Via Slashdot
Some Cell Phone Owners Spurn Gadgetry
This is exactly what I was talking about the other day. The first section in the article says it best:
“Nathan Bales represents a troubling trend for cellular phone carriers. The Kansas City-area countertop installer recently traded in a number of feature-laden phones for a stripped-down model. He said he didn't like using them to surf the Internet, rarely took pictures with them and couldn't stand scrolling through seemingly endless menus to get the functions to work.”
He goes on to say that he's not a “cyber-savvy” guy in the quote, which I can't relate to but the above paragraph says what I've been saying to anyone that asks for quite a while.
Most of the rest of the article is about how the providers are trying to figure out how to get over this particular hurdle. Somehow they think that the problem is that people don't understand the technology. Some don't probably. Most of the people that the telecom industry are trying to reach just aren't interested. A phone is a phone. Can it be so hard to get a phone that doesn't suck, isn't cheap and junky, and is maybe a little sexy without being bogged down with all of this extra crap? Or at least unlock things so we can uninstall it if I want.
I made my decision on this topic at least for the short term. I just bought an unlocked Sony Ericsson T610 on EBay. I'm going to use it til it breaks (or I lose it again), and when it does, I'll take a look at what's out there...and if the market hasn't changed, I'll buy another T610 on EBay.
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