[sdiy] OT: Cell Phones Becoming Profitless

[Richard Wentk]

At 07:01 30/07/2004 -0700, Scott Gravenhorst wrote:
>Sorry for the non-DIY content, but this made me smile wryly this morning.
>Anything to thwart the proliferation of damnable cellphones is a very good
>thing IMHO.

I think it's unlikely to go that way. The airtime suppliers know they're 
sunk without phones, and they can only squeeze the makers so far.

As for the DoItAll phone - you have a fundamental problem with the form 
factor, and the fact that you can only ever get so many buttons on 
something that small. I use a Nokia 9210 which is a damn fine PDA and as 
close to a mini-laptop as you'll ever get, but it's a bit of a brick to use 
as a phone. It's also more or less the smallest practical size you can 
expect of something with a QWERTY keyboard.

I get the impression that phones are being sold more as disposable toys 
than serious items of usefulness. Hence the urge to pile in every possible 
feature.

Personally I don't want a crappy camera or an MP3 player in a phone, but I 
realise I'm probably unusual like that. :)

Re: security - you can already subscribe to a service that gives you 
location tracking of mobiles. And there are proposals for much more 
accurate positioning in future mobile technologies. It is indeed very 
worrying from a civil liberties point of view - far more so than worrying 
about whether or not my phone will play Defender and give me a chance to 
listen to Bwitney.

Richard