Mobile Phones

I've got a Motorola phone on the Vodafone network. It's got a camera on it. It can talk to my PC using an infrared link. But, mysteriously, it refuses to transfer pictures to my PC except via the phone network, costing me money. The picture technology is disabled by greed, making it useless. The same goes for ring tones; I'm happy to record my own, but the phone insists I waste money downloading lobotomy-required tonal trash. I keep the phone on vibrate only.

It's full of silly features which interfere with its operation. For example, it's got a folding lid, which I like, but its got buttons on the side which are not covered by the lid. During the course of the day this buttons get pressed, and settings get corrupted. It is not possible to change the functionality associate with these buttons to "ignore". These buttons reduce the phone's usability.

SMS is a good idea, but is awkward to use. But, somehow, the manufacturers have actually managed to make it more difficult. As you type, it guesses the word it thinks I want. Unfortunately for the phone, my IQ is greater than that of a gorilla, and my word usage is consequentially greater too. The phone, having a word count less than that of the trained gorilla, almost always gets the guess wrong, so much so that there's no point in even considering using this lobotomy-required feature. When I want to finish a word and start another, I follow convention and press space, but this stupid pile of crap interprets space as selecting a random incorrect word. Thus I end up typing more than I need to, because I have to sort out its corruption of my text. This "feature" can't be turned off.

Every single modern phone I've encountered is full of unswitchoffable rubbish. There is no way that they've been subjected to proper usability testing, or the marketing borg have ignored reports from such testing. I detest this kind of incompetence.

All I want is a phone which makes and receives phone calls silently (on one line, not three), doesn't make random calls (a lid is fine, provided all buttons are under it), keeps the time accurately (which no phone does SFAIK), has a six month log of calls, has messaging (without predictive typing), and a six month log of messages. With all these logs, I want high speed editing, monitoring and seeking. Pin numbers are better than nothing, but I would prefer a more sophisticated security mechanism. I don't want any other features.

The basic principle is this. A phone can have zillions of features. They should be turned off when the phone is purchased. If the user wants a feature, let the user turn it on. Given this principle is not just a matter of making a phone usable, it's also central to basic security practice, and I believe good security practice is going to be required by law eventually, then I have reason to hope the user interface on phones in 20 years time will be properly designed.

As much as I dislike Apple, I wish they designed mobile phones.