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11 Responses to "QotD: Cell Phones"

1. | Reply Derek
   Posted 19 Jun 2005 at 9:04pm #
   

   If you knew me that would be one more. Not a fan of cellular phones. 🙂

2. | Reply Mat
   Posted 19 Jun 2005 at 10:00pm #
   

   I know several people that vehemently hate cell phones. They have excuses from I don't want to be interrupted (don't pick it up) to they are noisy (leave it on silent). It just means that if they are not at home they don't get to come down to the pub or see a movie. Their problem. 🙂

3. | Reply Geoff
   Posted 19 Jun 2005 at 10:52pm #
   

   My wife's ex-husband. He knows it's an inconvenience for her when she's calling about something related to the kids and he enjoys it. But she's not the only one tee'd off at him for not having one. He doesn't care. By not having one, he stays in control of his life or some other nonsense.

4. | Reply David
   Posted 20 Jun 2005 at 1:48am #
   

   scores... maybe even hundreds, but they are all minors. Little people are people too! I also know a few adults who probably don't have cell phones, but I am not 100% sure if that is still the case. It's just so hard to keep in touch with those kind of people.

5. | Reply Dustin Quasar Sacks
   Posted 20 Jun 2005 at 2:16am #
   

   I don't have one, and neither does my girlfriend, although sometimes I wish she did 😉

6. | Reply jr
   Posted 20 Jun 2005 at 5:18am #
   

   I know Ülbaum (http://ithink.ch/blog) who'll be w/o a cell phone just until tonight. Other than that, not really anybody.

7. | Reply d0le
   Posted 20 Jun 2005 at 5:18am #
   

   I just got my first cell phone since 1995 last week. I am amazed at the amount of crap that is shoved on cell phones these days. I remember when phones were just made to make phone calls and that's it. Nowadays, these phones have cameras, games, etc... A majority of the stuff on the cell phone I have I will never use, although I occasionally will take a picture with the camera.

8. | Reply Tim Buchheim
   Posted 20 Jun 2005 at 3:30pm #
   

   Quite a few people. I don't have one (except occasionally when I'm carrying the one from work, but normally someone else has it) nor does my girlfriend, nor my mom. Several of my other family members don't have them. (I don't think my sister does.)

   Some of my coworkers don't have cell phones, and many of the students don't.

9. | Reply Chris Bracken
   Posted 21 Jun 2005 at 12:59am #
   

   For years, I didn't have one. The cheap plan at the time in British Columbia, Canada was $35/month by the time all the access fees, 911 fees, and the rest were added in, without making a single call, but including 250 free minutes and no extra features. I didn't make personal calls at work, and from home, I'd use my regular phone at $12/month (unlimited local calls). Maybe once a month I found myself in a situation where I'd have liked to have had one, but that wasn't enough to justify it.

   Now I live in Tokyo and use my cell primarily for email. Japanese is very simple and fast to enter via keypad - most words are only a couple kanji characters long, and once you've entered them phonetically (as kana) you get an autocomplete list from then on, so you can type the first character or two and then pick from a short list of words you've previously used. I've tried mailing in English, and it's painful; usually I fall back to using Japanese words wherever possible even with other English-speaking friends.

   The "map my location" feature is also pretty good. It determines your location by which cell you're in and displays a map down to the detail of tiny alleys. A majority of streets here have no name, so this is a life-saver.

   Access to an iMode (internet-based) English-Japanese translator (popjisyo.com) is also handy.

   Final useful tool - train schedules. Tokyo has over 300 stations split between over 20 rail lines, so it's convenient to plug in departure and destination stations anywhere in the country and have the fastest route returned listing departure, transfer, and arrival times to the minute (including the time it takes to walk between disconnected stations if required).

   Here, I pay 4000 yen per month and can carry over unused usage for as long as I like. I can check usage graphs on my phone via a java applet so I know where I stand at a given moment. I still don't have much use for the standard "phone" part of the phone, but as a swiss-army knife of specialized communication and data tools, it's indispensible. That said, it's not useful for full-blown surfing the internet, word processing, longer email, or any other traditional personal computer functions; but it's not meant to be.

10. | Reply Patrick
    Posted 26 Jun 2005 at 5:46am #
    

    If we knock out "little people" (so those aged under 13), probably one. Met her today, it was quite strange. Everyone else seems to have them... my parents, my grandmother even.

11. | Reply Erik
    Posted 18 Jul 2005 at 8:23am #
    

    One of the developers on my team staunchly refuses. He's a loner, dottie. A rebel. (But a good guy nonetheless.)

    That was interesting to read Chris's comment about what cell phones can do in Japan. I think that's really cool. I also think it's kind of stupid that cell phones (in America) do all these useless things, but every feature Chris described seemed pretty useful (esp the train schedules and the usage applet).