There are two major problems I noticed with my cell phone in particular. My phone fell into water a couple of months ago which is probably why the first problem occurs, but since it is very bothersome,it applies. First, my phone has the habit of stating it has low battery when it has just been charged. This means that I have a phone that annoyingly beeps every minute or vibrates. Unless I have it constantly charging, off, or have no sound, it continues to make this sound religiously. But since having it constantly charging is not possible, having it off means I miss calls as does if I have the sound turned off, none of the options allows me to live life properly.
Second, my phone is a Verizon phone. Normally when texting, I can text up to 160 characters per text but send a total of 7 texts at once. This allows me to not exactly worry about how much I'm writing. Unfortunately, this only applies to Verizon customers. If I try to text over 160 characters to, for example, a Cingular customer, my phone will only send the first 100 characters and then I am stuck trying to figure out where the text ended so I can send the rest, or abbreviating words so the message can fit on one page.
My smart phone would solve both the aforementioned problems. To solve the first one, I think that one sound associated warning is enough to tell me that I have low battery. I think it would be better to use visual stimulation to continually warn me. My smart phone would, every 10 minutes, light up in let's say red to remind me that I have low battery.
To solve the second problem, my phone will allow texting of as many characters as one can to a Verizon phone, to all other carriers. This will solve the headache I get trying to trim my texts.
According to Acerman (170), "the social–technical gap is the divide between what we know we must support socially and what we can support technically." In my two problems, I feel that only the first problem really shows that there might be a problem due to the social-technical gap. The reason that the second one doesn't is because other phone carriers can text more than 160 characters to phones that are not in their network. I think having a phone light up in a different color in response to low battery may be hard to accomplish.
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I agree about the annoyance of the 160 characters. it's interesting though, how it varies across different phones and different carriers. when you exceed 160, sometimes itll send it in an extra long text, sometimes it will split into two message, and then other times the receiver will only receive the first half. very frustrating and i agree this needs to be dealt with.
ReplyDeleteFinally! Someone else who dropped their phone into water! I'm no longer alone! :-D
ReplyDeleteIn class today, one person mentioned the idea of having a standardized operating system for all phones. I really liked this idea, in that all phones could update at the same rate. Perhaps this would help to encourage more frequent software updates as well. Most importantly, though, phone OS programmers could focus on getting one system right instead of having to work with so many variations.
That text limitation between different phones seems really odd to me. I hadn't heard anything about it though, since I don't use text messaging.
Dropping your phone in water could be the reason why it is not keeping a charge. A short circuit can cause this low resistance connection between the two conductors supplying electrical power to any circuit.
ReplyDeleteThis could result in excessive current flow in the power source or vise versa, it can even cause the power source to be destroyed.
Possibly why you are having problems holding a charge. Hey I have been there and I feel your pain.
The texting is just a pain. Some plans consider 160 chars. to be a full text messages while others consider less. I could never understand why everyone can't get on the same page with that.