luminescente

Rui talked about current handset offering here in Portugal.

I had to go to the store today to replace my SonyEricsson HBH-600 headset (the battery went dead in less than 4 months of light use). It was replaced by the folks at The Phone House in Carrefour here in Aveiro, after being forwarded to them by it’s sister store in Fórum Aveiro.

While waiting for my turn, a **mere** 45 minutes, the people in front of me were buying 3G camera phones. I saw 3 Nokia 6630 being sold and 2 fugly Motorola ones. It got me thinking how this is so wrong. I mean, these people were not tech-savvy, or else they wouldn’t need explanations on how to insert a SIM card and operate the menus.

They are not going to use iSync or similar to sync their phones to the computer, they won’t be using video calls (not with this phone, it needs a base station to do so), they are not going to use data services (I would, though, but it’s so fucking expensive unless you have some urgent work to do or you happen to work for some cell company and can do your leisure surfing with a 3G link. Yeah Rui, I’m envious of you).

In short, they are going to be using this phone like I used my old Ericsson 628. Voice calls and some text messaging. Even it they wanted to take pictures, there are a lot of phones that are under 100 euros that let you do it. Sure, they’re not 1.3 megapixels cameras, but I’ve seen so many people using 4 and 5MP cameras taking pictures in 640×480 because they think using the supplied 8MB card is enough.

People have their priorities all upside down. A phone, a damn appliance, gets heads and shoulders above everything else in the minds of these poor souls. Meanwhile, the operators make every effort in milking the last cent out of us, but we are happy because we can video-call our friends while we’re at it.

The operators used to give a lot of credit with their phones. A 100 euro phone with 50 in credit was not uncommon. Now they come with 5 and the phone costs 300. The promotions they had back then were nice. Now they charge us for the priviledge of joining the promotion. And their membership programs (like Clube Viva). There is no way for me and the other 95% of the population to gather enough points to get a new phone using it. The points expire after some time. A damn record on a database expires. Maybe they don’t want it to have it there rot forever.

I have to go now. I have to be a good citizen and get my T68i and call someone.