Modern mobile phones are too complicated, says mobile phone inventor
Inventor blasts complex handsets
The march of progress goes on unrelenting. As the gadgets we take for granted shrink and merge with others, new markets appear and die all the time, with new classifications of products born seemingly every day.
But is this right? Martin Cooper, widely referred to as the inventor of the mobile phone, has said at a privacy conference in Madrid this week that modern mobile phones are ‘too complicated.’
It’s not Mr Cooper’s first such outburst; the 80-year old ex-motorola employee has previously lambasted the iPhone as being overly complex and hard to use.
- A brief history of tech
He said at this week’s conference: “Whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do any things well.” His solution? More dedicated gadgets. “Our future I think is a number of specialist devices that focus on one thing that will improve our lives,” he continued.
Essentially the only thing Cooper was in favour of was the pocketable size of today’s phones: “The first cell phone model weighed over one kilo,” he said, “and you could only talk for 20 minutes before the battery ran out, which is just as well because you would not be able to hold it up for much longer.”
Mr Cooper made the world’s first mobile, wireless call in Manhattan on the 3rd of April 1973.
Link: Telegraph
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By theevil
6|11|2009 15:08
Sorry i dont have any prejudice over the elderly, but there are some i have come across, like this guy, who find it hard to work out the simplest of systems, the iphone for me was and is the epiphany of ease to use!!
I wasn't exposed to tech such as mobile phones or computers until i was about 14 (dont ask, long story), and i found technology for some reason so simple to use i am now the geek of the family, and a recognized geek among people who have been exposed to technology for years longer than i have!!
I think there are just some people who automatically before trying decide technology is hard to use, and therefor dont actually try, technology is pretty much logic, if you have even the slightest amount of logic technology is easy!!