I spent some time at the Mobile World Congress in Spain last month, where pretty much everyone involved in wireless technologies showed up. I am happy to report that there were some very cool new technologies demonstrated there, like Texas Instruments’ miniature video projector that may one day be incorporated into cell phones. People were also chattering about fourth-generation (“4G”) cellular networks, which are (of course) supposed to yield cell networks that are faster and better than today’s 3G.
Now, I like the idea of being able to use my cell phone as a projector as much as the next guy, and I’m all for faster networks. But frankly, I’d be most excited if my cell phone would just do the basic stuff well—like, you know, make and receive phone calls.
My U.S. Verizon CDMA phone wouldn’t work with the cellular infrastructure in Spain, so I borrowed an old GSM phone from a colleague, and I bought a prepaid SIM card. Except that (oops) it turns out the phone had been “locked” so that it would only work with Cingular service. So I had to pay to get it unlocked. Then my service worked fine in Spain, except that I couldn’t figure out how to use the voice mail because when I called the number, the instructions were in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish—at least, not at the speed of the voice prompts.
Of course, everyone at the conference had at least one cell phone. After “Hola,” the phrase I heard most frequently may have been “Is that your phone ringing, or mine?” And it was clear that I wasn’t the only one having trouble with basic functionality. Here are a few other snippets I overheard at—and en-route to—this conference on advanced mobile technologies:
“I can’t give you the number right now because I can’t read the display on my phone outdoors.”
“Spare batteries are not allowed in checked luggage due to safety concerns.”
“You mean we have to turn our phones off in flight? I don’t know how to do that.” (Really. This was from my seatmate, a semi-retired engineer. If this isn’t an indictment of cell phone user interfaces, I don’t know what is.)
Yeah, fancy new features may be great, but can we please get the basics ironed out? Easy interoperability, good voice quality, decent user interfaces… is that so much to ask?
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