Psst: People Still Want Mobile Phones To Be Phones First

from the kitchen-sink,-second dept

Jeremy Wagstaff makes an important point that is important to repeat every once in a while: for all the fancy new smartphones out there, many people still want a mobile phone to just be a phone that works. Wagstaff makes his point by saying how an unnamed top mobile phone exec told him off-the-record (hence the lack of identification) that despite all the fancy feature-filled smartphones he was out trying to convince the world to buy, his favorite phone was the simple Nokia 1100. It's a simple, straight-forward phone. No camera. No video. No internet. Not even a color screen. But, it works. This reminds me that until only about a year ago, my main mobile phone was a Samsung SCH-3500, which I'd used for about six years or so. Sure I'd tried this or that smart phone, but none of them seemed to do the most basic thing (act as a phone) nearly as well. It was only earlier this year that I finally switched to a smart phone full time, but it still doesn't work nearly as well as that old 3500 for just making and receiving calls. I, like many people, certainly like the idea of the various features found in a smartphone, but if it can't work well as a phone, it's really not particularly useful.

Filed Under: feature creep, mobile phones, smartphones