Ubiquitous Cellphones

I just upgraded my Cellphone for the first time in five years. I suppose this puts me really behind in keeping up with technology, but I guess you could call me a selective early adopter. Everyone has different needs and my old phone did virtually everything I needed it for. Yes, today’s models do much more, but my old Qualcomm Thin Phone suited me just fine and I have mixed feelings about retiring it. As the name implies, it was thin, only half and inch and slips into your pocket and feels good in your hand. Truth be told, I haven’t seen a phone even today that is so thin. Besides that, it worked fine and the menus were simple and easy to navigate and it held 200 names and numbers.

So, why did I upgrade? I was basically forced to since the old phone was no longer compatible with all the system upgrades Verizon has been making and they wouldn’t let me upgrade to one of the newer plans unless I got one of the new phones.

So now I have one of the dreaded flip phones. At least that is what I considered them to be while I had my trusty Thin Phone. I’ve gotten used to it and even like some of the features, like the fact that the phone picks up when you open it and hangs up when you close it. Much more intuitive. But of course it has all these annoying ringtones and options for assigning the Star Spangled Banner to a specific caller and the Minute Waltz to anyone who blocks their Caller ID, and another to... You get the picture. You can also tag cute little pictures to each name in your contact list if you are, you know, like 9 years old.

The other thing it does is text messaging, although I haven’t tried that yet. I read that this is all the rage in Japan with the rest of the world quickly catching up. In Japan it is apparently a cultural thing; having you phone ring in a quiet place is considered rude so it is common for people to just check their messages frequently and leave the ringer on the lowest setting or off. Consequently, if you are standing in a subway station in Tokyo, you can expect that literally half of the people standing there will be staring into their phones either playing games or punching in text messages furiously.

It makes me wonder where we are heading, cellphone-wise. I also read about how in Japan and other countries they are incorporating RFID technology into some phones so they can be used as smart cards to pay for subway rides, vending machines, even as proximity ID badges for access to your apartment or company. Your phone is going to be your lifeline in more ways than one. Losing your phone will not only be extremely inconvenient, it will be embarrassing when you can’t pay for your train ticket or get into your apartment. The question that comes to mind is how will people protect themselves from this happening? Will all your personalized data be implanted in a chip under your skin so you only have to replace the dumb handset? Maybe the handsets will become cheaper, even disposable when they reach the commodity stage.

Of course, we are a very long way away from that here in the US, given that we have so many competing standards for cellphone communication. Europe is far ahead of us in that regard, using GSM everywhere and even only charging for outgoing calls – how logical!