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Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

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Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#271

Post by jmkb »

blakes wrote: post #238
mwcampbell wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. Looking at a screen on the windshield while driving was never going to be approved by authorities. The solution to that seems so obvious: make the phone speak to the driver instead. Was turn-by-turn navigation not feasible back then? Or what else am I missing?

Back in the before times, taxi drivers knew how to navigate a city just by memory. Give them an address and they'd probably know how to find it. Most likely this app was not navigation. Remember, feature phone, probably had less than a couple hundred MB of memory for the entire device. I assume the app would just give the taxi driver address details and what not.

Dispatch knowing drivers' locations in realtime would have made this a killer app imo. Car services used to assign pickups based on drivers reporting their location by radio.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#272

Post by wearywanderer »

drewmol wrote: post #263
asdff wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point 2 and 3 are baffling to me. Garmins mounted on the windshield have been a thing in vehicles since the early 2000s at least.

Regarding point 2: When I worked for a valet parking company not too many years ago it would astonish me how many people would 'remember' they must secure their GPS in the glove box, despite leaving much more expensive items like iphones/laptops/purses/wallets in plain sight strown around within their vehicle. They were an easy and common theft target at one time I guess .

In 2009 somebody smashed my car's window to steal my garmin. Even if the GPS is worth little, they are worth hiding because thieves are morons who will smash your window for it anyway.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#273

Post by hulahoof »

Worst part about decent Feature Phone games was the device / carrier lock in.

I was always upset as a massive FF7 fan that there was a canonical game only released for certain (one?) feature phones tied to a Japanese telecom, and despite my best efforts I was unable to obtain a phone with a copy of all episodes downloaded (though I did find some translated transcripts that I could read for the story).

Very happy that it will now be included as a part of Ever Crisis.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#274

Post by pbhjpbhj »

asdff wrote: post #254
surfsvammel wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is me guessing: This sounds like before turn-by-turn navigation was possible. If they had to approximate location via a set list of cell ids, then that doesn't give very precise location data. Also, back then, I am guessing, there where not as good map data available, especially not that would fit in a phone. I would also think that this was before synthesised speech was really possible to do on a phone. The wor…

GPS navigation is 90s tech, though. I had garmin barking turns at me in the early 2000s same as siri today. In fact usually better reception than my cell phone if it was a clear day, since cell coverage is still terrible where you really need need it out in the boonies where gas stations are miles and miles apart.

Devices like the Garmin [0] were chunky though, weren't they, like a few cm thick, even compared to phones of the times they were big. And to my [limited and shaky] recollection people had car mounted antennae for GPS (in the late 90s) because they worked poorly without it?

The first retro-fittable GPS was in 1997, the Alpine CVA-1005 [1], which weighed >3kg and had a display of 26cm across; it connects for nav to a CDROM drive containing base unit [2]; here's the wiring diagram [3].

[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gadgets/the-c... [1] https://ndrive.com/brief-history-gps-car-navigation/ a good review of early GPS [2] https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Alpine-NVA-N751A-Navigation-Syste... [3] https://elektrotanya.com/alpine_cva-1005_wiring_diagram.pdf/...

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#275

Post by dangrossman »

surfsvammel wrote: post #239
mwcampbell wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. Looking at a screen on the windshield while driving was never going to be approved by authorities. The solution to that seems so obvious: make the phone speak to the driver instead. Was turn-by-turn navigation not feasible back then? Or what else am I missing?

This is me guessing: This sounds like before turn-by-turn navigation was possible. If they had to approximate location via a set list of cell ids, then that doesn't give very precise location data. Also, back then, I am guessing, there where not as good map data available, especially not that would fit in a phone. I would also think that this was before synthesised speech was really possible to do on a phone. The wor…

Before smartphones and before cheap GPS, I got spoken turn-by-turn directions while driving from Tellme.

1-800-TELL-ME launched in 1999/2000. You told it your address and the destination address, and it read you the directions one at a time. E.g. after you made the first turn, you'd ask for the next one and it'd tell you. It did not need any GPS this way, it's like talking to someone sitting next to you reading the map for you.

Microsoft bought Tellme in 2007 for $800 million.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#276

Post by dangrossman »

asdff wrote: post #253
ingenieroariel wrote: post #212

I worked on a J2ME app that needed to access location on phones without GPS, I was in touch with the operator and got a list of cell ids with lat, lon. With that I created a daemon in Symbian that would query the cell id and open up a socket server to give it to the J2ME app. With that we developed an app to request a taxi service, but none of the taxi companies wanted it. Some of the complaints were: 1. GPRS data pl…

Point 2 and 3 are baffling to me. Garmins mounted on the windshield have been a thing in vehicles since the early 2000s at least.

In the early 2000s, I had to take my Garmin off the windshield and hide it in the trunk every time I parked, otherwise someone would break in and steal it. My car was broken into 3 times. Someone also stole my Microsoft Zune when I forgot to take that in with me.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#277

Post by tauntz »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #198
tauntz wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, it's nostalgia-a-clock. I worked on Skype for J2ME with a 3-4 person dev team. Custom UI kit, 128x128 screens, 128kb available memory and other fun limitations.. I think we re-wrote our text rendering/styling/wrapping code more times than there were actual releases of the app :) I honestly miss these times - it sparked so much creativity when one needed to achieve something in such a limited environment.

Also that version of Skype was way better than this hot steaming pile of manure currently shipped by Microsoft.

Thank you! It really was a different era back then :)

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#278

Post by tauntz »

mgkimsal wrote: post #201
tauntz wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, it's nostalgia-a-clock. I worked on Skype for J2ME with a 3-4 person dev team. Custom UI kit, 128x128 screens, 128kb available memory and other fun limitations.. I think we re-wrote our text rendering/styling/wrapping code more times than there were actual releases of the app :) I honestly miss these times - it sparked so much creativity when one needed to achieve something in such a limited environment.

> I honestly miss these times - it sparked so much creativity when one needed to achieve something in such a limited environment. As someone from the c64/apple][/atari generation... it was constantly amazing to see how much people could push a single device. Lots of creativity, as you say. But... we seemed to hit a wall with the whole j2me-era of "just get creative to work around things!" mindset. Because, IIRC, ther…

> The j2me device world always seemed a lot more fragmented to me (but maybe it wasn't?)

Oh it sure was! There were device specific workarounds and hacks all over the codebase.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#279

Post by atatatat »

dangrossman wrote: post #275
surfsvammel wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is me guessing: This sounds like before turn-by-turn navigation was possible. If they had to approximate location via a set list of cell ids, then that doesn't give very precise location data. Also, back then, I am guessing, there where not as good map data available, especially not that would fit in a phone. I would also think that this was before synthesised speech was really possible to do on a phone. The wor…

Before smartphones and before cheap GPS, I got spoken turn-by-turn directions while driving from Tellme. 1-800-TELL-ME launched in 1999/2000. You told it your address and the destination address, and it read you the directions one at a time. E.g. after you made the first turn, you'd ask for the next one and it'd tell you. It did not need any GPS this way, it's like talking to someone sitting next to you reading the m…

And did what with it?

And why?

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#280

Post by grzm »

atatatat wrote: post #279
dangrossman wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before smartphones and before cheap GPS, I got spoken turn-by-turn directions while driving from Tellme. 1-800-TELL-ME launched in 1999/2000. You told it your address and the destination address, and it read you the directions one at a time. E.g. after you made the first turn, you'd ask for the next one and it'd tell you. It did not need any GPS this way, it's like talking to someone sitting next to you reading the m…

And did what with it? And why?

> In early 2012, Microsoft divested itself of Tellme Networks' interactive voice response (IVR) service and the majority of its employees to [24]7 Inc. The service was moved to a non-toll-free number.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellme_Networks

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