Mobfones: shinier, faster, dumber!

The latest mobile phones pack a stunning number of features — but do we really need them? When does a valuable portable communications device become a brain-fuzzing mobfone?

There are probably few people who would dispute the benefits of the global connectivity ushered in by the Internet. So, what is it with mobile phones — which for all their NASA-level communications functions actually seem to switch us off to our environment? (At least partially explaining their incredible popularity in Japan.)

The latest phones are pretty amazing. Forget about mail and Net surfing, you can video conference, play 3D games, watch TV, listen to podcasts, find yourself using GPS, whatever. And then there are all the extra fun goodies such as ring tones and music downloads, which have become an instant multi-billion dollar international market.

These are all good things, surely? Maybe, but do you really want a phone that, for example, shows TV? This particular technology is still fairly new, so it is not yet clear if punters will buy, but chances are we will love it. With the ad and media companies slowly training us to view our lives as a succession of (easily marketable) sound bite moments, we now need the stream of mental hits provided by TV, etc to prevent stimulation withdrawal jitters.

While this bodes well for the future of porta-TV, its associated effects are making many people increasingly dubious about the mobile phone revolution. Other attention span gap fillers like game and music players have been criticised for much the same thing: They create a mental cocoon that separates the user from their physical location.

Phone-wise, the classic local example is the J-teen couple out on a date, corporeally together but in reality miles away as they talk or message on their keitais. It is definitely a worldwide phenomenon though, as the stati-stics about mobile users involved in traffic accidents testify. And you can see callers obliviously shouting into their hands wherever you travel. It will be interesting to see how headsets and video glasses and other new features affect our phone habits.

The irony here is that few people deeply consider functionality when they buy a handset. We tend to buy it because it is there. The two main purchase criteria are usually the “shiny, shiny” and “maximum use” coefficients. The first of these, the shiny, shiny factor, is the warm feeling that seduces us as we read through, say, the Casio W31CA’s1 long list of sexy, advanced functions.

The main pay-off of possessing this phone comes when we whip it out in front of people with less endowed models. It is the same drive that leads women to hog the pec deck at the gym and men to take double the reco-mmended dose of Viagra. The maximum use factor is the feeling that we really should equip ourselves for the day we go extreme skiing in the Himalayas, end up flash frozen in a white out and totally need the Casio G’zOne Type-R’s2 electronic compass and voice route guidance.

Which raises the question: Why do phone manufacturers seem so bent on tech overkill? The answer may simply lie in the warning sounded by influential US consultants Deloitte recently when they claimed that many mobile industry participants, including handset makers, are "focusing on achieving engineering excellence at the expense of commercial common sense". In other words, they don’t get it either.

It is a completely individual thing as to when mobile phones start increasing our disconnectivity, rather than connectivity, ie, they become mobfones, turning us into blank faces in the crowd. You, personally, may very much need the Pair Function on Sanyo’s candy-coloured Sweets3 model. But then again, the next time you are thinking about investing in that shiny, shiny new uber-keitai, may be it would be a whole lot healthier just to get a life instead.

1: W31CA by Casio

(Available, appropriately enough, in Swiss Army Knife red)

• Memory stick
• MP3 music player
• 2.6-inch wide QVGA display
• 28-step digital 6.4x zoom (video)
• 32-step digital 12.8x zoom (photo)
• Video theatre function (with media stand)
• PDF, XLS, PPT, DOC, mHTML viewing
• Prerecorded TV program viewing
• Exif Print (Exif 2.2) compatible
• PC-based Website access

2: G’zOne Type-R by Casio

(Comes with changeable impact protectors and hexagonal wrench. Portion of Live Earth charges donated to Think The Earth Project.)

• 5-mode 1.28 (effective) megapixel camera
• 5 types of digital/analogue clock plus stopwatch
• JIS class-7 certified water/impact-resistant body
• Area notification (person enters registered area)
• Location search (checking of individual's location)
• Electronic compass with directional sensor
• EZ Navi Walk plus voice route guidance
• Live Earth (cloud movement display)

3: Sweets by Sanyo

(Available in fresh candy colours with original sticker set)

• Cutely animated main menu
• High-precision 220-candela QVGA LCD
• Downloadable fashion-brand, etc dictionaries
• Lesson schedules, cash record, personal diary
• Pair Function (quick contact of registered persons)
• Teens Mode (regulation of usage and harmful access)
• Auto GPS mail (automatic location transmission)
• Contoured handset (shaped for female hand)
• Smart Mode (with Deka-moji 36-dot display)
• High-resolution camera with sticker function

Text: Kym Hutcheon