Monthly Archives: April 2010

Tim Dowling has written an excellent piece at The Guardian about his move from a standard mobile phone, with 3 missing keys, to an iPhone. Worth a few minutes of your time…

“It took a month for me to accept that it was probably unprofessional to carry on using a mobile phone on which the 4, 5 and 6 buttons were broken. For the most part, this had little effect on my normal daily usage. I could still ring my wife to complain, and people could still ring me when they couldn’t get through on the landline because I now assume that all calls to that number are from robots offering to consolidate my debt.

As the weeks wore on, however, I came to realise how many things I couldn’t do on a phone with no 4, 5 or 6. I couldn’t call anyone whose number contained those digits, unless their details were already in my phone’s memory (a total of 29 names, and I can’t remember who 11 of them are). I also couldn’t send a text containing the letters g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, or o, which makes for some stark choices. I could, for example, text “yes” but not “no”. Under this constraint, framing a coherent response became either an intriguing puzzle or a nightmare, depending on the situation. I once managed to send the reply “wed def” – which I hope the recipient took to mean “Wednesday, definitely” – but many texted queries went unanswered…”

A high-end smartphone can cost as little as £300 today and a significant proportion of the population can afford one, especially if it is bundled with a contract. I think this is one of the reasons why the smartphone has become so successful in recent times- we can all have a bit of iPhone or HTC HD2 magic if we want without breaking the bank and it is a luxury that we can enjoy. The same cannot be said for all segments of the computer industry because not everyone can afford ‘any’ Apple laptop or desktop computer or the super smart Windows PCs that sit in the shop only to be bought by those who have the wedge to do so. This makes the objects in question alluring to those who can afford them and frustrating to those who cannot. The smartphone is different though and somehow manages to be alluring without the frustration.

Don’t get me wrong- I am not suggesting that everyone can afford the high-end smartphones with ease, but the models used to sell them make them more widely affordable to more people. Music systems, cars, furniture, houses, holidays and almost anything else we think of as marks of success come at a cost which is more than financial. In our silly materialistic world we often judge the value of objects by the price and the status they bring- my point is that a smartphone can bring a certain status to the user and only cost an extra £5-£10 per month over a normal mobile phone.

The smartphone used to be for nerds until Apple, RIM and Nokia made them cool and as these monsters compete more ferociously, the prices will come down further. We will end up at a point where all phones will be free and the contracts are the only price you pay. As the networks invest to keep up with demand, they will have to increase prices to the point that it will no longer be acceptable to charge for a mobile phone of any type. At this point smartphones, which will be all phones by the way, will somehow still manage to keep their allure and even more people will be able to afford them.