Jose_R.A.M
09-16-2007, 09:13 AM
...says Jeremy Clarkson in his TimesOnline Column (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article2459930.ece?openComment=true#comments-form).
Is convergence really the way forward?:)
Dial M for a mobile I can actually work
http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q186/Jose_R-A-M/jeremy20clarkson.jpg
There are a great many mobile telephones on the market these days. All are made by companies with preposterous mission statements, all have idiotic names and all are full of ridiculous features that you neither need nor want. So where do you go for some nononsense advice?
Films are reviewed in all the major newspapers so that you can avoid the expense and embarrassment of accidentally seeing one with Vin Diesel in it. And it’s the same story with books. You want to know what’s worth reading and what’s not, you tune into Richard and Judy.
Everything is reviewed. Cars. Restaurants. Holidays. You name it. But the only place you’re going to find advice on mobile phones is on the internet.
On paper this is a good idea. We’re not being regaled by people who we suspect have been bribed with a press junket to Bali. We’re reading the words of real people who’ve spent real money on a product. Their experiences then should be worthwhile.
They’re not. The page always starts with one post that says the product is excellent value for money, well designed and sold as standard with a battery that lasts for a thousand years. This, you know, has come from the marketing department of the manufacturer in question.
So you skip it and get to the meat. As a general rule each phone has about 1m reviews, all of which fall into two distinct camps. When presented with the opportunity to be a reviewer, people think they have to either gush or damn.
Hand them a choice of giving a rating of anything from one to 10 and all you get are ones and 10s. Six, in the world of amateur reviewing, does not exist.
So the phone you’re reading about is either better than Uma Thurman’s bottom or the worst use of plastic since Leslie Ash asked for a lip job.
Absolutely none the wiser, you will go to a shop and seek advice from the nine-year-old boy at the counter. “Which mobile is best for me?” you’ll say in a language that marks you out as being English. A point he plainly doesn’t notice because, and I guarantee this, he will reply in a tongue you simply will not understand.
He will tell you how many “pixels” the camera has. How many “gigs” the music player contains. He will talk about “Waps”, “browsers”, “USB connectivity”, “Bluetooth” and, unless you are quick with your fists, “Eee-zee finance deals” that his company happen to be offering at the moment.
What I want is a mobile phone with a battery that lasts for more than six seconds. This means no colour screen. A colour screen uses more electricity than the Pentagon. I do not want it to take photographs. I do not want it to play music. I do not want to receive e-mails. I want it to be a telephone.
No such device is offered. Can you believe that? Seriously. Not one single mobile phone company in this vast and glorious world is offering a phone that is just that. A phone. A device that enables you to speak with someone a long way away.
Why? When I go to my local off-licence to buy a bottle of wine, I am not told that the bottle also contains a packet of Werther’s Originals, a typewriter, some insect repellent, the throttle cable from a 1974 Moto Guzzi and a million other things that will simply impair my enjoyment of the wine. I am very angry about this.
My previous telephone was made by Motorola mission statement – Web. E-mail. Music. Blade thin. Experience it – along with a picture of a stupid-looking black man. It was called a Razr (not so much a name as a spelling mistake) and it was great if you wanted to download pornographic images from cyberspace into your pocket. But unfortunately if you tried to make a telephone call it would let you say “Hello” and then the battery would be exhausted.
My wife suggested I buy a RaspBerry, but I dislike these phones with the passion I normally reserve for ramblers and John Prescott. This is because people who have RaspBerries do nothing all day but fiddle with them. Since my wife got hers all she has said to anyone is “Mmm?”
Nokia was high on my list as a replacement possibility. Its mission statement – “Connecting people” – gave me hope that it might do just that. But no. It should be “connecting people, photographing them and annoying them with a vast range of mindless ringtones”.
And it was the same story with LG – “Life’s good”, Samsung – “Where imagination becomes reality”, and Sony Ericsson, which claims to sell simple talk and text phones, but that’s like claiming the Bible is a book about a man.
It’s ridiculous. They’re making phones only for 12-year-old girls who want something cool, or businessmen who want something enormous so they look impressive in departure lounges. There’s nothing for normal people. Nothing with a screen you can read. Nothing for people whose fingers are finger-sized. And nothing for people who don’t do e-speak.
But despite this it’s important that you buy now because soon you will be able to use your phone to bet on the horses and watch television. :rolleyes:
It will become a device of such mind-boggling complexity that you will be lost and its battery will be flat anyway.
I ended up buying the nicest looking. It’s called the V8 and, in the best traditions of phone reviewing, I’d give it one.
- TimesOnline (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article2459930.ece?openComment=true#comments-form)
Is convergence really the way forward?:)
Dial M for a mobile I can actually work
http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q186/Jose_R-A-M/jeremy20clarkson.jpg
There are a great many mobile telephones on the market these days. All are made by companies with preposterous mission statements, all have idiotic names and all are full of ridiculous features that you neither need nor want. So where do you go for some nononsense advice?
Films are reviewed in all the major newspapers so that you can avoid the expense and embarrassment of accidentally seeing one with Vin Diesel in it. And it’s the same story with books. You want to know what’s worth reading and what’s not, you tune into Richard and Judy.
Everything is reviewed. Cars. Restaurants. Holidays. You name it. But the only place you’re going to find advice on mobile phones is on the internet.
On paper this is a good idea. We’re not being regaled by people who we suspect have been bribed with a press junket to Bali. We’re reading the words of real people who’ve spent real money on a product. Their experiences then should be worthwhile.
They’re not. The page always starts with one post that says the product is excellent value for money, well designed and sold as standard with a battery that lasts for a thousand years. This, you know, has come from the marketing department of the manufacturer in question.
So you skip it and get to the meat. As a general rule each phone has about 1m reviews, all of which fall into two distinct camps. When presented with the opportunity to be a reviewer, people think they have to either gush or damn.
Hand them a choice of giving a rating of anything from one to 10 and all you get are ones and 10s. Six, in the world of amateur reviewing, does not exist.
So the phone you’re reading about is either better than Uma Thurman’s bottom or the worst use of plastic since Leslie Ash asked for a lip job.
Absolutely none the wiser, you will go to a shop and seek advice from the nine-year-old boy at the counter. “Which mobile is best for me?” you’ll say in a language that marks you out as being English. A point he plainly doesn’t notice because, and I guarantee this, he will reply in a tongue you simply will not understand.
He will tell you how many “pixels” the camera has. How many “gigs” the music player contains. He will talk about “Waps”, “browsers”, “USB connectivity”, “Bluetooth” and, unless you are quick with your fists, “Eee-zee finance deals” that his company happen to be offering at the moment.
What I want is a mobile phone with a battery that lasts for more than six seconds. This means no colour screen. A colour screen uses more electricity than the Pentagon. I do not want it to take photographs. I do not want it to play music. I do not want to receive e-mails. I want it to be a telephone.
No such device is offered. Can you believe that? Seriously. Not one single mobile phone company in this vast and glorious world is offering a phone that is just that. A phone. A device that enables you to speak with someone a long way away.
Why? When I go to my local off-licence to buy a bottle of wine, I am not told that the bottle also contains a packet of Werther’s Originals, a typewriter, some insect repellent, the throttle cable from a 1974 Moto Guzzi and a million other things that will simply impair my enjoyment of the wine. I am very angry about this.
My previous telephone was made by Motorola mission statement – Web. E-mail. Music. Blade thin. Experience it – along with a picture of a stupid-looking black man. It was called a Razr (not so much a name as a spelling mistake) and it was great if you wanted to download pornographic images from cyberspace into your pocket. But unfortunately if you tried to make a telephone call it would let you say “Hello” and then the battery would be exhausted.
My wife suggested I buy a RaspBerry, but I dislike these phones with the passion I normally reserve for ramblers and John Prescott. This is because people who have RaspBerries do nothing all day but fiddle with them. Since my wife got hers all she has said to anyone is “Mmm?”
Nokia was high on my list as a replacement possibility. Its mission statement – “Connecting people” – gave me hope that it might do just that. But no. It should be “connecting people, photographing them and annoying them with a vast range of mindless ringtones”.
And it was the same story with LG – “Life’s good”, Samsung – “Where imagination becomes reality”, and Sony Ericsson, which claims to sell simple talk and text phones, but that’s like claiming the Bible is a book about a man.
It’s ridiculous. They’re making phones only for 12-year-old girls who want something cool, or businessmen who want something enormous so they look impressive in departure lounges. There’s nothing for normal people. Nothing with a screen you can read. Nothing for people whose fingers are finger-sized. And nothing for people who don’t do e-speak.
But despite this it’s important that you buy now because soon you will be able to use your phone to bet on the horses and watch television. :rolleyes:
It will become a device of such mind-boggling complexity that you will be lost and its battery will be flat anyway.
I ended up buying the nicest looking. It’s called the V8 and, in the best traditions of phone reviewing, I’d give it one.
- TimesOnline (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article2459930.ece?openComment=true#comments-form)