So I got a new cell phone today to use while I am in Whitehorse. I figured that I would just get the cheapest phone and plan to save money seeing as I am currently making almost none of my calls to people here in the Yukon and almost all of my calls through the internet (free) to the USA. Having a real number seemed important though in meeting and keeping new friends so I went ahead and traded my iphone for a truly worthless excuse for a cell phone that is so incoherently painful to use that I immediately wanted to switch from it to something else. I started to wonder, is is possible that the cheapest phone – it still has all the ‘cool’ gadgets like music player, movies, tv, web etc, even if they work terribly- is nothing more than something that was intentionally designed to be confounding, within the guise of desirable coolness and attainability? That in its uselessness, it both offers what was desired while at the same time being such an intentionally worthless crap machine that anyone who uses it automatically wants a different phone, or a different, more expensive plan? Through designing something to be inherently terrible, are consumerism and desire fuelled through the benefit of contrast? If this is true, I still find it interesting that the phone ‘offers’ the use of things like music and internet. What would be the point from a design standpoint to offer these services if the principal design was intentional dissatisfaction? Maybe this is all a bit of a stretch but I just find it hard to believe that someone would financially back a product like this without some sort of other agenda in mind.
Thoughts?
ps I took these photos with my iPhone- yarrr!
It looks like someone glued too different devices together and called it good.
I agree I think cellphone places intentionally stock terrible normal phones to push you toward a more expensive plan, I can see any other possible explanation for why normal phones are worse now than they where four years ago.
I wonder if someone put as much time and effort into designing a phone, that was just a phone, as the did into the iphone if we would want that as much as we want ipones?
This is an interesting discussion, I wonder if the RD team sits down and is told by the ‘bosses’ that they need to design a shitty phone. So they all sit around and go, hmmm well, we cant do this, and we cant afford to do that.
But when I think about it, its all about navigation and usability. In my opinion, that is what makes an iPhone better than its Droid cousin. You are right, it makes you want to throw that stupid piece of plastic into the yukon river…
Great death to a terrible piece of technology…!