New generation of Cell Phones - rapid technological advancements

I have always been a fan of Nokia, but I have not been into cellphones for a while. Last I was into cell phones Nokia (for its quality), Motorola (for style) and Samsung(features) were the big guys in the Cellphone industry here in SA . Then came Sony Ericsson with it's specialities, be it for gaming (who best to make gaming phones then the makers of the playstation 1,2 3 and PSP's), photography or music speciality phones. Another one of those  mobile phone companies who have had a meteoric rise to the top of the South African Cell phone rankings and has become the most popular and home to some of the most irritating social creatures is the Blackberry be it the curve, bold.

Sony Ericcson Xperia play gaming phone

 For those people who could afford it the iPhone of late has become popular not only in SA but it has taken the world by storm especially the iPhone 4s, this has forced companies like Nokia to move to the next level and make their latest addition of smart phones  the Nokia Lumia 800/900 to operate under the Windows OS, not Symbian like its predecessors. I personally liked Nokia's style before with their N95/96/97 smart phones, those were brilliant phones, and multimedia devices, they always offered a certain Nokia style and quality as well as alot of internal memory.

What I see now with Nokia's new direction is not individuality so much so but I see them trying to keep up and not leading the way as they did in the past, they are going for the iPhone type phone which is not bad and that is in fact the direction in which phones are headed, Cell phones have just become smaller tablets, or personal computers. Soon there will be no need for people to buy tablets because the cell phones will have all tablet abilities ans more with a more compact size. The design has become simple again, with just a rectangular shape, with a big screen and an attempt to make the lame shape attractive by using fancy casing. Its following the old trend of first making big cell phones with the latest features, then who can make the smallest but in this case thinnest, lightest phone with the same features as the competitors model, then they will improve the phone slightly while keeping the price high.

Cell phones, have become centred around apps and which offers the best apps with the best functionality, before the focus on getting the best screen resolution, the best touch screen interface (usability and all other things), the biggest memory and RAM (yes these devices are slowly becoming more powerful), who had the best stylish and which phone was best for entertainment. Now it has become the war of the applications, as if we need life to be made easier then it already is. Cell phone companies have also been advertising their phones as social media devices with things like Instagram which was an elite social network for fast photo sharing for Iphone users only (Which caused a big stir in the social media world when it sold out to Facebook for a billion us dollars. Other brands like blackberry use the elitist BBM as a social network to connect blackberry users, the social network has gotten so big here that you get left out of things just because everyone, organised and talked about things without your knowledge because you do not have BBM.

These brands work very smart they create little niches of supporters splitting the cell phone users into little iPhone and Blackberry Cliques where those who do not buy into that brand get left out, its like high school all over again, with the cool kids doing all the fun stuff and the parties...Hehe I'm just saying its a good marketing ploy, kids can beg their parents to get a Black Berry because 'everyone has it' and make their parents feel guilty if their kids social life suffers because they are not following this trend.

As for me I do not like following trends any more, I used to be into following technological changes but technology changes too fast for my liking. So I will buy my technology one 24 month contract at a time.

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BlackBerry and its BBM are everywhere and going strong

Blackberry is everywhere, everywhere I turn its BBM this and BBM that, I have to admit its a cool application and it sucks because I am not one those people who do what others are doing and follow the trend. The worst part of all of this is that most people have it and those of us that don't have it miss out on things because everyone else has already shared the information on BBM. I like to call it the government handout phone becuase there are so many people carrying it around its as if its handed out for free.

Not all BlackBerry's are popular only the entry-level curve which comes in different colors for personal customisation like pink,white and black.

Phone people love to hate

Then the is the BlackBerry Bold and the Torch the other popular but more expensive options, I have no problems with those phones I think they are descent phones for this day and age, but there are better phones out there for the same price unless you are a socialite of-course.

 Well the reason I wrote this post is because BlackBerry have released the latest version of the entry-level curve, the BlackBerry Curve 9360. They have improved it now, at-least its a descent phone now, it is more like the bold OS7 and liquid graphics. I suspect BlackBerry is going strong and is going to stay strong for a while, so if you are the type that wants the latest gossip and you don't want to miss any parties...then its the phone for you. As for me I'm not that into phones as I was a couple years ago, if it can make phone calls, has 3G and can email and surf the web, I'm cool with it as long as its not everywhere. 

Oh and here's a picture of the latest curve:

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When Cell phones really started improving

This is part 2 about cell phones...yesterday I did a post about the beginning of cell phones. I think I was in grade 8 when I got my first cell phone, and at the time flipping cell phones with a colour screen were the craze and having a phone with polyphonic ringtones was cool. I went to the phone shop to buy the exact same model everyone else around me was getting, it also came with a gold chain you could use to bling your neck up with your new trendy flipping phone. It was a motorola but I cannot recall the model because I ended up buying a different phone, a Motorola C650 which was a more advanced phone because not only did it have a colour screen, internet and cool games, it also played mp3's and had a camera. This phone would make me the coolest kid in school.

I loved my phone even though I had nobody to call, I used to play games all day on the phone and download new stuff. Fortunately for me this is when I really discovered the Internet, even though it was not really made for cellphones just yet. I used to search for all kinds of stuff, games, ring tones, wall papers, screen savers and unfortunately for my parents even though they have never found out this is how I discovered porn sites.

Anyways getting back to phones I totally fell in love with phones, soon I could set up things on other cell phones too and adults came to me for assistance( the word went around ). Soon the first smart phones came out and the first megapixel camera phones came out, phones that could play full mp3's were released, phones such as the Nokia N70 and samsung D500. Smart phones had 3G and video calling capabilities. Now phone companies started specialising to beat the competition, Nokia built quality multimedia phones for their top N-series range and samsung gave us phones with 2mp camera and you could attach speakers to your phone, sony ericson specialised in music phones and camera phones...They were now all in a war for sales and as soon as one improved all the others followed and who can forget motorola and their most popular style phone the Razr.

  I did not have the money to buy the best phone but I wanted one that looked good and cool full mp3's and had a little more space so I bought the Samsung X670. I loved that phone, it was cool,slim and it flipped.

 It did not last me a very long time because there were some issues with the screen so I decided to move to the nokia N-series to experience some features of a smart phone so I bought the N70 music edition. The N-70 was a cool phone, with lots of features and the best mobile games I had Ever played at the time and its ability to use third party software was awesome. I got pdf readers, anti viruses, browsers and a lot of other things. I pimped my phone and i loved that you could do many things at one time with the multimedia button. The music edition came with a 1gig memory card, was black in colour and had cool remote control headphones otherwise it was the same as the original. It had fast internet because of 3G and had almost computer like internet browsing.

Phones improved further buy increasing their megapixels and providing more space and features. The nokia n-95 was released and blew all of its competition away. It had the best of everything, the ability to to store and play movies,1000's of multimedia, take quality video's and use the best software for mobile devices. I wanted the n-95 but it was super expensive and rightfully so, but I fell in love with another phone I saw while walking through the mall, it looked so amazing and had 8gigs of memory and was intended as a multimedia gaming phone, it was just what I was looking for. I knew at that moment that I had to get that phone, it was also no cheap at the time and I told my mother I wanted the phone so she made a deal with me to improve my academic results in return for getting the then expensive Nokia n-81....

 

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cell phones at the beginning...

Old Cell phones

Do you remember this phone?

I do not think i was born yet when this phone was released. I cant blame you if you can't remember this, most people never had cellphones then, and most could not afford them. It was a huge brick if you think about it, not really handheld, it couldn't fit in ones pocket.  I remember the first time I saw a cellphone it was a Philips cellphone, my father bought one for my mother it looked cool back then but it was a weird shape, even though it was released in the late 90's it was still bricksize but smaller than the one above. It took a while for the phones to decrease in size, by the way the first improvement in cellphones was to decrease their size so that they could comfortably fit in our pockets and at the time that was a big deal and cellphones made big bucks with that now minor improvement.

nokia 5110

Then  in 1998 the phone that changed the way I would come to see all phones was released, although I only found out about it in 2000. This phone was slim and had the best graphics at the time, I mean it had mobile games. You could play snake on this phone for hours because the battery on that phone lasted for days. My father had this phone for years even after it too was considered a brick by todays standards. I dont know how many times that phone was dropped or slipped from someones hands but would still function properly, old phones were quality. While my father was still fine with his phone everyone else around us had moved on to the next biggest thing the nokia 3310, it was the slimmer more improved phone with better graphics, downloadable monophonic ringtones. It had better graphics with screen savers and it had improved games llike space impact and a new and improved snake, wow this phone was amazing and was expensive too.

Nokia were the first to bring us the a cellphone with polyphonic ringtones too, I have been a fan of their brand ever since the 5110, they always produced quality phones with the latest technology but they were always expensive, rightfully so though. The first nokia with polyphonic ringtones was the Nokia  3510

to be continued...

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