Zhephree

Call them “smart” all you want — cellphones are stupid. The whole idea of cellphones is insane. Contact me anytime anywhere, even when I’m trying to have dinner with family? Even in the restroom? Even while driving?

Don’t get me wrong; communication between humans is beautiful thing and anything that enhances communication is a good thing. The problem is, they don’t really enhance communication as much as they hinder it. People answer phone calls in the middle of face-to-face conversations all the time. Never mind that it’s rude, it’s not very practical — let the phone go to voicemail and answer when you have a moment. It’s built-in, no extra fee procrastination!

But the rudeness of cellphones isn’t my main feeling as to why cellphones are stupid. There are literally thousands of cellphones worldwide that do a variety of things from making a phone call to controlling the lights in your home to remotely starting your vehicle. And with this multitude of choices, people fall into two camps: Apple fans and non-Apple fans. Sure, you can further break the latter into Android, webOS, WP7, etc but what it all boils down to is they don’t want an iPhone. People will defend they mobile OS to the death for some reason. While that’s noble, it’s also stupid.

Cellphone manufacturers are suing each other left and right for patents on common sense stuff like lining icons up in a 4x4 grid. Big companies are buying other big companies for billions of dollars just to shove more ads on TV and bus stops promoting something you’ll likely never buy, which is stupid on all our parts.

Then, at least in the US since I’m too stupid/lazy to learn about other countries, unless you buy into one of the largest cellphone service providers (who, coincidentally, has the crappiest network quality), you can’t readily switch which model phone you’re using without jumping through a bunch of hoops on the phone or in the store, and sometimes they’ll make you extend your contract. Oh god, I forgot about the contracts!

You get locked into paying between $40 and $100 per month for the opportunity to voluntarily put up with all this nonsense for about 2 years and if you decide you want a new phone, you get to sign a new contract for another 2 years. Of course, you can sign for only 1 year or not even sign at all, but then you have to pay $600 for a phone instead $50, which makes sense since they know they’re completely screwing you every single month and making profits that would make Bill Gates Steve Jobs pay attention. Not only is the idea of all of this stupid, but we’re even more stupid for going along with it.

If I want a laptop, let’s say an amazing, well-equipped and well-priced HP laptop (Hi, HP! I make apps for webOS and need new phones!), I can buy it from HP, Best Buy, Amazon, eBay, or some creep on Craigslist, pay whatever price fits my budget, and when I get home, I can plug it into my Cox Internet and it’ll just. freaking. work. I don’t plug that laptop into my Cox Internet and it doesn’t work and then I call HP and they say “Oh, sorry, you can only use this with TimeWarner.” “But TimeWarner isn’t in my area.” “Oh, well, you’ll need a different laptop then.” THAT NEVER HAPPENS. (I’m talking normal laptops, not stuff with 3G built-in).

If I buy a car from, say, Toyota, and I go to put Shell gasoline into it, it’ll run fine. There’s no Chevron etching on the rear of my car. The dashboard doesn’t have an Exxon logo next to my fuel gauge (“I’ve only got 1 bar left. Better fill up.”). I can use whatever brand gas I want.

I could go on and on, but the point is the cellphone industry is stupid. If I want to use a Pre 2 on Sprint, I should be able too as long as it’s a CDMA version of the phone. I’m fine with different technologies (though, laptops work the same on DSL as they do cable, just different speeds. CDMA and GSM should be the same. Everything should be a world phone.) The Pre3 will work on CDMA networks, so why should it matter if the CDMA network I use is Verizon or Sprint? CDMA is CDMA. (Mostly). That’s stupid.

It all boils down to money and blah blah blah. I don’t care about all that. The Verizon iPhone should just be me calling Sprint, giving them the ESN or whatever and then them going “Ok, you’re all set! Thanks for continually giving us $90 every month for using half the crap you’re paying for!”. Why should they care where you buy the phone? Hell, they should WANT me to buy the phone from someone else. They subsidize the costs of phones in your monthly plan. They go “Well, your smartphone is $600, we’ll sell it to you for $200 if you agree to pay a premium $20 extra every month”. If I don’t buy the phone from them, that subsidized $20/month goes RIGHT INTO THEIR GIANT POCKETS. They’re stupid.

Or maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about and I’m the one who’s stupid. 

The cellphone industry is stupid and I hate all of it and it’s annoying that I for some reason give a damn enough to whine about it on the Internet and continue writing apps for a mobile OS that I really like even though there’s a good chance I won’t be able to use one of their devices after my Pre Plus dies.

I guess I’m the one who’s stupid.

Edit: Here’s a nice related piece on cellphone contracts and their absurdity.