Mobile Madness written 4 years ago

I’m in the market for a new mobile, as my crappy Motorola is, well crappy, and honestly shouldn’t have been allocated the several billion molecules which could be used for more important things, like dust.

As you know, I’m a bit of a geek, so obviously I’m drawn to phones that have all the dangly bits included. Unfortunately having all the added extras poses a paradox with my other desirable features, such as a decent battery life.

I’m sure everyone remembers a phone they’ve had that lasted for weeks on a single charge. Each new phone I’ve had has featured a shorter battery life than its predecessor — and this is in a world where batteries have gotten smaller and larger capacity. In the old days “low battery” meant “You might want to charge me in the next week or so”, nowadays it means “Death imminant, take cover”.

Another irritation is the cost of data transfer. I want to do the whole email-on-the move, but as it currently costs me 7 pence to check my email, it’s something I only do grudgingly. I realise I’m on Pay as you go, but even on the majority of standard contracts no data is included, and the only offer is to get an “add on”, which are always expensive. Even finding out the cost of data transfer is difficult.

They’re quite happy to push all the fancy data services, but don’t provide information on the medium that’s delivering it. Is that ?3 game actually going to cost you ?1.50 to download? Probably.

I think what I actually want is a phone / mp3 player that happen to share the same casing. It still doesn’t get around the other limitations of converging lots of devices together, such as pitiful battery life. It’s not so bad if your mp3 player runs out of juice, but a phone aughta never die. Many phones these days claim to be media machines, but do they feature dedicated media transport buttons? Not really (though some are catching on).

I also miss glaringly simple things like an LED alert to tell you if you’ve got a message or a missed call. I could tell from 10 feet if my old ericsson wanted attention.

And whoever decided that putting the volume control on the side of a phone was useful aughta be shot. “Let’s put these buttons where they’re most likely to be accidentally pressed.” Sure bob. And why must a phone make a noise when I’m changing the volume level? I don’t really want to hear dringly dringly as I’m trying to silence my phone.

So what to do? I guess I’ll just buy something that looks pretty, then resent it for the next 12 months. Owing to some silly design defect, that someone should have been shot for. And live with the fact that i’m going to have to be near a power outlet every day, and that the silver paint will scratch off

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