OK, I’ve got two ideas to improve cell phones, one I rate as brilliant, one as perhaps workable.
The brilliant idea is about the hardware: I often find myself without a charger at times when a charger would come in pretty handy. I’ve bought a crap load of chargers at 7-11s just to make one call. So… how about a couple prongs built into the back of the phone that pivot out 90 degrees when you move a slide on the back. Phone goes right into the wall, no middleman. Of course, you still have a plug for a regular charger when you want to talk and charge. I realize this would make the set larger, but I’d actually prefer my phone to be a little beefier.
The second idea is this. When someone sends you a voice-mail, it is stored on the phone itself. So, I don’t have to connect and deal with a menu tree to hear my messages. They just play back like an audio file. The messages would still be “on the network” for remote access too.
Any thoughts?
Well, your first ideal is interesting, but the second one is already being addressed by the iPhone.
While I don’t think it downloads the messages locally, it does provide you with a visual interface so you can select whatever message you want.
First suggestion - it would make the phone a lot bulkier having the transformer built into the phone.
Second - a good idea.
One of the neat technologies on the horizon is a capacitor that can discharge its energy slowly enough to power your cellphone for a day rather than frying it in mere seconds. The really cool thing about a power source like that is that it can be charged in a few seconds, and once they’re out there, charging stations will be popping up like vending machines. The wall plug is a neat idea (although again, you have to avoid melting the phone), but it’ll be outdated in a few years.
First idea cool, but not workable due to current technology limits (the transformer, as mentioned before).
Second idea not so good when you get right down to it. To store the voicemail on the phone would require the equivalent of connecting a call. If you want to pay for the airtime while Cousin Bo leaves you a 10-minute-long message, feel free; I personally don’t. 
As things stand now, you can let the VM pick it up, then check it whenever convenient. AND, if you don’t want to pay for the airtime at all, you can do so from a landline (with all major carriers, at least).
Maybe if it was offered as a opt-in choice, or if the carrier waived the VM airtime, I’d be interested. But unless those options are available, I’d be against it.
I have an Ipod wall charger (USB power supply) that is very, very light, like the plastic case is all there is. I haven’t had to use it and I’d be hesitant because I’ve heard of some cheap ones frying Ipods. Anyway, how does this work? I assumed it had some sort of switching power supply. If so, could this not be adapted to make a light, built-in charger for a cellphone?
One thing that bugs me is antennas. There are some with no external antenna and they worry me about reception. Then, there are those with a telescoping one that has a little rigid stalk that covers part of it when it’s retracted. Why not make a telescoping one that closes flush with thee body? I was leaninig towards a Motorola V325i but I might rather have a sleeker phone that would sit better in my pocket.
With VM on the phone, it wouldn’t have to be real-time like a phone call. They could give it low priority and just squeeze the bits in whenever it’s convenient, I would think. They could split them up into small parts.
I had a cheap ass motorola at least 5 years ago that had a built in answering machine. It was a great function. Never had to dial to a service to access vmail. I loved it but obviously not so popular.
Airports in Asia have these little machines with about 10 different sized adaptors and you can go charge your cell phone. It does a super charge in about 10 minutes to juice up the battery. Do these exist in the US?
My brilliant idea for mobile phones, I had when bluetooth was first being hyped as the new things for phones.
I thought that it’d be great if you could have a bluetooth hub in your house connected to your landline, so when you were within range your mobile could just work like a cordless house phone and you could make much cheaper calls.
Maybe I should have patented the concept, because BT are now advertising a wifi version. I’m sure that the idea was invented long before it had occurred to me, but it’s still annoying.
Off to patent some of my other great ideas[sup]TM[/sup]…
Not nowadays; switched-mode power supplies can be made very small indeed. The pin layout of mains electricity sockets in some countries would make this difficult to implement though.
Your second idea is how phones work in Japan. When people call my phone, if I don’t pick up, the phone runs through the whole answering machine bit and records the message. If the hard drive is full, or the phone turned off, or whatever, then my carrier stores it on the server and I get a little list of messages to check when I next look at my phone.
And the future of phone energy is most likely going to be through some sort of inductive power supply. For instance, something like this company’s product: http://www.splashpower.com/Products