Dull Phone

I am in the market for a new mobile phone. I am currently using the Nokia 6280 (pictured). I’ve disliked it since day one, it looks like a toy, the battery life is poor, it randomly turns itself off, bits keep falling off of it, the 3G doesn’t work because it doesn’t have enough memory (or so it tells me) and the ring tones are rubbish.

So I went to my local Vodafone store and a couple of others. Vodafone have 8 phones to chose from!!! and of the 8 nothing stands out as being cool or different or exciting or new. Even the shop assistants are uninspired. In another store, we chatted through a much wider range. My thoughts are as follows:

Motorola - The Motorazr is looking a bit dated. OK, so its comes in a range of colours/finishes but it’s not seen as being a serious phone, the flip design appeals more to the ladies. It’s not the sort of phone you’d want sitting in front of you in a business meeting.

Nokia - Most of the new phones are in the slide design. There doesn’t seem to be much between them. Nokia offers a 5MB camera on the N95, that’s quite neat. I haven’t had a great experience with the slide phone. See my comments above.

LG - Relatively new to the market and getting better. Battery life is generally a problem and I don’t think I’m their target market. They are going for a youthful, fashion conscience audience. Nothing jumps out here either.

Sony Ericsson - I wouldn’t go near SE as I had bad experiences with the T300 (I think that was the name of it) a few years back. It was really slow and didn’t really work as a phone due to poor reception and sound quality. I looked at the W880i yesterday and this has really bad buttons.

Samsung - Have a new range of phones coming out soon with some nifty features, such as a business card reader. Focused on the flip market. Not for me.

There are others; Asus, htc, O2. Still, nothing stands out and new entrants need time to iron out glitches and get competitive.

The issue here is that the mobile phone market is maturing, the manufacturers need to minimise costs so they standardise or industrialise their designs and manufacturing process. Meaning that they opt for a single chasis or hardware platform and then add different features around this. The good news is that this creates opportunities for new entrants to the market with big ideas. The bad news is that until that happens, we can’t expect to get to excited about going and choosing/buying a new phone.

I’ll probably go back to my old old Nokia until something sexy arrives – such as the iPhone, which arrives in Australia in 2008 but then if the Australian iPhone is anything like Australian iTunes then only half of the features will be available anyway.