This is a very good idea executed poorly. SMS has become a way of life and you'll be receiving messages that you can not read, also a paper phonebook requires that you carry a pen with you.
Play it again, John, this time with a pager sized (text) display and I'll buy one.
edit: added the (text), it does have a display but can't display text messages.
Basic Nokia phones that don't do much more than calls and SMS and that are very simple to operate and very sturdy, can be found (new) for around EUR 20.
SMS-lifestyle or not, I'd take the Nokia (at 2/3 the price or less) for the 10+ years of industrial design that went into it.
To be honest, this doesn't seem to be a phone for children or the elderly (neither of which have some sort of cognitive short circuit that keeps them from grasping a simple Nokia while allowing them to embrace the idioms of this particular phone) -- but rather a phone for hipsters who need to very loudly announce that they don't have an iPhone.
I think you vastly overestimate the level of technology people can pick up.
My grandmother couldn't figure out how to work the new radio we got her - which just had two giant large dials. We got her a dead-simple cell phone and it was never used.
One thing she does know how to do is use the 12 button landline phone thats mounted on her wall, and this looks exactly like that and works nearly exactly like that. This would be perfect for her.
> and this looks exactly like that and works nearly exactly like that
Except for the two small switches on the side, having to charge it, and having to push pick-up and hang-up instead of lifting and replacing the receiver.
A friend of mine bought one for his grandma, and she absolutely loves it. The big feature for her was that the buttons were big enough for her to see and push accurately. Works great for that use case.
Well, my grandmother can operate a wireless home phone, so the pick-up and hang-up are OK. And she can probably just ignore the switches on the side. So the only hurdle for her would be to remember to charge it.
Maybe we could get her to drop it in her keychain bowl when she comes home, and outfit it with one of the charging pads.
What I found strange though is to see that it's from an Amsterdam-based company. Maybe it's different Out There In The West but in most of the Netherlands, iPhones aren't a big deal, and we don't have US-style hipsters at all.
I've showered at the beach with my nokia in the pocket of my bathing suit. It was fine. My nokia has fallen out of a moving vehicle. I drop it several times a day. It's been run over by a bicycle.
does anyone know of cheap mobile phones that are easy to connect to via USB or rs-232 (or whatever) from Linux? I want to have some remote sensors be able to send SMS...
All of them AFAIK. Huawei is one of the most popular ones: http://www.3gmodem.com.hk/Huawei.html Just double check on the forums that your linux knows how to talk to them. Some models have integrated storage which includes windows drivers and need a special application to send them "start acting normally, I don't need that crap" message.
I've got a friend visiting me in the UK from the US, where she's on Verizon, which is incompatible with the GSM/UMTS networks we use here. I've got her one of these to use while she's over here - http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/mobile-phones/ALCAT... - and mailed it to her in America so she can call me as soon as she steps off the plane.
It was £0.99 when I bought it, and has been as low as £0.01 recently - with the only catch being that you have to buy £10 worth of prepaid airtime when you buy the phone. Ideal for a couple of weeks' travel in a foreign country. (It's SIM-unlocked too.)
It's a shame that Nokia doesn't make CDMA versions of simple phones like that for the US market. I'd buy one in an instant. Though I do admit I'll probably finally break down and get an iPhone this year now that they are available from Verizon.
I have actually been using a Nokia very similar to that one for over two years... I just went to the T-Mobile store and said "I need to replace my phone, what is the cheapest thing you have?"
I only have to charge it every week or so, and it has lasted longer than any other phone I have had.
Oh wow, didn't realize phones had really gotten that cheap. I did do a quick vergelijk.nl search before posting but I guess they got buried under the bundles that I got.
Pixmania and Amazon.de, for example, have a Samsung E1080 for 25 euros and a nokia 1616 for for 30. However I've seen big box electronic retailers selling off old stock for less than that.
I pop the SIM out of my iPhone and put it into one of these whenever I go biking or camping. Mine cost $15 as a GoPhone (not unlocked). Couldn't be happier.
Not for everyone. For example, I send one text message every two or three months. I could easily live without the ability to send or receive texts.
The thing I don’t like about this phone is the silly pen-and-paper address book. Are there any phones out there that just make phone calls, and nothing else?
Check out the Motorola F3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE_F3. It has an e-Ink display, so you can read the clock without having to push a button and the battery life is awesome.
Any way to use one of those on Verizon? Googling around, people claim that (a) the F3c (CDMA version) isn’t available in the US, and (b) non-Verizon-branded phones can’t be made to work on their network.
Plus, it's on the back of the phone. So if you need to make a call to someone on your address book, you need to flip the phone back and forth (and then up and down to verify the number on the display) to make sure you typed it in right.
Agreed. Anyone who texts shouldn't buy this phone. However, I would say that it's not aimed at SMS'ers and as such is not executed poorly.
Strikes me to have two major markets: (1) people who only want to talk to people via phones (e.g. some of the elderly) and (2) as a fashionable item. The gold one would be a head-turner and topic of conversation.
Some people want to get rid of SMS from their way of life (or never adopted it in the first place), and hark back for simpler times. This phone appeals to that.
When it comes to phones I go through alternating phases of high-tech and as simple as it gets, mostly because I get frustrated at how bad high tech phones usually work as phones (they're great little computers, but I mostly use my phone to call).
SMS is no longer optional, even if you want to get rid of it, typically service messages are only sent using SMS, not voice and people will simply assume that even if you didn't respond that you still read their SMS message saying they'll be an hour late.
It's like with businesses and FAX, you may never send one but people pretty much used to assume that you were at least capable of receiving them.
False! Perhaps for your way of life, but there's the age-old 'you != everyone'. Once your friends know you don't text, they stop texting you. They may think you're a Luddite, but that's another issue.
Even though you (and me for that matter) may want SMS on phones, I don't think it was a poor design choice to skip SMS on this phone.
On UK landlines now you can receive texts, they have a service that does text-to-speech and reads the text to you. With this then you would only lack a way to send texts, people wanting a simple phone probably don't want that.
Well, but like the above poster said it's not all about your friends texting you - verizon, for instance, sends password reset notices through SMS, and other service messages.
> SMS is no longer optional, even if you want to get rid of it, typically service messages are only sent using SMS, not voice and people will simply assume that even if you didn't respond that you still read their SMS message saying they'll be an hour late.
And they'll be wrong.
And an hour late.
I would argue that politeness requires the sender to contact the receiver in a manner of the receiver's choosing, not the sender's, while the receiver should not go to extremes to avoid the sender.
Lack of SMS is the normal, passive state and since there is no legal or social requirement to have it, I wouldn't consider not having it impolite at all.
Odd, perhaps, if one takes the receiver's demographic into account, but not impolite.
I think that would be pretty bad, you'd have to get paper refills approx every 5 seconds (and there'd need to be room for that paper to be stored somewhere), and the text recognition would have to either be perfect or extremely cumbersome.
It has an integrated pen, like the integrated stylus on a Palm:
The back of each John’s Phone features a flap with an address book behind it. The left of the flap contains an opening with a small pen: these two unique accessories allow you to update your address file at any time, even when your phone is switched off.
But in that case (if SMS is necessary), why is this phone a good idea at all? There are good old-fashioned simple and cheap phones on the market. For example:
That is a fricking awesome phone. Dirt cheap, indestructible, and a battery that lasts for 2 weeks between charges. Unfortunately, it has the worst UI ever, and is completely unsuitable for Grandma duty.
It does have an excuse for being so bad -- it's designed to be used by people who cannot read.
This is the first thing I thought of when I saw the headline "minimalist phone". The wikipedia page confirms it's not available from Motorola in the US. I'm curious if anyone has had luck using an unlocked one?
They were available from TigerDirect. I used to own one, and it was pretty good. I quickly got annoyed with the screen though, so when I had the money I purchased a Nokia phone.
However I found something just about as cheap from NewEgg, this one has a colour display:
You can read about 8 characters at a time, but since most SMS's are pretty short if you have good fingers and get used to the buttons it's not as bad as you might think (kind of like a pager). I know a guy that uses this phone as his primary. For composing, there's no T9, btw.
There is a pen, the phony body includes a "silo" for the pen and a flap that folds out to reveal a pocket that holds the address book. Both pen and address book are included with the phone.
Typically such items get lost pretty quickly, so you'll end up carrying one along.
Maybe you're more careful than I am, but when I used PDAs I ended up buying several replacement styluses because I kept dropping them in weird spots and losing them in spite of being careful not to.
If it's not attached to the device permanently it tends to get lost over time.
I really think that a paper phonebook is cute but impractical, and this phone strikes me as aimed at practical people, not people looking for 'hello kitty' like cute little phonebooks.
"Typically such items get lost pretty quickly, so you'll end up carrying one along."
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I have at least 5 spare styluses somewhere that I bought with various devices because I was afraid I'd lose the original ones, yet never did once in 10+ years of use.
I think this is a good idea and has been executed pretty well, I don't think this is necessarily aimed at the HN crowd, but possibly at the HN crowd's grandparents.
I'm sure there are some pretty switched on grand parents out there, but I don't fancy the idea of sending my grandmother an SMS. I'd need to call her and no doubt visit her to explain the whole SMS thing.
I have a friend with a parent who is getting on in years, she described a device very similar to this "If only something like this existed" - I've just sent her the link, I imagine a purchase will follow soon after.
I can see it would have appeal for someone that would not use SMS but since the other side can't see that your mobile phone is not SMS capable you will be having a lot of confusion.
For older folks, larger buttons and some visual signaling would help. Also, greater amplification (that said, I don't know how loud the ringer or speaker on this thing is).
Ugh, I'm always surprised when I meet people who still SMS text. It's weird. I think I know two people who do it. Everybody else just emails each other.
(in 2010, I received and sent 6 txt messages, 3 people texting me, and 3 responses from me telling them to email me instead)
I don't use SMS at all. I do use email a lot, so for me what would be ideal is an e-ink Android device. Right now I'm getting about 3 hrs of battery when I use the phone non-stop for data-related things. Very annoying.
It also requires instructions in order to figure out the quickdial function... which is more than I've ever needed for my iPhone. (BTW my toddlers can work iOS devices just fine.)
Seems like an okay review to me, if the purpose in buying the phone is to get something that can make phone calls:
> So, how did it work? Well, to make and receive calls it worked fine. The ringer was suitably loud and the vibration was strong enough to get noticed in a pocket. The audio quality during calls was also decent -- not spectacular but not awful either.
So is the John's Phone "The world's simplest cellphone." No. The fact that all three of the device's switches are so frustrating to use is simply unforgivable on such a basic cellphone that's supposedly rooted in "great design." We wish that the company had spent as much time on the phone's industrial design as it did on its slick promotional materials and cutesy graphics. Even then, you'd better be sure that the simplicity is worth the €70 - €100 price tag (depending upon model) -- for that you could take home a fully-loaded 3G featurephone from Nokia. A nod, perhaps, as to why the John's Phone exists.
"Both these switches deserve a special place in Gadget Hell for the very worst in industrial design. Not only do they require a fingernail to operate, they also don't work most of the time."
Even if the only thing you want to do with your phone is make phone calls, you still need to:
1. Turn the phone on when you want to make a call
2. Turn the phone off, or lock it, when you don't want to make any more calls
Where are all the phones that are minimalist in size?
We used to have quite small phones in the turn of 90's—00's but now that the smartphones are everywhere, and even for non-smartphones everyone is assumed to want internet and lots of features, the current phones are so big and come with such a big screens that my first Nokia 1611 has stopped looking like stoneage in comparison.
Something similar to MacBook Air but a phone would be cool.
Thickness closer to 5mm than 10mm. Slightly larger than a USB stick. A clamshell design would be a must to make it long enough to reach both ears and proximity to mouth. Something that you can certainly lose in your pocket, something almost invisible.
There's a reason we don't have those anymore. I remember in '01-'02 there was a small war between manufacturers to get their phones smaller.
What came out were ludicrously small phones that made dialing and usage a pain.
There's a limit to how small phones can get before they get downright unusable. I remember back then some even had voice dialing to compensate, which was - and still is - just a plain bad idea.
Better yet, just fit a phone inside a USB earpiece and put a tiny dialpad on it (or perhaps shrink a rotary dial, turn it sideways like a volume roller and stick it in there). You should double purpose the roller as a selector for a minimal oled display showing just a couple lines of text so you could at least keep a phone book.
If size is really all that matters to you, consider the Motorola V3 RAZR. They're still possible to find if you look hard enough. I had one for a few years. Great hardware, solid build quality, tough as nails, but disappointing software.
I've seen them, and they are very annoying. Not having an address book is annoying, and not being able to receive text messages is just frustrating. It's an awesome idea, but not for use in real life.
Perhaps not for use in your life. I'm not a smartphone user and don't do text messages. I really like the idea of this phone because it strips away all the crap that I don't need.
Granted, if I did have a smartphone, or was a "power user" of my current phone, then perhaps I'd feel the same way as you do.
Right, but the problem is not so much about me as it is about the rest of the world. Not being able to write messages is fine, but people expect you to be able to receive text messages.
I like it, but mostly for the gimmick value. I think to be truly * usable* and simple it absolutely has to have a phonebook / speed dial of some kind.
"If you love it simple" is their tag-line, but I don't really see anything simple about having to reference a piece of paper and then dial a 13 digit number each time I want to call home.
"You can allocate 10 speed dial numbers, each under one of the ten digits. You can allocate a telephone number (in this case, 0612345678) to a speed-dial number (in this case 1) by entering: * * 1 * 0612345678#. Subsequently, hold down the ‘1’ button for two seconds to automatically call the telephone number entered. To delete the speed-dial number in the above example, enter * * 1 * #. If you wish to alter a telephone number allocated to a speed-dial number, simply write over it with the new number."
We'll talk about how useful that is when you're in a non-ideal lighting condition trying to find a phone number and typing it in on the front.
I used to remember pretty much all the phone numbers of all my relatives and people I'm in contact with, even the international ones but with the coming of cell phones something else has happened: people switch phone numbers far more frequently today than they did in the past and the ability to re-program the phone but keep the mnemonic the same is actually far more useful than a piece of paper.
It's good for old people and aggressive people that frequently like to throw their phones away, because they are cheap. Nobody else will buy it just because its got a "minimalist design".
The iPhone has only one button.. seems even more minimalist.
Although I won't buy that phone, I would be interested in a solid, beautifully designed phone that simple focuses on being a phone and doing that really really well.
Think Vertu, but not crap and designed by someone with actual taste and not stupidly priced and...OK, so perhaps not Vertu.
If you can find one in good condition a Nokia 8910 might be for you. Titanium casing, well built, and old enough (2002) that it doesn’t have much beyond calling and txting.
Hmm, this might be a problem. Usually Nokia batteries are fairly compatible but it looks like the BLB-2 that the 8910 takes was only ever used in that.
I remember getting a £30 ZTE phone on 3 that did texts, calls, and had a fairly rubbish but workable browser. It wasn't complicated, it was small, light, and the battery lasted forever. It was a bit slow but for £30 it's a far better bargain than this John's Phone.
I just sent a link along to my mother, who has been wanting a no-frills big-numbered mobile phone that has a long standby time. I think it's perfect for those, like my mother, who don't use SMS, electronic address books, or any other "fancy" features of modern mobile phones. The numbers being big so that she doesn't need to take her glasses out is also very good. The only down side I can see is the review on engadget that said the switches are a bit finicky. But then again, it's not like it's $400 either :)
If it wasn't big then you couldn't have oversized number keys. If it wasn't heavy then it wouldn't be suitable for people who need oversized number keys, light phones need more motor-skills to handle (up to a point).
Also hardening and a large battery would increase weight (though I don't know if this is how it's heavy).
agree with most comments here that the pen/paper address book seems a bit out of place. i'd imagine that the swivel door to keep the address book is quite cumbersome and certainly this would add unnecessary weight. also i feel that the simplicity of the design is somewhat ruined with handwritten entries in the address book (see link below for a picture):
i'm all for minimalist designs, this phone seems to segment a very niche user base that is only interested in using phones to call people, however small that is, i'm sure there's a market. though the price point conflicts with this as i feel people in this market segment are probably looking for low price as well.
some additional comments, a video on the webpage would be nice showing the interface for navigating through an address book or adding contacts. i think the dial buttons are nice, but imho the slide buttons on the side of the phone are a bit arcane, perhaps individual buttons would be more modern.
i'm actually quite attracted to the general design of the phone, the keypad is laid out quite simply, the lcd at the top is out of the way and quite utilitarian. i'm a smartphone user myself (nokia e72), but i'd love to have this phone if it included bluetooth and i'm quite curious as to the ease of use of the phonebook because i really hate storing numbers by keypad. based on the design, it'd be nice if you offered a higher end john's phone, let's say you added bluetooth, a 5 MP camera, and a micro SD storage slot, you'd have a pretty good shot at getting some premiums for people that are looking for something fresh in comparison to iphone/android.
Interesting. I agree with the SMS comments. I almost entirely SMS. Mostly only business and family on Talk.
Two years ago I did a "simple phone" concept. Mine was touched based. Never progressed it, to busy with other things. I find it funny that somebody did.
Already? so soon? I think people need some more time with their smart phones.
I like it that my WinPhone7 pulls phone numbers from my Outlook (office email), Facebook or Windows live. Making an acquintance online and automatically having the number in my phonebook is natural and works.
I think we need some more time with smart before simple gets niche again.
This is perfect for my parents. They don't use address book, they won't read or write SMS (need to click too many buttons) and they need to use glasses to see the buttons. I'm really tempted buy 2 for them. Although it's unnecessarily expensive considering I can buy a really good and light non-brand mobile phone for £5-£10
This would be perfect if it had an amazing antenna hidden in there. It would be the first cell phone I've had since my first car phone that was actually good at being a phone...which would be WILD!
What's funny is the phone calling functionality of my iPhone is the one feature I wish I could have removed. I just want internet, text, and iOS and I'm happy.
so why not get an ipad with 3g? i wish they made 3g ipod touches, i also agree with you and would like a device like iphone without the calling functionality.
Novel design, although not something entirely new. Swedish telephony equipment manufacturer Doro has for several years had a number of "senior citizen" cellphones on the market in the same geist as John's Phone, some of them even simpler. A few models even include an assault alarm.
I always wanted something like the old Nokia 7280 for a second (small) phone for times when I don't want to carry my expensive smartphone but I could never get myself to buy a second phone...
In terms of simplicity and resistance nothing beats Nokia 3310 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3310), for me at least. I even threw it against a concrete wall once, it all dissembled into several pieces, but after I had re-assembled them back it was as new.
Play it again, John, this time with a pager sized (text) display and I'll buy one.
edit: added the (text), it does have a display but can't display text messages.