If you have used some of the newer fully featured phones currently on sale, then you have experienced the frustration that comes with feature creep. Poor battery life, user interfaces to make you want to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge (Moto, are you listening?), complex PC-to-phone music transfer process …. and did we mention tinny headphones, and poor battery life.
Even gadget junkies likes myself often opt for the simple please of just a phone. (Nokia 6101 is my favorite for days when I just want a phone.) In case you had doubts, there is a study to prove this.
Style was mentioned as a buying factor by 39 percent of the users, making it the single most popular answer, but cost considerations were the biggest reason overall
The study conducted by J.D. Power and Associates in essence says that for U.S. consumers price and looks, are more important than advanced features. However, if the phone’s advanced features were dead simple to use, then consumers started using them, the study says. Learn from Steve Jobs people!
Well. I assume you’ve seen the Motorola FONE F3. Under 50 USD, quad band GSM, two internal antennas, 450 minutes talk/16 day standby time, none of that fancy (and useless) colour screen/camera/mp3 player/magic wand of voodoo power like every single frickin’ phone on the market.
Plus it’s thin, good looking and resists the awesome might of the twin powers of sun and dust!
But seriously, it’s pretty sweet phone if all you want to do (like I) is make calls and text messages.
Is the UI any better than the other Motorola phones? It be nice if they could improve it because right now its a beast!
Motorola deserves a large share of the blame here. They’ve done a great job of creating phones with the style and features people want, but have expended no effort at all to making a decent UI. Why they don’t just team up with Apple is beyond me. I guess the answer is that despite the crappy UI, their stuff sells fine. Phones are still like the early days of PC vs. Mac.
The interesting thing Moto has done with the FONE is go backward with the UI, to an icon-based system reminiscent of the time when LCD was just replacing LED in their phones. The display is barely a GUI at all; it’s almost more of a dashboard than anything else. For their target market, it’s perfect, and maybe beyond (in the last year, I have gone steadily downhill from a Nokia 6620 to a Moto V635 to a SE Z520 to, now, a Moto L2 without even a camera).
Just a heads up: Motorola just announced a new phone called the MOTOFONE, which in essence looks like an F3 with an improved UI. Should be out sometime in Q4.
http://www.uncrate.com/men/gear/cell-phones/motorola-motofone-005621.php
On every important point to note that this study mainly points to US mobile phone usage.
Global mobile usage is a very different beast ( yes people actually use MMS ) especially in India. And a good digital camera and mp3 player is actually good for some people albeit with a poor UI.
As my friend Brendan says, “It has long been predicted that one day, computers will be as easy to use as phones. And that day has come, for I no longer know how to use my phone.”
i got this phone. i was surprised how basic this phone was when it didn’t have predictive texting. i knew it was basic but not that basic. although i miss stuff like call hold and forwarding messages. i have learnt i can live without it. my phones battery life although isn’t all that its hyped to be barely lasts 4 days on my usage. i would probably make an 2 hours of talk a day.