h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What's your point, bbfl?

Err, you can send a quick message, without having to actually speak to someone, so if they're busy at work, they don't have to stop and talk?

Thing is, text messaging is something only phones do, whereas all the other bells and whistles are functions that other devices do much better.

you really should research things b4 you put things down.

My point is that I cannot perceive of a situation where I would ever want to talk / message / send naff photos to someone whilst in a place where I could not get hold of a normal telephone / PC.

Some (probably most) people love such things. Me, all I have to go on is my experience of being tied to mobile for work purposes and hating every minute of it.

My phone just died. In the past year, I have used about £20 of credit, but it is annoying knowing that people cannot contact me when I am away from home, where they could before.

thats understandable but you must understand from other angles as well, like building sites so you can send photos of what has been done instead of just telling the office/boss. cause it is possible to send a photo to anyones fone or email address.. but i do understand your point,.

I work at a construction company, and I say that the example you site is not a good one. If I were to use a phone in such a manner, then I would have to take several to dozens of pictures to express what I want to express about building progress. If I were to send the boss a picture of a building being built, he would call me up and ask questions about the building, and it is much more difficult to answer questions over the phone as opposed to in person. I might as well take a digital camera and bring the pics back to the office.

In any case, any good supervisor who wanted to know about the progress that badly would go look at it himself. Relying on subordinates and pictures for information is asking for trouble in my line of work.

Furthermore, in my experience with digital cameras, I would expect picture-taking ability to drain the phone batteries very fast. Like someone posted before: if I wanted a digital camera, I would get a digital camera.

In another point, digital photos can be pretty large files. I wonder how fast do these phones really transmit files, and what the charge is for this service. If my cell service charges $0.20 per minute of peak air time, and a picture takes 2 minutes to upload, then I've just paid $0.40 to send a picture to someone. That's more than it would cost for film and development of the same picture. And that's just for one picture. Say I had 10 pictures, or 50.

And where are the phone companies getting the bandwidth to handle all this traffic? A recent article in the New York Times (yes, I'm American) said that cell companies are getting more and more customers with more and more data-transfer needs, and not building any more cell towers. I already get dropped calls about 30-50% of the time I talk on my cell...why would I pay more for picture capability if my call will get dropped halfway through uploading my picture of a construction site to my boss? Do I really want to rely on this system for my work? Unreliable devices/systems like these tend to get dropped pretty quickly at my office.

Bells and whistles do not a good product make.

Wampus

Yeah, there are certain products that amazes you with their uselesness. I just want a pocket pc, so I can send e-mail and such.

The cellphone I have bought here is a prepaid. The lowest card you can buy is about 6 pounds, and it runs out after 30 days. I don't have it for any real use, just for emergencies so I really feel I'm being overcharged.

When picture phones came out I (admittedly whilst a bit down the pub) jokingly suggested that they would mainly be used for perverts to send pictures of their dangly bits to ususpecting victims.

It seems I was not far off the mark. My girlfriend told me the other week that one of the blokes down her place of work was bragging about having had sex with his girlfriend and sending the photos to his mates to brag.

I suppose such idiots can be traced fairly easily but that's not really the point.

the matter of fact that you live in america and i live in england makes an extremly big difference. cause as the rest of the world no america just has to do things on a much larger scale than the rest of the world. so matbe not on your building site but on others, remember they have taken off in a very big way in england and america isnt the only place on earth...

the matter of fact that you live in america and i live in england makes an extremly big difference. cause as the rest of the world no america just has to do things on a much larger scale than the rest of the world. so matbe not on your building site but on others, remember they have taken off in a very big way in england and america isnt the only place on earth... you must start to look at things from other point of views...

I used to be with GreyDesk on this one until I got given a mobile for Christmas. Now as I have a car that weighs in at a horrendous 31 years old, it is kind of useful.

I thought you might say something like that. I will concede the point that I live in America.

But tell me this. Are any of the points I mentioned before invalid on your side of the pond? Are cameras more useful in England? Is cell service more plentiful and reliable there? Are dropped calls less common? Do digital cameras take smaller picture files? Are British cell batteries more powerful?

And perhaps a British person besides a cell phone salesperson could tell me if these toys have really taken off or not in Britian. They sure haven't in America.

I suppose there's something to be said for a device that does it all...a camera/cell phone/web-enabled PDA/MP3 player would certainly cut down on pocket clutter. However, it isn't worth paying for a device that does all these things poorly, and from what I've seen, cell phone/cameras make pretty poor cameras.

Wampus

why thank you. i mean at the end of the day it is irrelivent what fone you have as long as it works.its just certain fones have more practical value to certain people than others do. admitidly my mobile does have all the bells and whistles but then again i work for a network provider here in england. really they are just another way to keep in touch, like your point if you were to break down then it would be very useful 4 u. and if you were off travelling around the world then as long as you had a tri-band phone then people would always be able to get in touch with you, wether it be loved ones just wanting to here your voice or an emergency... they can also be used to trace and pin-point your exact location if anything was to happen to you, so it could be a life line really...

I think the general point is that there are more possible uses for this kind of technology than are immediately apparent.

That was the one scenario when I might (and I stress might) have got a phone.

There was a chance that my job would have been relocated 20 miles north and over the South Downs. Now with a knackered old car I didn't much fancy walking over the hills in January looking for a phone box to get hold of the RAC. I looked into getting a phone and discovered that the cheapest most basic and horrible package would still have cost me close on £100. With that I decided that getting the suit dry cleaned on those 'occasional' days when I had to trudge through the storms was way cheaper, so I wouldn't bother.

Also the salesman who dealt with me thought I was some kind of a primitive ape for wanting a phone that *only* makes phone calls. So I came out of the whole experience even less enamoured with the mobile phone industry. And still phoneless

simulpost.

I knew that someone would ring with a query whilst I was typing that lot

How ironic.

right first off i would just like to say that dropcalls are very rare in england and the only place you may have a chance of getting them is in the most remote parts of england. also the battery on the phone in point the sharp gx10 has a 250hr standby time which works out out to just over ten days, and as for the the digital camera built in is does have about 60,000 pixels so you cant say that just that isnt impressive for a phone, and the files for the photo's only take the same time to send as a regular text message.

Isn't it handy that we have an expert available.