I used to provide tech support for smartphones and wireless 3G for a major cellphone company. They were good to work for, at first. Later I went to a shop and found out the store manager was screwing some of the female employees under threat of firing them if they didn't put out and I really objected when they fired a woman who'd just had a miscarriage and was unconscious in the hospital (she nearly DIED) so didn't call in according to policy. Yeah, not okay. Criminal, actionable in a court of law. Lesbian attack lawyers would have a field day with that. Ahem. Anyway, I had lots of customers who wanted a Convergence Device kinda smart phone, but Palm smartphones were cranky about signal changes and would lock up. Half the time a reboot would erase your data. It wasn't supposed to, but it did. And once in a while that reboot would corrupt a critical OS file, killing the phone for good. I can't tell you how many times that happened. No, I can't. NDAs.
So would MS phone OS. Any tower change while you were driving and it stopped working entirely. They tried and tried, but the hardware didn't know how to handle the exceptions and for SOME reason the OS programmers just couldn't be arsed to fix it, in any OS you cared to name. I think MS was less stable than Palm, at that time. They're better now, but I am quite hesitant to spend any of my own money buying something so unreliable.
I think this was the start of the cellphone tech crash and provided impetus to shift attention to the iPhone, which was more reliable but not perfect either (antenna? Covered by your hand? REALLY??). They're also very expensive. And most of the apps are just toys to show your friends around the water cooler or at a bar.
Of all the smart phones, the Blackberry, reviled for its lack of a camera, was the most secure, best sound quality, and more reliable as both a phone and email platform. Naturally, this is why they're in trouble. The govt uses them for their high encryption and govt phones aren't allowed to have cameras to prevent pictures of secure installations. If you need to text and it needs to be secure, that's the best platform.
Of course, few people need secure text. If you need security, there are lots of VPN logins or HTTPS sites for secure company bulletin boards and documents. You don't need to spend hundreds a month on a phone. That's just a convenience, a tether. And really, do you want the Bondage Implications of a smart phone or laptop, showing the world you are not free? They Do have their uses for families though. Texting is a discreet way to let Mom know where you're going after school and when you'll be home. They're great for shopping lists. Most smartphones today will either stream Pandora or other music services or contain an MP3 player program inside anyway. The thing is, do you want to wear down your battery streaming music? You could just carry an MP3 player designed for it that uses a fraction of the battery and a separate phone so you don't miss calls. Each are cheaper and more efficient, even though they're two devices.
That's the big problem with convergence devices. Individual devices often do it better and more efficiently and they don't all die at the same instant when your rechargeable cellphone battery, whittled down by use to half its lifespan a few months after purchase, must be bought again for $30-60? A proper GPS is waterproof. A cellphone is not. A good MP3 player isn't locked from your real music collection and holds way more than a cellphone does. A tablet has a bigger screen and will access any open WiFi, no monthly fee, no data charges. Cellphones are EXPENSIVE for their apparent convenience. I wasn't allowed to tell my customers that when I was fixing their issues or recommending bigger plans to protect from overage fees. It was the early days of working smartphones, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. They're better now, but still quite expensive. For a family they make sense. For a single with lots of friends, they're probably okay. For any serious use? They're just too limited and too fragile.
What I would like to see in a cellphone is a waterproof tablet with a full OS, complete with virus scanner and support for all websites, scalable data and automated billing so you go from 4G to WiMax to WiFi as soon as you come into range for each. That's more efficient and cheaper all around. I think someday we'll have gutted down the cost on those cellphone companies through local competition by City Wifi and county WiMax (Clearwire) that cellphones will mostly get used on the highways rather than in town. If you have a convergence device with the gellied thermite battery and 4-deep solar PV coating with diamond over the top for scratch resistance and waterproof to 10 feet, you're set. Just having it out in the sunlight would generate enough power to run it. Use the 7 inch display format for the small rectangular tablet and bigger 10 inch for schoolwork and work-work, you've got it covered as a ubiquitous device. I suspect this is what MS is heading towards with Windows 8. It is supposed to be the same interface, regardless of device type and its light enough to run on limited hardware.
So we're getting there. The Dumb side of smart phones is going to eventually get better and I can give it another look.
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