Who else wants a simple cell phone?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Nextel/Sprint keeps sending me invitations for nifty new phones that have color displays, camera capability, internet options, and so forth.

Not want.

I’ve got a nice old Motorola i60c with monochrome display. It lets me call you and you call me.

It doesn’t give me stock reports, it doesn’t press my pants, or let me know when the cat dish needs more food. It’s a phone. Which is oddly enough, the purpose I desired it to serve when I purchased it.

I just bought a bigger LiIon battery for my dinosaur phone so I can go longer between recharges.

Anyone else own a plain phone phone these days?

Get off my virtual lawn, you darn kids! :smiley:

2

I used to be with you. I’d get the free phone when the contract needed to be renewed. They’d get odd things screwing up with them or breaking on them, so I figured I’d spend a hundred bucks and see what I could get. A couple of months later, I run into a coworker. She has 3 phones and was looking to get a new one. I bought my BlackBerry Pearl off her for a hundred bucks.
I effin’ love it.
I’ll never get a regular phone again. I’m only getting smart phones.

3

Great minds must think alike.
Just the other day I was thinking that there is a huge market for some electronics with only the basics. Not only for some of the elderly who don’t need the extra bells and whistles, but also for some of the techno-impaired who simply screw up anything when there are more than four buttons to push.

With baby-boomers reaching retirement age in huge numbers now, you would think some designers would take the hint and start to create “simplified” versions of some of the newer technologies: MP3 players, cell phones, remotes, clock radios, car stereos, DVD players, DVR players, watches and clocks, etc. VCR’s are almost out of date now, and most people never learned how to set the damned clocks during the entire generation of use!

I personally am a techno-geek of sorts, and generally don’t have any problems.
However, just the other day I was going batshit with a thermometer wall clock; it seems when setting it to DST, I accidentally set the alarm to go off at midnight every night! First of all, I don’t need a damned alarm on my thermometer! Secondly, I threw out the instruction to it after I set it up and hung it on the wall. I came within four seconds of throwing the damn thing off the balcony when I accidentally found out how to turn off the alarm instead.

So yes, I think there is a market for “dumbing down” certain technological products.

4

People complain about this fairly regularly on the SDMB. I just don’t get it. Why do you care?

My phone is fairly fancy. I can go on the internet, send emails, listen to music, take pictures and video, play games, etc. etc. But if I want to make a phone call, I just push some numbers and press the nice big dial button and it works just the same as any other phone.

Some of the features aren’t particularly useful but I can assure you that having a portable internet is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

5

I agree. I can Dope wherever I please.

6

[QUOTE=Tanaqui]
Some of the features aren’t particularly useful but I can assure you that having a portable internet is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
[/QUOTE]
QFT. My iPhone has really paid its dividends more than a few occasions where I was in a pinch on the road. Their new commercials might be goofy, but until you’ve had the ability to look up an establishment on the net, Google Map it, and then ring them up to ask a question/check showtimes/make a reservation is a tough case to argue against, especially when you’re in an area you’ve never been to before. I couldn’t do that on my “simple cell phone”. No dialing an information line and getting charged a buck and no guessing at where the place might be. The only thing it needs now is a GPS uplink like several other smart phones seem to be getting.

And I must say that once you’ve been exposed to a software interface that can change to accommodate anything, the notion of using a dialing pad begins to seem like using a fork to eat soup. Flicking my thumb and watching a list of names fly by (or just simply tapping the letter of the name) is a hell of a lot better than clicking through a giant list or using a bloody dialing pad to “txt” the name in or, heaven forbid, send a text message. The number of people who can do this at an almost breakneck speed is frightening to me and makes me wonder whether, like my father before me (who never learned how to type in school), I’ll be some kind of relic because I can’t txt at least 30wpm like the rest of the 12 year-olds. Also makes me wonder whether or not mandatory phone texting classes will become part of school curriculums in the not-too-distant future. The thought makes me shudder.

7

[QUOTE=Tanaqui]
People complain about this fairly regularly on the SDMB. I just don’t get it. Why do you care?
[/QUOTE]
Most people don’t really want a phone with fewer features, they just want a phone with better design for the features they actually use, and that’s hard to do without dropping features.

Even the best designed phone (and most of the feature-ridden ones are anything but) is going to be frustrating to use if you eventually have to go through 12 levels of menu descent to find the settings for the feature you actually want. When I hit the “menu” button on my phone, I see 9 graphics. I’m pretty sure I’ve only ever used 4 of them: Address book, Settings, Pictures, and Tools (for the alarm clock). So, at the very least, unused features are visually distracting. At the worst, though, they’re often actively annoying. There’s a button on the outside of my phone that takes a picture when you hold it down. You can’t turn it off (that I can tell). So I’ve gotten some lovely pictures of the inside of my pocket, which I then have to spend more time deleting (through a dialog process that double checks to make sure that I want to delete the dark blur). And, of course, delete is the seventh item on the menu, after “Send in Message” “Send to the Web” “Store in Album” “Store in Memory” “Use as Wallpaper” and “Save as Contact”. Now, I’m not that down on picture phones. I actually like having the camera. It’s nice to always have one with me (just like it’s nice to always have the Internet, if you want it). But I’m pretty sure that on those occasions that I need to take a picture, I can go ahead and do it the long way: by opening my phone up, pointing it at something, and pressing a button. But, you know, that use case doesn’t make for very compelling advertising for 12-year-old girls who have to take a picture with the phone closed because otherwise they can’t see the screen since, of course, they’re in it!!!11!.

It’s not that I want fewer features on my phone, it’s that I want fewer stupid ones.

8

I prefer the basics. As long as “the basics” includes people being able to call me, I can call them, there’s an inbuilt phone number list and the phone wakes me up when I’m away from home, I’m happy.

9

[QUOTE=anamnesis]
QFT. My iPhone has really paid its dividends more than a few occasions where I was in a pinch on the road. Their new commercials might be goofy, but until you’ve had the ability to look up an establishment on the net, Google Map it, and then ring them up to ask a question/check showtimes/make a reservation is a tough case to argue against, especially when you’re in an area you’ve never been to before. I couldn’t do that on my “simple cell phone”. No dialing an information line and getting charged a buck and no guessing at where the place might be. The only thing it needs now is a GPS uplink like several other smart phones seem to be getting.

And I must say that once you’ve been exposed to a software interface that can change to accommodate anything, the notion of using a dialing pad begins to seem like using a fork to eat soup. Flicking my thumb and watching a list of names fly by (or just simply tapping the letter of the name) is a hell of a lot better than clicking through a giant list or using a bloody dialing pad to “txt” the name in or, heaven forbid, send a text message. The number of people who can do this at an almost breakneck speed is frightening to me and makes me wonder whether, like my father before me (who never learned how to type in school), I’ll be some kind of relic because I can’t txt at least 30wpm like the rest of the 12 year-olds. Also makes me wonder whether or not mandatory phone texting classes will become part of school curriculums in the not-too-distant future. The thought makes me shudder.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, they’re starting to come out with phones that have built-in qwerty thumb-boards (picture a conventional keyboard’s runt sibling). On my Helio Ocean, the keyboard layout is actually quite cool, with buttons for all of the letters, space, enter, backspace, periods, and a few other handy thigns such as the @ sign, and then you hit the Alt key to access a series of secondary characters, including numbers, slashes, parenthesis, question marks, etc., and finally, an emoticon button that gives you fast access to various smilies (in an on-screen menu) without having to fuck with the Alt button.

Aside from that, this phone is set up by default to be able to access Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and AOL/MSN/Yahoo Instant Messenger services, along with being easily set up to access POP email. Oh, and the Google Maps thing is handy too, for the aforementioned reasons. All in all, the Helio Ocean would be a great phone if it were a lil thinner, a little more solid feeling, and if the screen froze up on me less often.

That said, I don’t think I would terribly mind having just a fairly basic phone, and a kickass PDA to go with it. I mean, I always managed to get by asking for directions at gas stations, as long as I had a general idea of where I was trying to get to.

10

I love having a phone with everything! Saves me carrying an mp3 player around + a camera & personal organizer! Which all 3 things i use on a regular basis. I want more features in my phone.

11

I don’t have any great pressing need for a cell phone but if I did I would be less interested in the features and more interested in one that didn’t have what I consider insanely stupid pricing structures. How have cell phone consumers let providers get away with per-minute pricing for this long? I would probably get a basic phone for those rare occasions when I’m on the road for an extended period of time if I could have one where I could pay a reasonable flat fee per month the way I do with my land line. There may be such phones out there but I don’t care enough to seek them out.

12

[QUOTE=DMark]
Great minds must think alike.
Just the other day I was thinking that there is a huge market for some electronics with only the basics. Not only for some of the elderly who don’t need the extra bells and whistles, but also for some of the techno-impaired who simply screw up anything when there are more than four buttons to push.
[/QUOTE]
Jitterbug is a company that is targeted right at this audience. Their calling plans are flat rate, with no prime/off prime minutes or roaming charges. And they carry two phones: One has just the number keys, up/down keys, and yes/no keys. The other just has “Operator,” “911.” and one speed dial button in place of the numbers. The calling plan includes 24-7 live operator services as part of the rate. Want to call your daughter? Press “Operator,” and ask for your daughter. Want to call the store on the corner? The operator service will look the number up for you. Apparently the operator service is available to subscribers from a landline as well.

13

I’m a luddite - I don’t like cell phones, and I don’t have one.

But my parents do have them. They were generally satisfied with their old Nokia phones, but due to their age, the network they were one was no longer going to be supporting them. So, they got another bare-bones phone, and have any number of complaints about the silly things.

The one that bothers me is how effing many audible alarms they have. It beeps when it’s called. It beeps, in a slightly different tone when there is a text spam message. Given why my parents are, their age, and what they use the phone for - the only texts they recieve are text spam. Usually from their network. :rolleyes: Then there’s another tone for when the phone is charging. That’s when it’s charging, not when it’s charged - there’s a different beep for that, and it keeps telling you it’s still charging at apparantly random intervals while it’s hooked up to the power supply.

My parents have tried to turn off most of those audible alarms and have gotten nowhere.

Whether the alarms are useful, or not, could be argued - but they way they’re set up is absolutely idiotic.

14

I’ve had this conversation in my shop dozen’s of times:

Customer “I just want a cheap basic phone”
essell “How about this one. Cheap as they come, a great phone that’s just a phone”
Customer “Doesn’t it have a camera?”
essell “Punches customer”

Okay, so I don’t actually hit them. Maybe just kick their shins.

While I expect some people want a basic phone I think iamthewalrus(:3= nailed it. People say they want a basic phone when they really want an easy phone. Somehow the idea that adding features makes the phone harder to work has become embedded into our group consciousness. It’s the same faulty logic that makes people think the phones that were launched most recently are the best ones.

15

[QUOTE=Otto]
I don’t have any great pressing need for a cell phone but if I did I would be less interested in the features and more interested in one that didn’t have what I consider insanely stupid pricing structures. How have cell phone consumers let providers get away with per-minute pricing for this long? I would probably get a basic phone for those rare occasions when I’m on the road for an extended period of time if I could have one where I could pay a reasonable flat fee per month the way I do with my land line. There may be such phones out there but I don’t care enough to seek them out.
[/QUOTE]

Wait a minute… ours are like that! The NajaHusband and I dropped our landline several years ago in favor of two Verizon cell phones because the flat monthly rate worked out to be much cheaper, we’d no longer have to pay long distance rates or fees, and we got the added bonus of being able to give the virtual finger to Qwest Communications, who were trying to dick us over at the time in regards to some faulty equipment which they owned and broke and wanted us to pay to repair. We get free night and weekend calling and free long distance with some number of “free” daytime minutes. I make any lengthy, chatty, family calls on weekends and since neither of us are big phone users anyway, I think we’ve only ever gone over the limit maybe once or twice.

Also, our phones are just phones.

16

I am in the “minimal functions are best” crowd. I have absolutely nothing against gadget-heavy gadgets, but they aren’t for everyone. And although I could probably use every feature available on the fanciest phones, I wouldn’t use them often enough to justify the cost of owning or cost of learning how to use them.

And the “cost of learning” is a big factor. If it takes me an hour to figure out how to do something that I could do otherwise in 5 seconds, it makes no sense to do it the hi-tek way.

A camera on my phone? Sure, I could use it. But I have an excellent digital camera that takes higher-quality pictures and does the job suberbly. I don’t need to transmit them that fast. Internet? I’m never so far from a standard computer that I need to save 3 seconds sending an email or looking up something on the 3W. Text messaging? Very few of my celphone-equipped friends have that and typing on a tiny device using abbrevs is clumsy. I can make a regular phone call, send a fax or an email to do the job better.

Besides, celphone coverage in my area is so spotty that in many places, NONE of the features will work, including my home.

It might be different in a few years, though. I’m the last person to be anti-technology; don’t get me wrong. We’ll see how things develop.

17

[QUOTE=danceswithcats]

Anyone else own a plain phone phone these days?
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I’m with you, ours are pretty plain. I’m actually a techno-phreak, but our cell phones are used mostly for emergency while driving. I wanted my wife to have one in case the car breaks down in the boonies, ditto for me.

Hardly ever make more than one or two calls a month (“Hon, I’m running late, be home in an hour.”).

The trick is to be persistent with your carrier salesperson. If you just keep repeating “I want the most simple phone you have” about 30 times, they’ll finally drag out what you want, with a look of disdain.

The first ones we had were the big old brick types, but last time we did upgrade to smaller folding models. As we sign up for a two-year contract each time, never have paid for a phone yet.

The latest ones do have some features we don’t want or use, but it is easy enough to get into the menu and turn off what is not needed. We can put a lot of numbers in memory, the first ten can be dialed by just holding down the number button a few seconds. Other than that, we just make calls now and then, and turn the damn thing off the rest of the time.

What I’d really like in both cell phones and cordless phones, is to be able to connect to the USB port on my computer and type in all the numbers and names we want in the memory. Typing them in on the phone keys is a royal pain in the ass.

18

[QUOTE=tonedef]
I love having a phone with everything! Saves me carrying an mp3 player around + a camera & personal organizer! Which all 3 things i use on a regular basis. I want more features in my phone.
[/QUOTE]

Ah, see that’s why I like my phone that’s just a phone. I don’t use any of those features and would prefer to keep it simple.

I don’t like full color displays because they are hard to read on bright sunny days compared to monochrome displays. I don’t need an MP3 player, because I don’t walk around plugged in all the time. I don’t want to be plugged in all the time.

I don’t need a camera with me all the time. I don’t need a personal organizer that’s portable. I use project management software at work. I can’t do my job without my workplace computer system, so there is no point in me having a portable organizer reminding me of all the tasks I have to do that I can’t do unless I’m at work… where I use the project management software.

I don’t need a portable address book. I store all the email addresses and phone numbers I need in my head.

So I like the simplicity of just being able to dial numbers and hit “talk”. No menus, no obtrusive ring tones, I just sometimes need to be able to make a call. Heck, I even only use it for calls I need to make, and don’t even use it for casual chit-chat.

I have an extremely simple phone and I still ignore almost all the features. I make the occasional call, and I check voicemail. That’s all.

19

It’s funny, apparently the Motorolas of the world really shit the bed for the BlackBerry phones and the iPhone consoles. Motorola’s screens and meus were not fun to go through. I hear the iPhone is pretty simple to get aroud in. The BlackBerry has a ton of features, but it’s all very intuitive.

20

I have a bare bones phone. But only because it’s a company phone and I don’t have to pay for it. :smiley: I don’t have a home phone and my internet and cable is provided by my landlord,so I have $0 commo bill. All basic but all basicly free!