How Not to Build a Cellphone

Jamie found an NYT story about a new t-mobile Shadow phone which starts off by talking about how Apple is changing the phone game by wrestling power from the carriers, and then discussing what could be a reasonable piece of hardware. And then how it is wrecked by software. The phone has wait screens, a task manager, odd error messages etc. Makes for an amusing read.

In the same vein

[mike260]

Joel Spolsky does an entertaining job of ripping another phone with poorly-designed software to pieces here [joelonsoftware.com].

Mystifying

[StarKruzr]

I'm still waiting for the phone that sounds and works like a phone.

Why does everyone say this as if it doesn't exist?

I suspect it is because they want their posts to sound as though they possess some real down-home 'Murrican wisdom. Jesus. How [cnet.com] many [cnet.com] counterexamples [cnet.com] do [cnet.com] I [cnet.com] have [cnet.com] to [cnet.com] find? [cnet.com] All of these are "phones that look and act like phones."

Moreover, why is ANYONE "against" convergence? Seriously? Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?

Wrong! That's not an advantage, that's insane. At least, I can't remember the last time I was looking at my cellphone thinking, "Damn, I wish right now I could open up a Word document!", not even if one was attached to an e-mail.

Yesterday, when I got an email from my advisor. Thankfully, I had my iPhone at the ready and it was quite capable of opening the document. I was able to answer her question immediately and it made me look like I was really on top of things. I guess that makes me "insane."

"wresting power from the carriers"?

[Thaelon]

I fail to see how "wresting power from the carriers" is a bad thing. They do evil things with it. Two year contracts with "early termination fees". Phones locked into their service. Phones with software or hardware they've deliberately crippled (Verizon I'm looking at you). Phones that have had a nice GUI replaced with their branded crap. Charging absurd prices for downloads. Padding HTTP headers with data so you use more of their outrageously overpriced data plans. I could go on and on. But if you ask me, the more power the phones wrest from the carriers, the better off we'll be.

Re:Mystifying

[EvilIdler]

Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?

You can't fit great optics in the size of a typical mobile phone, so the camera is a toy.
If the phone has wi-fi and a decent SSH client, I won't mind any PDA-ness. But I don't
ever feel the lack of a laptop, anyway, and just use the phone to be reachable :)

What an idiot reviewer...

[Xenious]

I have an iPhone, I also have a windows mobile 6 smartphone. I use one as a wifi ipod and the other as my communications tool. Why? Cause the iphone doesn't sync up with my corporate exchange server and push email to me from it. It's just a tool and as much as I love my iphone I have to use the other to get the functionality of the tool I need. For what its worth I think WM6 is pretty decent and I can work without a laptop and have access to my corporate address list, email, contacts, office documents anywhere I've got reception. not bad.

Where the t-mob shadow really sucks is the half azz keyboard. ;)

Re:Mystifying

[rickb928]

Well, I do that. On my BlackBerry 7105t. Which is an old phone now in marketing terms.

Heck, I went out and got Google Maps, and an SSH client. People look at me like I'm clever when I drill down and tell them their house is the third light down, not the second. My co-workers aren't in awe any more when I reboot my web server, they are in awe when I can run a macro and suck up the latest patches. And keep them up to date on World Series score. And this is just a BlackBerry.

As soon as I begin wishing for a camera, I remember though, having all your devices in one leads to the inevitable 'all your devices are broken to you' scenario . I like being able to replace my phone, and then replace my camera, and not having to replace both.

ack.

Oh yea, and I open Word docs just fine. Even Excel and PDFs. Take THAT, Windows Mobile!

Re:Mystifying

[Beltonius]

Oh, certainly. I'm not saying that I don't understand why someone wants their phone to do literally everything. It just bothers me that the minority of the populace that do want higher-quality electronics are basically being marginalized. Noone really makes PDA's anymore, except for HP, and their's are worse in every way than the ones Dell used to put out. Palm hasn't updated their line in upwards of a year and the only devices I've seen running WM6.0 have been smart-phones.

Re:Comment on the keyboard lock

[ledow]

Err... the early Philips (C12/Savvy) phones ALL had this - they were the first real phone that BT (back then Cellnet -> BTCellnet-> O2) released when mobiles started taking off. Trying to dial 999 or 112 was given as the reason - pressing 1 or 9 would undo the key-lock.

And yes, it was incredibly dumb. And more than once I nearly dialled random 4-5 digit numbers because it had activated in my pocket. It wasn't the only model to suffer from it, though. And I shouldn't think many modern phones emulate this "feature".

How about another opinion?

[gurulegend]

Matthew Miller from ZDNet's The Mobile Gadgeteer: http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer/?p=679 [zdnet.com]

This is basically a blow-by-blow refutation of Pogue's article. Enjoy.

Re:Mystifying

[pjt33]

Do you really WANT to be carrying around a camera, a phone, a PDA, and a laptop?

No. I have no desire whatsoever to carry around a camera or a laptop. I carry around a phone (Nokia 3310 - a real "phone only" phone) and a PDA, and wouldn't want to trade them in for a single device. The only advantage I can see is that I would have a spare pocket, but when I weigh that against the disadvantages of being unable to speak on the phone and skim through my calendar at the same time, running down the battery on the combined device faster than on either of my current devices, and being vulnerable to a single accident, I come down on the side of standalones.

Re:Mystifying

[gforce811]

I could care less about taking pictures.

Just a slight point here, but this phrase is so completely botched all the time, that I had to say something. I think what you meant to say was, "I couldn't care less about taking pictures." As in, your level of caring for taking pictures is so low already, that it could not get any lower. I think that is what confused the author of the other reply to your post. Either that, or he/she was just being cynical. Of course, maybe I am too.

Cheers. Oh, and if I'm wrong, please tell me so I may correct myself in the future.

Re:No Design Experience

[jandrese]

Two button presses have a very good reason for existing. A single button is not sufficient when you're trying to protect against accidental presses. Even if you don't have a problem with it personally it is a problem. Making the buttons difficult to press is a terrible solution too, since it means wearing your fingers out to solve the accidental press problem.

Personally, I find the two button press option to be a pretty good solution in the case where your only controls are buttons. The op mentions how Apple came up with a new method to solve it, but apparently fails to realize that Apple was forced to come up with something like that on account of having only a single button on the phone. Frankly, the button press and finger motion on the iPhone seems like more effort than the two button press the op is complaining about. The article's author is dead wrong about two button presses being too many however, but I agree with him on pretty much all of his other points.

TFA written by Apple Fanboy

[Yahma]

To summarize the article:

T-Mobile [tmobile.com] has great hardware on their hands. But this phone could have been so much more... if... and only if...
They had used apple's Iphone software... and since the software wasn't designed by Apple, but instead by big bad microsoft, it sucks!

Personally, I am getting sick of the argument that everything that Apple does is the work of God. While I admit, the Iphone introduced some better concepts in UI, it still has no SDK, is locked, and will be bricked by apple if you try to unlock it. It is a closed platform that is strongly controlled by the almighty Apple.

Had Apple released the Shadow with Windows Mobile, the author of this article would have found some way to justify Apples actions.

Re:Windows Mobile is the Achilles Heel

[julesh]

Amen! I also love how the phone has a knack for running out of memory right when an important call comes in. There's nothing more frustrating than a ringing phone that won't show me the phone screen and where the buttons suddenly don't work.

This is one of the brilliant things about PalmOS: you can write a program that will run on it _without using any memory at runtime_. Because it can run programs straight off flash, without having to load them into RAM.

OK, so PalmOS has/had a lot of problems, but why are mobile operating systems still being developed that treat their flash devices as if they were just a disk...?

Re:apple may be changing the power-structure

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that 160 character limit to a text message? That's because they are sent at the end of the data packet that the cell phone sends to roam from tower to tower. It costs the cell company exactly zero, since the phone is going to send the packets anyways.

Re:No Design Experience

[phoenix_rizzen]

My original cell phone, a Panasonic TX-220, had a single-keypress lock function. However, it required holding down the lock key for 2 seconds to enable or disable (with an auto-enable after 10 seconds feature). Never had it accidentally lock or unlock on me, and I found it to be a lot more usable than the "top-left button, then bottom-left button" process to un/lock my current phone.

Don't dismiss a single-key lock process because you can't think of a way to make it work. :) It's been done before, it's been done well, and lots of us really miss it.

Re:Cell phones are pieces of shit.

[zlogic]

I hesitate to suggest this since they seem incapable of getting even simple things right, but replace SIM cards with SD cards (they're effectively a commodity now, $20 for 2GB). Poof, instant long-play pocket audio recorder!

SIM cards are more than simply memory. They store a bunch of encryption keys; but the keys are NOT transferred into the phone and a lot of encryption is done on the SIM card, so technically it's a very simple processor. It's done so that someone doesn't steal your phone, clone the SIM card, assign any PIN they like and get "free" calls as well as a "free" phone.
Oh, and most modern phones (except really cheap ones) have an SD, miniSD or microSD slot.

The ability to turn the volume up or down in a wider scale than they give us.

Most phones have a speakerphone mode that makes it really loud; turn it on but turn down the volume, this way it'll be louder than normal but not deafening.

The phone to tell me what the hell it's doing signal-wise.

It may be anything, including the carrier. For example here in Russia most prepaid contracts (having a $5-$10 monthly ARPU) have a much lower priority and their calls are dropped or rejected if network load exceeding limits; they are also switched into half-duplex mode when bandwidth is needed for something more important. I think that "bars" are lowered if the signal is too noisy.

A phone that doesn't fucking break.

My Siemens phone got chewed by a dog, its screen (the protective glass, not the display itself) now has a hole in it (because of the dog), the battery is dead because of awful handling (but still lasts a day or two), I opened it twice just to look inside and it was dropped a million times. Everything (except the battery) works perfectly! My new phone is a Sony Ericsson and I've never had any problems with it yet.

Re:Mystifying

[lattyware]

I think PDAs are being replaced by UMPCs - Things like the Asus EEEPC will offer far better performance (along with other advantages like the bigger screen), for about double the size of a PDA - not to mention the same, if not cheaper, price.

Apple Copied LG, Which Copied Samsung

[meehawl]

how could anyone possibly look at that phone and think it's even remotely inspired by the iPhone/iPod?!

Agreed, Nokia's phones are usually based on the Nokia "look" more than anything else. But there is a whole new wave of big-screen phones emerging based on trends coming out of Korea. The first one of these was a few mutant Samsungs, which begat the LG Prada, which Apple then lifted for its own phone design. Compare and contrast [reghardware.co.uk].

Re:Mystifying

[DECS]

Because the mobile network you're paying $1000 a year to use is only designed to provide minimal voice quality. Perhaps you should blame the provider, not the iPhone.

Of course, that's far less sensationalist and fashionable to complain about than whining that Apple delivered the future of mobile phones at a consumer price.

The Great Google gPhone Myth [roughlydrafted.com]
Pundits have seized upon rumors of a new mobile phone product from Google as their golden ticket for bashing the iPhone. The "gPhone" is the perfect foil for fear-based rumormongers because it's a secret Google han't said much about publicly. That lets the wags blow it out of proportion and stretch it into an iPhone Killer. They're wrong, here's why.

Mod GP up, Mod parent down

[Fifty Points]

Your statement is false. If I care less about my car, I will spend less effort maintaining it. If I care more about my car, I will spend more effort making sure it's working right. I have reasoning power to work this out in advance, therefore caring less takes less effort.

Re:Mystifying

[Kyle_Katarn-(ISF)]

Well, I don't know about you, but "double size of a PDA" is far too big for me. I'm still using my Palm E2. Why? Because it fits rather nicely in my shirt pocket. Lots of the new PDAs I've looked at need a carry strap to be able to use while standing. If that's what you want, fine. But I want something smaller and lighter. Something that doesn't make my shirt pocket sag to my belt.

Oh, and on the "Just a cell phone" phone, I've had an LG VX3200 for more than 3 years now. It doesn't have a camera, web browser, email, games, etc. It has a phone, an alarm clock, and a calculator. That's it. It's a tri-mode phone (CDMA800/1900,AMPS) so it works anywhere. I have an extendable aftermarket antenna, and it gets reception just about anywhere. And I live in a very rural area. I'm on my third battery, so that should tell you good things about it's durability (And bad things about LG's batteries...). All in all a good phone that is just that: A good phone.

Re:Mystifying

[Anonymous Coward]

And on top of that, if the battery goes flat in one of those all-in-one devices, you don't have any of those functions usable. With separate devices if my phone's battery is flat I can still take photos, make/refer to notes on the PDA, edit documents on the laptop, etc. Or if I use up all my camera battery taking photos all day, I can still make and receive phone calls.