Robert Hampton

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26th January 2008

Sim City

Mother has discovered that T.J. Hughes is flogging Orange pay-as-you-go mobile phones for a fiver each. Word has gotten round my family and various far-flung relatives have been availing themselves of this offer, and also availing themselves of the mobile-phone-setting-up services of muggins here. They didn’t even ask, they just ASSUMED I’d be happy to do it. How about that?

Yesterday was my third “job”. The two previous phones have been Sagem models (and actually fairly decent to boot), but the one I got today was a Motorola F3. It took some time to figure out, not helped by the fact that the only instructions in the box were written in what appeared to be Arabic (I assume that is a one-off problem and not endemic to the whole batch).

Mobile Phone

Now, see where it says “oRANGE”? Yep, this phone uses an old-style LED display as might be found on a digital clock. WhAt thIS MEAnS oF CoURSE IS ThAt ALL tEXt GEtS dISPLAyEd In tHAt Odd MIX oF UPPER And LOWER CASE ChARACtERS WhICh IS QUItE hARD tO REAd.

It’s also where SMS text messages are displayed — six characters at a time.

Now
can
you
imagin
e
having
to
read
a
senten
ce
just
six
letter
s
at a
time?
It
would
get
annoyi
ng
quite
quickl
y,
no?

I’m certainly no technological snob; in fact, I’m generally suspicious of all-singing all dancing phones (ringtones! MP3s! Pictures! Happy slapping!), but really, even for a budget model, 6 characters at a time is a BIT impractical. As CNET’s review states: “It’s like trying to read a text message on a calculator”. The only advantage being you don’t have to turn it upside down to spell out BOOBIES — although the word won’t actually fit on the phone’s display all at once.

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