What I Want in a CellPhone
Secret Agent Phone by Inweeknessbe
As the buzz about the possible iPhone from Apple swirls about, one interesting point that’s come out is how unsatisfied most people are with their cellphones or PDA’s. Given the exquisite user experience that the Mac and iPod offer, coupled with the end-to-end control of hardware, OS and content that Apple now has, it’s only natural to look at cellphones and hope that Apple could do some magic with them.
I, for one, am interested in what Apple may offer in a cellphone / PDA / music player. However, I don’t really want or need a super all-in-one device right now. Here’s what I really want in a cellphone.
Small. I like to put my cellphone in my pocket, to keep from looking too geeky with various large electronic modules hanging on my belt. Therefore, it must be of sufficiently small size to fit comfortably in my pocket. Treos are not small by my criteria. Older BlackBerrys are not small.
Voice. The main thing I want my cellphone to do is to let me talk to other people. Just voice. I don’t want to surf the Internet or watch sports on a 2 inch screen. I don’t want to check stock prices on a 25 character-wide display. I don’t want to hook my portable electronic communications device up to a PC projector to display a PowerPoint chart by pressing a tiny little button. I don’t want to take blurry, grainy, yellow-ish, 320×240 “pictures”. I want to talk to people.
Contact Sync. In order to talk to people, I need to know their phone numbers. I already do know them and have them on my computer. My cellphone must be able to keep in sync with my contacts on my computer and must require little-to-no work from me to keep them in sync. When I want to call Gary, I want to have his number accessible to me on my phone without me having to painfully enter it in by hand.
Qwerty Keyboard. OK, in addition to talking to people, I also like to use SMS a little bit. To type messages, I want a keyboard with one letter per key, please.
That’s it. Now I used to have a BlackBerry and really did like it. It’s convenient to be able to access your email and calendar virtually anywhere. My BlackBerry would stay perfectly in sync with my Outlook contacts without me doing anything more than plugging it in to the USB cable to sync and charge.
My perspectives have changed, though, after giving up my BlackBerry almost 2 years ago to save my company some money. While it would be nice to be able to quickly check my work email or calendar, it’s not that critical for me. I have a very portable and fast computer that I can use to check my work email in less than 60 seconds.
All I really want my cellphone to do is to let me easily talk to other people, comfortably fit in my pocket, stay in sync with my contacts on my Mac and have a qwerty keyboard.
My friend Blake writes about some really cool things you can do with a Nokia e61 and your Mac, and that looks pretty neat. But I don’t really see an ideal phone for me out there just yet.
I’m hoping that if Apple does create an iPhone, it will at least inspire and challenge the other mobile device manufacturers to simplify form, functionality and user interface to get closer to the very basic things I want in a cellphone.
Simple is better.
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