I’m a trogylodite non-cell phone user, but I just might be tempted if a company would make a smaller cell phone. One that you can really just slip into a pocket and barely feel. I like to ride my bike a lot, and I don’t want to take up an entire back-pocket with a phone. So, why doesn’t someone make a phone that’s really, really tiny, like perhaps the size of an iPod shuffle or something? The lightest, smallest phones I can find still weigh in at 77-80 grams, but they’re filled with crap like color screens and VGA cameras. What if I just want a straight up phone with a phonebook? I mean, it seems like they had StarTac’s of the same size ten years ago.
Also, what is the smallest cell phone on the market right now?
The last I looked, it was the Panasonic GD55, but that was about a year ago. It is smaller than my Samsung S307 flip-phone (77 x 43 mm and 65 grams versus 99 x 43 mm and 82 grams , but I think that includes the antenna on the Samsung) but it isn’t a flip phone. It is ludicrously small, like Zoolander size. It is what you ask for – B&W screen, pretty much no frills. My phone is a small phone, and I wear it in my front jeans pocket and barely notice it. So the GD55 is gonna be even better.
Siemens makes tiny slide-phones – the SL65 at 90 x 48 mm and 99 grams for the camera phone and the SL55 at 82 x 45 mm and 79 grams for the regular, non-camera version. They also have some small flip phones.
All of these phones are GSM, designed with not only the US market but the Japanese and European markets in mind. That said, you pay for the price, and most of them are not standard-issue phones offered by the cell phone companies. So you won’t get a deal on the phone, you will have to buy a Sim Card and the phone separately, and drop it in. Also, the density of GSM towers in the US is less than other places in the world, and I’ve heard complaints about reception and dropped calls.
My S307 was a standard-issue for Cingular (although at the medium-top end of the line), and we got the appropriate deals for it when my wife and I moved over to Cingular. The reception is so-so and I do drop and miss a few calls, but it is a nice size phone, and I wasn’t willing to pay the extra $200 or so it would have cost me to save around a centimeter in dimension.
The last point is that no phone is going to be the size of an iPod Shuffle because you have to actually dial it and speak into it and listen to it (although I suppose you could use a hands-free device). I have pretty nimble fingers after a lifetime of piano and years of insect dissections in graduate school, but I still misdial and hit the wrong buttons on my phone, which is a flip-phone so it offers a much bigger target than either the Siemens of the Panasonic.
My Sony Ericsson T226 is four inches tall by less than two inches wide by less than three-quarters of an inch thick. It weighs 79 grams.
This makes it comparable to (slightly less wide, taller, thicker and lighter than) an Ipod Mini. Plenty small to carry unobtrusively.
I’d imagine that the size of a cellphone also determines the size of its antenna, thereby determining how useful it would be as a cellphone. Battery size-to-life ratio is probably also a consideration.
I used to have the Panasonic GD55 mentioned by Edwino. People, seeing it for the first time, thought it was a cigerette lighter. It went through the washing machine, twice. Having a small phone that you don’t notice in your pocket is not always a good thing.
The thing about a tiny iPod is it has cables attached to it so as to make it easily retrievable. A cellphone that was just a tiny battery-sized piece of plastic would be a) easy to misplace b) hard to locate c) difficult to hold d) hard to operate and e) you wouldn’t feel if it had slipped out of your pocket.
Cellphones are getting bigger so they have fancy screens on to watch TV and surf the web and whatever. That’s the likely ultimate ideal size and multi-capability.
Mobile phones used to be the size of a brick, and the batteries took up a whole briefcase.
Mobiles could be a bit smaller, but you’d have to lose or downgrade some of these features:
readable colour screen
intelligible speaker and microphone
camera
tri-band capability
reliablility
battery life
usable keypad
There comes a point where they’re so small that they’d be too fiddly to use. And they’ve got to interface to your ear and your mouth simultaneously, which is a limitation on how short they can be.
Also I think the antenna size has something to do w/ the ability to get a usable signal.
In general more and more features have been added to phones, people now want color, which requires more power to use, so bigger batteries. Multiple ‘bands’ (tri-mode) also increase the amount of stuff inside. Flipphones, by there very nature has inherent inefficencies. Phones now need a computer interface, either by cable, or wireless.
And as stated we are running into limits with the size of a usable phone, buttons are hard to press for many people w/ large fingers and screens hard to see for people who don’t have perfect vision.
Much smaller cell phones will reduce to zero “you should be impressed” factor which is pretty low at this time anyway. Those around you would not be able to see the phone, so it will look to them you are simply talking to yourself and that will leave a completely different impression.
Screen and keypad could be eliminated with some cleaver interface.
Picture this… what if the handsfree earpiece WAS the phone - not attatched to it. You could use a voice system to dail with no screen, where you could just say “555-1212” or “Call Mom”.
I think there is still room to go smaller and I think there is still a market to go smaller.
If nothing else, at least thinner. The screen and the keypad need surface area to be user friendly, but don’t need depth (to be user friendly, I’m sure they need depth to function physically).
Most cell phones these days will not take up an entire jersey pocket. I ride with mine and can carry a tube and powerbar in the same pocket. That leaves two pockets free for carrying things like sticks of butter (I don’t like to bonk).
Of course, I could do without it. I’m out for a ride, not to talk on the phone. Think you might need a phone if you have a mechanical or a crash? Trust me, everyone else in the world has a cell phone. Use theirs.
If you do carry a phone in your jersey, put it in a plastic bag to keep it dry.
That brings up another problem with cell phones – many cell phone makers stick a camera on everything but the low-end models just because they can and it looks good in the advertising. This becomes a problem when you want high-end features, but specifically don’t want a camera because your workplace doesn’t allow them for security reasons.
Cripes, I’m getting old. I already thing cell phones are too small. Anyway, my geezer eyes can still use a Samsung E-105 from T-mobile. Folded about 1-7/8" wide, 7/8" thick and 3-1/4" long not counting a 3/4" stub antenna. It’s a flip phone with a B&W LCD on the outside and a large color display inside. I can read it okay an do text messaging but I do sometimes need mild reading glasses. You can pretty much get them free after rebate now. Dual band and mine worked fine in Germany and The Netherlands. Oh, color is worth it IMO as it’s easier to read in poor light.
You are kidding right? I don’t have a mobile now but I had one some time ago, and this is it Motorola 4500X. It did work as a hand-held unit (if you used both hands), it pre-dated mobile phones as devices of hipness.
The optimum size for me would be credit card sized, that is, a bit skinnier than current phones but surely a feasible size. And I’ll join the group who just want a phone to talk to people. Not to take pictures, listen to music or surf the web (on a tiny screen). Just gimme decent audio, we shouldn’t have to live with a 4k bandwidth in the 21st century.
No, I know that I could fit more stuff in there, but I still want a bit more space in there. I’m already way-over backed because here in Colorado, if you’re doing 4-5 hours you need leg warmers and arm warmers because the weather is always changing, plus your flat kit, food, keys, etc. What I’m thinking for my phone is just a phone that looks like a package of gum with three buttons down each side. Taht seems long enough to put an antenna in. Put a tiny little bright screen on it somewhere, no color needed, and you just dial and call. Maybe you have to plug it into your computer to download a phonebook. It seems like a good idea to me anyway. Plus, it would look really cool.
It could become this decades version of the 70’s/80’s “NOBODY MOVE! I’ve dropped my contact lens! It cost $200 and my mom will KILL me if I don’t find it!”