On phones

I got a new cell phone battery in the mail today. It cost me about $6, delivered. But then again, my cell phone is about three or four years old now, and its not an iPhone. I can actually change my cell phone battery. I remember a time from about six or seven years ago up until really the last two years, when the first iPhone sparked the first real shift to smartphones, when phones were really cool. They slid, they opened in strange new ways, there was this emphasis on the object, on hinges, screens, buttons, form. How it felt in your hand and how you interacted with it. Now it seems the world of cell phones are coming down to two types and each year, the phones look more and more like either an iPhone or a blackberry. One is a hideous banal slab, brutal. Rectangular. There's no fun, no play, no humanism. It has a form that suggests it fell out of a computer, or that it slots into something. Remote controls are more interesting and human. The RIM blackberry is a monster, a wide, flat freak of tiny buttons. 

I like my phone. It's a Sony-Ericsson, a joint venture between the Scandinavian and Japanese brands. It's not a crappy motorola or an unknown Chinese or Korean brand with the AT&T or Verizon logo on it. I liked Nokia phones too. Well built, logical, intuitive. I had a Nokia cell that had an LED flashlight built into it. And they work nearly anywhere in the world. I want a quad band phone because I want to use my phone when I travel. But I'm getting technical here. I really want to talk about form and anthropometrics and ergonomics. 

This phone is a slider. The top half slides open to reveal the keyboard in the front, and a camera in the back, which is protected by the slider when its closed. When my phone rings, I snap it open with a flick of my thumb and that answers the call. To hang up, I snap the phone shut. There's something about that physical connection, that gesture that connects me a lot more to what the phone is doing.  I just don't get that tapping a glass surface.  There's no feedback to tell me that the phone is doing anything.

What really annoys me is that some phones are still being designed and made that aren't clumsily aping the slab or the monster, but they are not for sale at network stores. They almost all sell slabs and monsters because (gasp) they make more money when you buy the overpriced data plan.