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“Smartphone” is the wrong name

loup-vaillant.fr

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Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#91

Post by acchow »

wodenokoto wrote: post #11

Japanese cellphones had a lot of the same use-cases that modern smartphones have. You could buy stuff online, use GPS, surf the mobile web, send pictures via email and purchase stuff and movies (disney even produced direct to featurephone cartoons in Japan!). This is usually used as an argument for why the Japanese decided to colloquially shorten 携帯電話 ("keitai denwa", hand-held telephone) into just 携帯(hand-held, or h…

In Hong Kong, cell phones were always referred to as "手機", which roughly translates to "hand machine". Yes, even the 80s and 90s Nokia dumbphones.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#92

Post by loup-vaillant »

OJFord wrote: post #64

Does anyone actually say "smartphone" except (vanishingly rarely) when necessary to describe the device in contradistinction to "dumbphones"? Is there a difference whether spoken or written? If so, where are you? I'm curious because all I hear in the UK is "phone" or "mobile" - both of which we always used. But I'm acutely aware that I hear or read "cell" in American sources significantly less often than, I think, I…

> Does anyone actually say "smartphone" except (vanishingly rarely) when necessary to describe the device in contradistinction to "dumbphones"?

True. My beef isn't about "smart" however, it's about "phone". I believe my point stands even more acutely in this light.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#94

Post by robotresearcher »

coldtea wrote: post #18
agumonkey wrote: post #5

Not even phones they're not handheld devices anymore. The lack of physical interface is very sad. Taking pictures, listening to music, even calling someone, all require high attention interaction over an unfit touchscreen. It's a small slate computer.

> Taking pictures, listening to music, even calling someone, all require high attention interaction over an unfit touchscreen. Are you kidding me? All of those functions are 10x easier to do on the "unfit touchscreen" that on what we had before that (tiny non-touch screens, LCDs, 80's style arrays of buttons, etc). And when it comes to actually taking the picture, changing track or volume etc, smartphones even offer…

> All of those functions are 10x easier to do on the "unfit touchscreen" that on what we had before that...

The old Blackberry devices were UI marvels. The physical scroll wheel was great.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#95

Post by carapace »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #44
chroma wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the paragraphs I quoted, the point was basically: If Microsoft had tried what Apple actually did, it would have been a disaster for Microsoft. I think that's accurate regardless of whether they were a monopoly or not. > Also malware infested vs walled garden is a false dichotomy How so? The vast majority of users can't tell if an application is malware. Better for them to put their trust in an authority who can te…

No uneducated user is safe. And I believe malware on smartphones are not unheard of. Short term, sure, give in to the walled garden. Long term though? Learning what a computer is might be a good idea.

Sad that this is getting downvotes, it's one of the most important points about this vast machine we are building around ourselves: You cannot secure [people who suffer from] ignorance. "No uneducated user is safe." Very much so.

Personally, I feel that this is a disgraceful failing on the part of the global computer industry et. al., but that is beside the main issue of, "What the heck are we going to do about this!?"

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#96

Post by coldtea »

khedoros wrote: post #74
coldtea wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taking pictures, listening to music, even calling someone, all require high attention interaction over an unfit touchscreen. Are you kidding me? All of those functions are 10x easier to do on the "unfit touchscreen" that on what we had before that (tiny non-touch screens, LCDs, 80's style arrays of buttons, etc). And when it comes to actually taking the picture, changing track or volume etc, smartphones even offer…

> Remember trying to get to the 10th track of the 4th folder in your "physical" CD mp3 player or minidisk? Setting anything more advanced than zoom level and picture mode on a typical 2002-2005 compact camera? I remember putting my music on MP3 players for the last 12 years, having non-MP3 CDs before that, and being able to perform basic operations on them blind and one-handed. I remember using my non-touch camera be…

>* I remember putting my music on MP3 players for the last 12 years, having non-MP3 CDs before that, and being able to perform basic operations on them blind and one-handed. I remember using my non-touch camera being much quicker to adjust than the app in my phone, especially when I'm adjusting the more advanced settings.*

You remember through rose colored glasses then.

Try using that non-touch early 00's compact camera again (and no cheating with DSLRs with dedicated aperture and speed dials). As for the "blind and one-handed" operation with the non-mp3 CDs, did that include changing through 200+ albums and 2000+ tracks?

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#97

Post by Razengan »

stillsut wrote: post #54

The average adult is required to be available by phone. Not by snapchat, not by skype, not even by text message. By. Phone. In tech-land and teen-land you can specify platforms to each of your relationships. But in the average American's day, doctors, daycare providers, clients, etc are all going to be contacting you by phone. Without being required to carry around the phone part, a pocket-sized tablet would have 10x…

Not to mention that you can have multiple accounts on any social network, and switch between them at any time, but you can have only one phone number on that mobile device, whatever you want to call it.

So if that device is uniquely identifiable by a phone number, and only you can be the only user of that number at any time (again unlike social network accounts), might as well call it a phone.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#98

Post by oxplot »

khedoros wrote: post #78
oxplot wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can all be "fixed" in software. In fact, on my HTC One M8 which is running Cyanogenmod, if I double press the power button at anytime, it switches to camera app and I can then take photos by pressing either volume buttons. I don't need to (or do) look at the screen let alone interact with it.

How often do you take a picture without needing to set the focus, or at least watching the screen to see when the app has finished its autofocus? More generally, beyond changing the volume or initiating a voice query, how much can you really do without pulling the device out to use the screen? Lack of hardware buttons and tactile feedback can't be fixed in software.

Even with a purpose built DSLR, you still have to frame your shot. I meant I don't need to look at the screen to make the phone ready to shoot. I believe the software can go a long way. It will never be as UX friendly as a camera, sure.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#99

Post by loup-vaillant »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #89
danjayh wrote: post #65

> Personally, I have more faith in a third alternative: a virtual instruction set. Like bytecode, though not managed like Java, and not meant to be interpreted or JIT compiled either. It could run on the bare metal, or be translated into something that is —like the Mill CPU. That way you can keep the illusion of having a single instruction set, while sacrificing virtually nothing. Moreover, future CPUs don't even nee…

The idea is to own up to this reality, and stop designing instruction sets as if they were meant run directly. x86 in particular has a legacy of simple CPUs that didn't have much of a decoding unit. But now it has gone too far in the other direction: it takes a significant amount of chip surface and energy to decode, making it unsuitable for low power situations. ARM on the other hand is probably lacking in the SIMD…

When I make a long comment, I like to see explanations about what warranted a downvote. So I can learn…

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#100

Post by loup-vaillant »

carapace wrote: post #95
loup-vaillant wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No uneducated user is safe. And I believe malware on smartphones are not unheard of. Short term, sure, give in to the walled garden. Long term though? Learning what a computer is might be a good idea.

Sad that this is getting downvotes, it's one of the most important points about this vast machine we are building around ourselves: You cannot secure [people who suffer from] ignorance. "No uneducated user is safe." Very much so. Personally, I feel that this is a disgraceful failing on the part of the global computer industry et. al., but that is beside the main issue of, "What the heck are we going to do about this!…

My take on it is, the computer industry, because they're capitalists like any industry, care about money. The engineers working there often care about the users of course, but the shareholders don't give a damn. They just want money. Ultimately, that greed determines the output of the engineers far more effectively than the ideals of the engineers themselves. (This could be generalised to basically any public company, and any of their employees. Employment is an amazing crowd control tool.)

To sell stuff, promise of usefulness is more important than genuine usefulness. We only care about the substance insofar as it reinforces the appeal (fortunately, the stuff gotta be genuinely useful, or the scam would be exposed). The industry could explain how computers work, but that would be far less effective than selling selling a magic wand.

So we end up with computers that hide their internals, so the user doesn't have to deal with them. Language based interface (command line) is put aside for the point & click "caveman interface" (Bret Victor showed us some amazing GUI, but rarely ever saw this since sketchpad). And we pile up abstractions on top of abstractions without stopping for a minute to consider the sheer madness of the distributed cognitive load implied by a personal computing system that requires over 10.000 thick books to write.

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