AN OPEN LETTER TO SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS
Why
your smartphone is not as ‘smart’ as it claims to be
DEAR ‘SMART’PHONE manufacturers,
I’m
not in a bad mood and I’m not angry. I’m just massively frustrated. You took a
device called a cellular phone, tweaked it a wee bit, changed a few things
around and started selling it as a smartphone. Smart? Really? Indulge me for a
moment and let me just point out some of the not-so-smart things in a
smartphone!
SILLY SLOTS:
So let me get this right. Every time
I want to add a movie or songs to my storage card, I’ve got to pry open the
back cover, use my nails to pull the battery out and then get to the slot? And
I have to do this every time I have to transfer some picture from my phone to
the computer too? And when I’m abroad and have to switch my SIM card, I have to
do the exact same thing? How about a slot right outside on the side or the top
or the bottom where I can get to it 20 times a day if I want without rebooting
my phone! Pick your favourite spot outside and put the damn slots right there.
SENSELESS STORAGE:
Have you guys noticed that you’re
making phones with full HD screens, more megapixels, excellent e-book reading
capabilities and fantastic music playing ability? If you have noticed, then you
obviously do expect me to fill up my phone with movies, pictures, songs and
books. Right? Wrong! You’re giving me a measly 16GB storage on the phone (and
the OS takes a chunk of that away, anyway) and then don’t give me the option of
adding more storage on my own by taking away the slot itself. Are you nuts?
PUERILE PROOFING:
Let me understand this one. You’ve
made a device that you want me to carry with me all the time, fish it out of my
pocket 100 times, use it 16 hours a day and also made it the world’s most
delicate piece of equipment? Have you heard of the term ‘oxymoron’? I drop it,
I get water on it, I get dust on it, I use grimy hands on it all day – and the
warranty doesn’t cover any of that? You’ve been selling phones for years now.
Can you standardise it so that EACH phone is waterproof, dust-proof and
shockproof as a bare minimum standard of toughness. If the mobile phone
industry was like the car industry – then they would be selling cars without
seatbelts or airbags or even brakes and steering.
MANGLED MATERIALS:
I just bought your phone. I saved
for six months and paid a king’s ransom for it. And one month later, as I take
it out to show it off to my friends, I notice that the screen is badly
scratched and the outer casing and back looks like a pack of dogs had a great
time last night playing ‘chew’ with it. I paid you good clean money for my
phone – the minimum I expect is for it not to turn into a grimy, ugly,
scratched, dented piece of crap in 30 days. Use gorilla or orangutan or baboon
or whatever-you-want-tocall-it glass, but just make sure it doesn’t scratch and
make sure that the outer material isn’t sleek and shiny just for the first five
days.
OPTICALLY MUDDLED:
You want me to stop thinking of
buying a standalone camera as your cameraphone has it all? Well, let’s take a
look and see if that’s true, shall we? First of all, where is the damn button
to take that picture? You actually think touching the screen to take a photo
makes a lot of sense? It’s a clunky and a very poorly thought out ‘feature’ as
it shakes the camera every single time, plus is just awkward to use. Put a
dedicated camera shutter button on the phone and stop having brain-dead
arguments about it. And while you’re at it, how about a larger sensor (so that
pictures look real rather than giving me a jaundiced look most of the time), a
real camera-level flash (instead of the cheap LED that makes everyone look like
white ghosts posing for a picture); and finally a real optical zoom (instead of
the crap digital zoom that gives horrible pixelation). An optical zoom today is
not a luxury but a necessity, and technology exists today that won’t add any
bulk to the phone.
BATTERED BATTERY:
Stop adding cores to your
processors, megapixels to your camera and pixels to your screen if you can’t
add power to your battery. Get with the programme; you’ve been given enough
time! The bare minimum one needs is 48 hours of battery life IRRESPECTIVE of
how I use my phone and whether I use 3G or not! Would you take a 16-hour flight
if you were sure that the airplane only had fuel for eight hours? You wouldn’t,
right? So stop selling us phones
that crash in the middle of the day!
ASININE SECURITY:
You want me to shell out R45,000 for
a phone? Then take good care of me and my device! I want anti-theft features
that really work, I want tracking that actually gets my phone back, I want you
to insure my phone when I buy it and I want you to work out a programme with
the police that doesn’t have the local cops laughing at me when I go to report
a stolen phone!
WIRELESS BRAINLESS:
So you finally got wireless charging
built into the phone. Great! But you still expect me to buy a wireless charger
separately as you want a little more money over the R45,000 I already paid.
Have you heard of the word ‘greedy’? Look it up, it’s there in bold letters in
every online dictionary. And by the way, I’m very happy that most of my syncing
between my phone and my computer is now wireless. Could you just make the whole
experience suck a little less and make it work every time I want it to?
There’s a lot more that I want.
Voice control that doesn’t make me tear my hair out, real multitasking with
windowing options for ALL apps, sensors that make my phone really smart (air
quality would be a good start) – there’s a huge list that I’ve left out. But
for a start, let’s just go with these. Turn your StupidPhone into a real SmartPhone.
After all, it’s got your name on it.
- Rajiv Makhni Rajiv Makhni is managing editor, Technology, NDTV, and the anchor of GadgetGuru, Cell Guru and Newsnet3 HTBR130505
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