dumb phones
Certain products are so highly evolved in their genre it’s hard to imagine improvement. The old hardy Bell telephones come to mind, as do the electromechanical Selectric typewriters. In many ways, they were perfect.
Then along came new features, necessitating redesign. And all heck broke loose. And there were many clunky ’solutions’.
What I want in a telephone shouldn’t be so hard. Caller ID you can read. In an ideal world, sync with my address book on my computer. Some of the basic ‘last called’ ‘last called by’ lists that cellphones *all* have (I pay for caller id but I can’t hardly use it, my phones are so bad.) A speaker that doesn’t require laser guided alignment between my ear and the teeny-tiny hole in the molded plastic. Have a jack for a headset, and if it does have a headset jack, make sure it has a belt clip.
On the slightly more expensive end, why not bluetooth? Why, for that matter, hasn’t anybody come up with an all bluetooth solution? base stations in the house, speakerphone only at the base station, and a bluetooth hookup so i can walk around cordless but also handset-less. I realize the distance for which bluetooth is designed is short range, so maybe use wifi. but for pete’s sake, make it affordable, and easy to use, and standards compliant. I can only hope my apple iphone will let me skype as well as place cellphone calls.
here’s another one–my cellphones ten years ago did voice dialing. but only on numbers where it memorized my voice. Speaker-independent recognition of digits should be easy by now. “Phone, dial. Eight, one, four….” This should be in every phone!