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  Things that are Wrong with Mobile Phones Today

  Prasad Naik, Mar 09, 2011 1435 hrs IST

  Somebody really needs to address these issues.

  

It's no secret how much mobile phones have evolved over the years. In fact, it won't be an overstatement to say that mobile phones have evolved the most of any technological product category out there. But while the manufacturers of these devices are taking giant steps ahead in terms of innovation, there have also been some steps that were taken in the opposite direction. Some of these things are quite important and while they may have been unavoidable, one somehow gets the feeling that nobody really tried to find a fix for them. Today, we will list the things that are wrong with mobile phones of recent times, something that older phones did not suffer from. Here we go.

High price
There was a time in India when spending over Rs. 10,000 on a mobile phone was a big deal. There weren't even that many phones to choose from. These days, however, most high-end phones are upwards of the Rs. 25,000 mark, some going as high as Rs. 40,000. While they may have evolved tremendously in terms of technology and features, they also end up making your pocket significantly lighter. And it's not just about the devices any more. There are the accessories and the applications and the services that we pay for, that just weren't there a few years ago, which further add to the cost of the device.

Poor battery life
While the technologies in mobile phones evolved at a rapid pace, the battery technology did not see the same level of progress. As a result, the solution to getting more battery is still the same: include a large battery.  But with mobile phones suffering from anorexia these days, you cannot have a phone with a really large battery as it would make it look like the Hunchback of the Notre Dame. So instead, manufacturers slip in a small battery, which can store barely enough charge to make the phone last for a day. In older days, we had phones that seem to last forever, even with their relatively small batteries.

Software issues
With software getting more and more complicated, the things that could go wrong with phones these days increase accordingly. But then it is the software developer's responsibility to make sure everything works correctly. We know that it would be very difficult to make sure everything works 100 percent correct but then it's also disappointing when you come across glaring defects that could be found after using the product for five minutes. Older phones never had to face these issues. In fact, the software was so simple, it was almost non-existent and it just slid out of your way and let you do the things you wanted to do, which was mostly calling and messaging. This is how all software should be. These days, with all those fancy animations and effects, it seems the developers are concentrating more on software that looks cool instead of actually making it functional. And when you try to do too many things simultaneously, mistakes are bound to happen.

Hardware issues
The hardware is prone to errors as well. Ever had a phone in the past which would drop its calls if you touched it at a particular point, or overheated or had faulty earpieces? We doubt that. Phones in the past, especially those by Nokia, were built like a German tank. We have all heard tales of phones that have survived a trip through an entire round of a washing machine. Modern phones on the other hand are extremely fragile. They are so thin and packed to the brim with stuff that they very little surface to absorb the impact without shattering or something inside getting seriously damaged.

Hardware that gets outdated way too fast
This is one of the major bugbear that we have with phones these days; their hardware gets outdated way too fast. Earlier, you could buy a phone and even after a couple of years, you wouldn't want to upgrade it as there wasn't anything significantly better out there to convince you to do so. Now, you have great phones coming out every month and within a few months of buying a device, it gets replaced by a better one at a lower price by the same manufacturer. This also makes buying difficult as you are always waiting for something better to come out and when it does, there is something even better around the corner. You just cannot buy a phone these days knowing that the one you buy will be the latest and greatest for at least six months.

Complicated to use
A phone that was recently launched abroad, called John's phone, which was a highly simplified phone for the technologically challenged or those who just want something simple. These days, we have to specially create phones that, for starters, resemble a phone and can be used by anyone without advanced degrees in engineering. In the olden days, all phones were that way. You could pick one up and you instantly knew how to use it. There would be a large number pad, a call and an end button. If you give a modern smartphone to someone who is not well versed with them, it would take them ages to unlock the screen and several more to find the number pad to dial a number. These phones even make a simple task of picking up a call seem like solving a puzzle, with the absurd amount of swiping gestures you have to perform in some phones. We are pretty sure you will soon have smartphones that will make you solve complex mathematical equations before you pick up the call.

Too many features, too few that actually work
In the olden days, phones would have very few features. But if they said that they had ten features, there were ten features that actually worked. Phones these days claim to have hundreds of features but very few actually work as advertised. Some of them are just pointless and there for the sake of it. Everybody these days wants to play just the numbers game. If my product has more number of features than the competing product, then it is automatically better, is the way companies work these days. Nobody actually spends time to see if those features actually work properly or are even needed. If not, why are they even there, just to make up some stupid spec sheet? And you can't even blame them when customers themselves compare spec sheets before deciding what to buy these days. Everybody wants more features, few stop to think whether they would actually use all of them.


So that's it. Those are the complaints we have with mobile phones these days. Do note that we are not ignoring the advancements that they have made over the years and this article is not about belittling them. The purpose of this article was to point out that while some things did get better, some got worse over time and sadly, those were rather important.

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