I Just Want A Phone

I currently own this Motorola cell phone with minimal features. Well, mainimal if you compare it to other more sophisticated models kids nowadays carry around.

Colored screen, browser, scheduler, camera. It lacks an mp3 player, or fm/am radio, no infrared, no bluetooth function, and whatever else manufacurers want to put into their products.

Still I rarely use those features. I don't use my phone to browse the Internet, I have my computer for that. I don't use the phone camera, I recently bought a decent digital camera with very good resolution. I don't use the scheduler because I'd rather write my schedules on a piece of paper.

I certaintly don't miss the radio or mp3 player, I have a boom box with a fine-sounding CD player. Nor the infrared and bluetooth because I don't use them.

I only needed a phone for chrissakes, one I can use to make a call and send text messages with occasionaly. Now there's the 3G technology. Frankly I'm not interested in seeing whom I'm talking to. I already know who they are most likely.

Cell phones are the biggest marketing scam of this generation. Trying to input all these innovations in one little gadget yet not giving us enough battery power is absurd. Consumers are the worse because we fall for it.

And not surprisingly, manufacturers find themselves entangled with all these product features that they have forgotten the very simple concept of usability. As CNN reported, cell phone makers find making their products simple & easy to use.

"(Consumers have) shown a growing frustration with how confusing those added features can be... That has providers working hard to make their devices easier to use -- fewer steps, brighter and less cluttered screens, different pricing strategies -- so consumers will not only use data functions more often but also be encouraged to buy additional ones."

I know going back to the basics will sound primitive to some, but many of us would rather that we have a choice between a basic phone and a communications-entertainment-gadget-rolled-into-one without the so-called techie trend watchers looking at us like we were trapped in a bomb shelter somewhere for 40 years.

One fellow confused cell phone user share this experience:

You would be amazed at how hard it was to convince the people at the cell phone store to get me a plain phone. Last November when I traded in my three-year-old Kyocera (an antique in cell phone terms), I looked all over the store for, as I told the salesman, a phone that just makes and receives calls and nothing else. You could practically hear his crest falling. He finally found a little Samsung model that had what I wanted -- nothing -- and when I told him to disable the text messaging reception, it looked like I told him that his dog had died.

Truth is if you have your phone leading multiple lives as a PDA, radio, mp3 player, camera, video players and all those whatnots, you're getting shortchanged. Because you're actually getting these features in small doses.

Therefore you don't get to enjoy them in full despite what those million dollar adverts tell you. You're only settling for style, what's hot in the market and what goes with your outfit.

When all you really need is a functional, sturdy phone.