile.
Sales guy: Ok, what kind of features do you want?
Me: I’d like to be able to make phone calls…
Sales guy: Uh huh?
Me: …
Sales guy: blinks
Me: …
Sales guy: Um… this one has a camera.
Me: Bye.

When we moved we had to get all new phones (My wife, me and my daughter). We went with pre-pay Telus phones and bought them off the shelf. I didn’t even bother to get one.

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I have an analog cell phone with no “features” other than what phones are supposed to be used for - making phone calls! (It’s an Audiovox, in case anyone cares). I have a suspicion that analog cell service is being discretely reduced around here; I’ve had better reception in the past. Nonetheless, it works for what I need it for (making phone calls!).

When the battery eventually completely gives up the ghost (I’ve already checked into new batteries - ones for this one seem to be very hard to impossible to find) I predict an “interesting” conversation with some idiot cell phone salesman. No, I do not want text messaging. No, I do not want a camera. No, I do not want an Internet browser. No, I do not want silly ringtones. I want a PHONE!!!

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I don’t understand the anger here. If the phone you get happens to have a music player or camera or whatever you don’t want, is someone forcing you a gunpoint to listen to MP3s while taking pictures with the thing? If all you can find is big plastic shiny phones, you’re not looking hard enough, but as far as features, who cares if it has extras you never use?

Of course, I’m sort of a phone dork. I posted this from mine.

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I imagine the anger’s based on having to wade through the phone menus, touch screens, animated informational alerts, and three-dimensional pop-up friends’ lists that comprise the average modern phone experience in order to, ya know, dial a phone number. Sure, you can turn all of those bells and whistles off, but the tech-savvy required to do so generally belongs only to those tech-savvy enough not to need to.

As an example, the technician in my lab spent no less than three days (in her spare time) searching through her phone’s menus and setting options in order to figure out how to turn the volume up. Of course, as I pointed out to her, the volume button is that completely unmarked slide on the side of the phone - which she had never seen before. The problem was not that she didn’t know how to adjust the volume and had to come ask me - it was that it took her THREE DAYS to ascertain that she didn’t know how to change the volume. And that the damn thing had so many buttons on it that there were several that she hadn’t even noticed. That many options does not help many users, it only confuses.

mischievous

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Sadly I suspect you are not the target market.
Teenagers will demand a phone (to keep up with their friends), then soon buy a later model with ‘more features’. Repeat every year or so.

I bought a mobile phone 5 years ago.
It cost £30 ($60). I spend about £5 ($10) a year on calls.
Apparently I can send one of these new-fangled ‘text’ messages if I want :confused: . (I never have.)
There is no camera, no link to the Internet and no way to play music on it.
Suits me. :smiley:

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In addition to mischievous’s comments, which I agree with, the more irrelevant crap that is built into the phone, the more irrelevant crap that can break and screw up the phone. In addition, if the phone doesn’t have a camera or text messaging capability or websurfing capability then I can’t get charged extra by accidentally pushing the wrong button.

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Allow me to explain:

Some folks work or travel in places where cameras, blue tooth, or personal computers are not allowed. Hence cell phones with cameras, blue tooth, removal memory, etc. are not allowed. Have you tried to find a phone without a camera recently? This narrows your options down to about 5%. I expect (or perhaps, hope) that when some big lawsuits arise from industrial espionage, identity theft, or locker room pictures that the demand for camera-less phones will increase.

Some folks work outdoors and in remote places. They need a durable phone with a good battery and good reception. Good luck finding that information from a frat-boy salesclerk.

On a more personal, pitworthy note: I chose this piece of shit Samsung I’m using now because it doesn’t have a phone. But it does have mobile e-mail and mobile net browsing. “Don’t use these features”, you say. There are a least two ways to accidently use them just by rocking a buttom the wrong way when tryng to pull up a number from the phone book. Each time I make that mistake, $0.03 on the bill.

Another intentionally designed-in feature of this piece of hog excrement is targetted directly at the pubescent demographic. With one button, you can connect directly to the Cingular Store to shop. You can try out ring tones and add new features to your account, al la carte.

Oh, and I almost forgot. When I discovered that the reception on this thing sucked donkey testicles, I figured I would buy an external antenna and connect it to the jack beneath the rubber plug on the back. I removed the rubber plug - no jack. Silly me, I assumed it had an external jack because it had a plug covering it.

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Heh. There really SHOULD be more phones that are just, well, phones.

I’ve got a Kyocera tri-mode phone on the Verizon network, my second one, actually, after the screen on the first one went all funny one day.

I’m somewhere between the Luddites and the tech kiddies: no camera, e-mail or browser, but color screen and text messaging capability. It’s apparently possible to download ringtones, but that requires an accessory I didn’t want to pay for. Seems to get pretty good reception.

I’m dreading the day I have to replace this one, as I expect by that time there will be nothing available but all-singing, all dancing flip phones, which I’m not interested in.

My ideal phone would actually be a bit larger, to allow for a bigger display and keys, and a bit more squared off, and would have the same ring tone as an old-style dial phone. Oh yeah, and a more easily viewable version of TETRIS than my current phone has. That’s about it, really.

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Try shopping on your carrier’s website instead. I found the LG C2000 flip phone and the Motorola L2 bar phone on Cingular’s site. No camera, no music. No hip sales dude to annoy you.

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My Dad consults for a very high security place and has this problem. He had a hell of a time finding a non-camera cell phone recently. He’s a tech weenie so he really wanted a phone with all of the cool stuff except for the camera and was out of luck.

Great OP, FM, and welcome.

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I don’t get this. I have never seen a phone that cannot be dialed by typing in the phone number and pressing SEND / the green button. Never. And I’ve had a lot of phones.

As far as your friend’s problem, I imagine that within the first few pages of her user manual, there was a note on how to raise / lower the volume on the phone. Had she bothered to crack it, I bet she’d’a had a better time of it.

For those of you who are not permitted camera phones, I second the recommendation to shop the carrier’s websites. My carrier (T-Mobile) has two really basic phones on their website: the Samsung t209 and the Motorola v195. Most other carriers do too. If you go with T-Mobile, you can even bring your own phone to the party, so you can get extremely basic GSM phones off eBay and use them if you want to.

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AT&T/Cingular is not the best cell phone company, but when I went to get my first prepaid phone at one of their stores, the male sales rep did not try to upsell me at all. The phone was packaged, they activated it, and that was that.

Now they’re discontinuing CDMA and forcing me to get a new phone with GSM. I went to the store and the manager (A woman in her late 20s, I think) did not try to upsell me.

I have other complaints about AT&T/Cingular, but pressuring me to get a more expensive phone/plan is not one of them.

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I really have a hard time believing that it’s impossible to find a plain phone. My husband and I got new phones not that long ago, and we found ones without any non-phone features by checking for the cheapest ones at the store. We then went to the cellular company’s website and got them for free. Two different models, one a stripped-down version of the Motorola SLVR (I think it’s called a L2), and a Nokia flip phone.

And if you are “forced” to get extra features? Come on, it’s not like you have to wade through a zillion “take a picture!”/“listen to music!” menus before you can actually figure out how to place a call. Push the number buttons on the keypad then hit Send or “the green button”; presto.

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This works fine for me - it’s the cheapest or second-cheapest option offered by Orange in the Dominican Republic. All it does is make and receive calls, and you can text and choose from lots of lame ringtones.

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I’m with you on this.

Last year when I went to get my own fancy phone that is exactly what you hate (it’s a Treo), I felt pangs of guilt at the thought of taking my expensive gadget home and my wife finding out what it cost.

So, I got her a phone. I asked for the smallest phone they had, but even that was larger than the phone she was carrying in her purse at the time.
I eventually got her a fancy model with camera, bluetooth, MP3 player, and the Verizon “Vcast” feature (don’t even know what that is – must be music videos or something).

All the way home I was imagining her looking at me saying “But it’s bigger than the one I have. Why do I need a new phone?” :frowning:
Happily, she was pleased with the new larger device and didn’t complain, though of all of its features, she only uses the bluetooth, with a headset.

There should be a durable tiny long-lasting phone out there with no bells and whistles. One that can be dropped from 6 feet onto concrete. One that has no flimsy plastic pieces that snap off. One with solid reliable jacks for headset and power. If they wanna get fancy, why not make some cool inductive coil charging doohickey where you just lay your phone on the dresser somewhere near the device and it charges perfectly overnight? No market for reliable solid one-purpose phones.