25 Sep
2013
25 Sep
'13
6:52 a.m.
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 02:21:15AM -0400, Mouse wrote:
[...]
It's not difficult round here. Anybody can just walk into a shop and buy one.
For less than a bottle of super-strength cider and twenty Silk Cut. There's
even a choice of different models!
[...]
Or it's a
reasonable engineering trade-off given how little the phone
functionality is expected to be used compared to everything else.
I'd agree
with you, except that they are sold as phones and it is difficult
to get a device that carries voice calls over the cellular network that
_isn't_ one of these phone-is-an-afterthought things. Well, that and, as I mentioned above, stopped making
real phones, or at least
far too close to that. I'm still using my Nokia 5190, and this is a
significant fraction of why. (It dates back to when they were pretty much
just phones - no camera, no Web browser, only trivial games, no MP3 player,
no appointment reminders - the clock in it doesn't even keep track of the
date.)
They're still making basic GSM handsets, as cellular telephony is growing in
the third world where people can't afford fancy phones. The UK mobile phone
networks that still have GSM networks and aren't UMTS-only offer them.