Homo Cellphone-ictus

If you were to be a two pronged alien or a twin antennae-ed cockroach, you would be dumbfounded by some of the choices the average human has to make; that is if aliens and roaches can feel dumbfounded. The average human has to decide which brand of toothpaste to use, what car to drive, whether or not to supercharge his car, what shirt to wear, what water to drink and so on. If, on the other hand, you happen to be an alien, or a cockroach or a monkey on a tree in India, you simply do what your body tells you to and go forage for another planet to invade, or a kitchen sink to infect or find another balcony to take a dump in. It really is that simple when your brain can see no further than your next meal. You couldn’t be bothered with where you’d find the next intergalactic fuel station to top up your uranium or be bothered with where you’d be taking your next dump. You just do these things.

Take another human activity, buying a cell phone, for instance. It has become insanely complicated. Go to the average store and you’re bombarded with a smorgasbord of clam shells, candy bars, flip phones, sliders, touch screens, smart phones dumb phones, cat phones, Androids, iPhones, YouPhones, MePhones, hell, you’d confuse Einstein! There’s enough strange-sounding variety out there to keep the average Frenchman satiated.

Pardon, monsieur, Would you like that clam shell flipped with a grating of a candy bar or a hint of smart?

This dilemma came to light when rather recently, I decided to go hunting for a phone that would suit my needs, and not the needs of some hypothetical consumer that the phone companies have in mind. My needs were simple, small phone, thin phone, few keys, colour screen, GPS for the big bad Indian countryside and an internet browser; Standard issue on most phones these days except for the issue that most phone manufacturers also add a lot of other rubbish to the package, just to raise the price. For the love of God in heaven, why would I want a million megapixel camera in my phone, or why would I want a phone in my camera? The argument of most is ‘convenience’, one device, two functions. This is my answer.

Would I like dinner with breakfast or my breakfast with dinner? Neither, they’re two completely separate things, best enjoyed apart.

Can you imagine the following going through the head of someone like Atul Kasbekar, the renowned fashion photographer?

I’ve just taken a rather nice picture of that banayan tree, what shall I do with the image?

I know, I’ll just upload the 90 MB RAW image on Facebook and let all my mates know.

(for the uninitiated, a RAW image is what the average SLR, a decent camera, would produce instead of the compressed JPEG’s that most point and shoot cameras do)

That would be akin to killing a phone with a Nikon and a shaky hand, or killing a Nikon with a Sony-Erricson and a hand that belonged to an Eskimo. It’s killing two birds with one camera, or phone, depending on how you see it.

Again, why would I want a 32’ AMOLED screen to fit in my pocket? I’d just go and buy a television and mount it on my wall if I wanted to watch movies or be entertained.

If I wanted PS3 like graphics, I’d go get a PS3, not a Nokia X3 or whatever it’s called. If I had enough of those, I could build an igloo. Imagine that, an igloo that kept out the rain, allowed me to talk to thirty different people at the same time, and also came with a bunch of little screens that allowed me to watch the telly. Cool, eh, the things you can do with the average phone these days.

But, no, being me, I had to have what I wanted. I wanted a small phone that dids a few tricks, like a daschund that jumps through the letter hole in my door, not a lion that gets its paws burnt trying to jump through a flaming hoop. Sadly, the days of simple phones that look like the letter E with the middle line missing are over. No one wants a phone just to be a phone anymore. They want it to do magic tricks too but sadly the problem with that is like magic’s most famous trick, the disappearing act, the Houdini. Your phone is also a Houdini, it comes factory made with a sliver of the great escape artists soul embedded inside. Go to a railway station or bend over too far and Hey Presto! Your little device is gone until you find out what the magic words are or are able to get it back with a sleight of hand.

Coming back to the subject at hand, or rather in hand, phones have become so complicated that for the average man, deciding on which one to buy takes about as long as it does the phone companies to churn out a new model. By which time the one you want will become obsolete and will have been buried in a grave yard in a remote church and you will have to start the process all over again.

Which would make you tear your hair out in frustration which will then result in raw material for faster and stronger communication channels for the newer models which will enable them to survive the flinging at walls and stomping-ons that you will subject them to when they don’t work.

There are phones for women, for businessmen, for executives, for grocers, for farmers, for accountants, for kids, for the YouTube generation, for old people, for nuts; heck there might even be a phone for God! But sadly, there are no phones for the simple mobile phone users who want their phones to work, and do what they want, when they want it.

You might eat your candy bar if you’re hungry, your clam shell might contain some oil slick from the Exxon Valdez, your slider might just slide off into another dimension and your flip phone may slam shut and bite your ear off. Hell, it’s scary.

Only one phone met my criteria for ‘my’ phone and a friend is now considering buying it because he’s become disillusioned by all the iPhone clones out there and also because he needs it, or so he claims. If you want an iPhone, save enough money and buy one. Don’t buy a HTCPhone or a SamPhone, they’re rubbish. If you’ve ever used an Apple made touch interface, you’ll agree with me; if you haven’t, try rubbing your finger against your eyeball. Did your eyelid slam shut instantly? Now, imagine if you had to press your eyeball to within millimetres of causing blindness for your eyelid to shoo your finger away. That’s the difference between Apple and pretty much everything out there.

My solution to this problem : Buy an old Alcatel or Erricson phone. They’re only phones and not much else. Nothing else, no other problems.

Cheers!