The Facebook Phone • Hacker News Board

Re: The Facebook Phone

#21

Post by rglover » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 10:29 PM UTC

schrototo wrote: post #5

rjd wrote: post #2

Vodafones product page for it: http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/about/what/devices/vod...

Seems like a pretty half-assed product. "Vodafone 555 Blue", really, that's what you're gonna call it? Anyone remember the Motorola ROKR? Yeah, exactly...

Considering this is supposed to be a Facebook supported phone, this thing looks like crap. Kind of a good idea, but with that sort of hardware and half-baked UI this is just as good as any other "social" phone that's come out in the past three years. Next.

Re: The Facebook Phone

#22

Post by mirkules » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 10:45 PM UTC

rjd wrote: post #17

nosequel wrote: post #3

“We hope to sell millions . . . Anything below millions will be disappointing.” I think they will be disappointed. I can't name a smart phone where it takes more than about 2 keystrokes to do anything you want on Facebook.

You have to remember price point and demographics. A lot people don't care for smart phones. Smart phones are only a fraction of the phone market as well. Lots of people don't want smart phones for various reasons, lots of people buy them and then regret it like I did. The market is pretty varied. I've gone back to my old Sony because of battery life. I kept forgetting to put my Android on charge every night, next da…

Rjd, my feeling is that you're in the minority. I don't have any numbers to back up my statement, and I think it's safe to say we are both speculating here. This is my reasoning:

Even if people don't want smartphones, I would speculate that people who want to be connected to Facebook ALSO want to be connected to other services: Twitter, Google+, etc. Tying a phone (with a contract life cycle of 24 months) to fickle online services with no room for expansion is a letdown waiting to happen. Just my $0.02.

Btw, when the iPhone first came out, battery life was a huge issue, which turned out to be a non-issue for the millions of iPhone owners. Most people have an extra cable in the car or office to charge it through the day. And those that didn't, didn't forget to charge it because they loved their iPhone so much. It was really quite fascinating to watch Apple shrug off the battery life issue so eloquently, which, unfortunately set the trend for shorter battery life (e.g. my coworker goes from 100% to 20% in 4 hours on his LG Revolution). I agree with you that this is pretty abysmal, but what can you do...?

Re: The Facebook Phone

#23

Post by rjd » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 11:12 PM UTC

mirkules wrote: post #22

rjd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to remember price point and demographics. A lot people don't care for smart phones. Smart phones are only a fraction of the phone market as well. Lots of people don't want smart phones for various reasons, lots of people buy them and then regret it like I did. The market is pretty varied. I've gone back to my old Sony because of battery life. I kept forgetting to put my Android on charge every night, next da…

Rjd, my feeling is that you're in the minority. I don't have any numbers to back up my statement, and I think it's safe to say we are both speculating here. This is my reasoning: Even if people don't want smartphones, I would speculate that people who want to be connected to Facebook ALSO want to be connected to other services: Twitter, Google+, etc. Tying a phone (with a contract life cycle of 24 months) to fickle o…

Tech crunch says the figures are 28% phones, hence standard phones = 67%. I agree its changing, but I'm not sure how much is forced and how much is through real consumer decision making... you'd need to be a manufacture or a carrier insider to answer that one...

I know I'm an extremely impatient person, which means I loose my cool over things like battery life. That impatience usually does make me a minority as I reject half arsed products (sometimes to early). I'm also very busy, and things like worrying about cell phone battery life are really low on my priority list, often I'm only aware when I get the warning beeps while having a conversation. Having to actively worry about my phone ... when others I don't... makes it a useless product to me, it needs to do its job and not make my life more difficult.

But I can't help looking at the reported 40% return rate for android phones and start to think there is a problem there... and maybe theres multiple issues going on, battery issues maybe for some, carrier apps yo can't delete reported in other threads here, warranty issues, standard Android UI/usability issues no one has ever fixed.

Then theres reports of weird java versions especially compiled for unique chips that aren't library complete/compatible... meaning apps aren't portable. Carriers and manufacturers refusing to supply upgraded firmware, and voiding your warranty if you do it yourself.

Its a real mess, and people are complaining and advising people not to buy them. I advised both my parents to hold out for the iPhone 5 because of this, I've heard a few Android owners I work with regretting the purchases.

Anway I'm prepared to accept I'm wrong ;)