Unbelievable what you can do on a phone nowadays.

[pagroove]

I bought this for use in my studio (€ 11,90). It really rivals my synths.
Expect an Oolite tune made with this soon (for use in BGS)
Now I can really compose anywhere

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stcf_8H_qVM

[Commander McLane]

Now if you also could make phone calls with the iPhone, it would almost be a perfect phone...

[pagroove]

Now if you also could make phone calls with the iPhone, it would almost be a perfect phone...

Luckily I have the 3G and not the 4

[JensAyton]

Now if you also could make phone calls with the iPhone, it would almost be a perfect phone... :oops:

Hey – now that Skype runs in the background, that isn’t a problem any more. :-)

[Cmdr Wyvern]

Now if you also could make phone calls with the iPhone, it would almost be a perfect phone...

No kidding.
I recently had an argument with a Radio Shack guy trying to sell me phones based on the internet capabilities.

"Look pal, I have a PC for internet, and a nice camera for shooting pictures. I don't need all that in a damned phone, alright? I just need it to be a phone. Make and take calls, nothing more, nothing less. Is that too much to ask?"

Apparently, it is.

[Commander McLane]

"Look pal, I have a PC for internet, and a nice camera for shooting pictures. I don't need all that in a damned phone, alright? I just need it to be a phone. Make and take calls, nothing more, nothing less. Is that too much to ask?"

Apparently, it is.

No, it isn't. Just go and buy the cheapest Nokia phone you can find. That's what I've been doing for the last six years, first in Africa, now in Europe. You can use it to speak and for sms, which are the two things I want to do with a cell phone.

Also saves you a lot of money.

[pagroove]

"Look pal, I have a PC for internet, and a nice camera for shooting pictures. I don't need all that in a damned phone, alright? I just need it to be a phone. Make and take calls, nothing more, nothing less. Is that too much to ask?"

Apparently, it is.

No, it isn't. Just go and buy the cheapest Nokia phone you can find. That's what I've been doing for the last six years, first in Africa, now in Europe. You can use it to speak and for sms, which are the two things I want to do with a cell phone.

Also saves you a lot of money.

SMS is a bit dated IMO. Thats where you have a phone. I synchronized the mail accounts and voila.

[Commander McLane]

SMS is a bit dated IMO.

Well, in the past years SMS was the fastest, most reliable, and by far the cheapest means of communication for me and everybody I knew. In eastern Africa I was always trying to not use my phone for talking, because it is no fun if you have—as a rule—to dial at least four times in order to establish a connection at all, which is then so crappy that you understand—at the very best—forty percent of what the person at the other end is saying.

I always found the use of mobile phones as shown in movies and TV shows utterly unrealistic: they were showing someone picking up their phone, dialing, being connected in a matter of seconds, and talking to their counterpart without any problem. Only when I came back to Germany and started using a mobile phone I found out that it actually can work that way.

And SMS is still the only sensible way to communicate with people back in Africa.

However, I discovered one aspect of mobile communication where my African experience is superior: I was a little shocked to find out that German phone companies charge their customers for receiving calls. I still can't get my head around why anybody would be willing to pay for receiving a call. I think it's scandalous, bordering to extortion, and unprecedented by how we are using landlines. The caller has to pay, not the one who is called. For me it's the same as with mail: the sender buys and pays for the postage stamp, not the receiver (special exceptions notwithstanding, where the receiver has agreed to pay the service; but in that case the sender has no costs). From my African phone company I am used to that wherever in the world I receive a call or SMS, I don't pay a penny for it. And that's what should be normal. Why are mobile phone customers in Europe content with such business practices?

[Cmdr Wyvern]

"Look pal, I have a PC for internet, and a nice camera for shooting pictures. I don't need all that in a damned phone, alright? I just need it to be a phone. Make and take calls, nothing more, nothing less. Is that too much to ask?"

Apparently, it is.

No, it isn't. Just go and buy the cheapest Nokia phone you can find. That's what I've been doing for the last six years, first in Africa, now in Europe. You can use it to speak and for sms, which are the two things I want to do with a cell phone.

Also saves you a lot of money.

Over here in the USA, it's close to impossible to get a phone that's just a phone, except for landline phones.
But ask for a cellphone that doesn't have a billion features that you'll never need, and they treat you like some kind of moron and crank the hard sell up to full blast. The reason? Money; As in vacuum as much of it out of your wallet as possible. Selling you a phone that's just a phone puts the brakes on their runaway greed machine.
Man, the greedy buggers really make me ill. What happened to the customer is always right?

Anyway, I'd better stop myself before I blow a fuse. [/endrant]

[docwild]

SMS is a bit dated IMO.

I was a little shocked to find out that German phone companies charge their customers for receiving calls.

That's what it was like in the UK at first, on the old analogue networks. Now it's all about selling contracts because people seem not to be able to work out how much they are actually paying for a phone over 18 months. It's the same with the laptops they give away with phone contracts, you end up with an emachines netbook for a contract value of about 4-500 pounds. Buying the phone alone costs about the same or sometimes even more.

The only thing it proves, as far as I can tell, is that the phones cost pennies to make and everyone who buys them is getting ripped off and laughed at.

It's depressing really.

[Commander McLane]

"Look pal, I have a PC for internet, and a nice camera for shooting pictures. I don't need all that in a damned phone, alright? I just need it to be a phone. Make and take calls, nothing more, nothing less. Is that too much to ask?"

Apparently, it is.

No, it isn't. Just go and buy the cheapest Nokia phone you can find. That's what I've been doing for the last six years, first in Africa, now in Europe. You can use it to speak and for sms, which are the two things I want to do with a cell phone.

Also saves you a lot of money.

Over here in the USA, it's close to impossible to get a phone that's just a phone, except for landline phones.
But ask for a cellphone that doesn't have a billion features that you'll never need, and they treat you like some kind of moron and crank the hard sell up to full blast. The reason? Money; As in vacuum as much of it out of your wallet as possible. Selling you a phone that's just a phone puts the brakes on their runaway greed machine.
Man, the greedy buggers really make me ill. What happened to the customer is always right?

Of course, if you deliver yourself to the wolves...

I guess what I really meant is: Just order the cheapest phone you can find over the internet. No hard sell, no communication at all needed with someone who wants to drill for your money. Just one go through a search engine, one click to order, and wait for the postman.

[maik]

I was a little shocked to find out that German phone companies charge their customers for receiving calls

That really only happens when you leave the country with your German SIM card and receive calls. Within Germany I haven't heard of this practice. At least not in the past 10 or so years.

[Commander McLane]

SMS is a bit dated IMO.

I was a little shocked to find out that German phone companies charge their customers for receiving calls.

That's what it was like in the UK at first, on the old analogue networks. Now it's all about selling contracts because people seem not to be able to work out how much they are actually paying for a phone over 18 months. It's the same with the laptops they give away with phone contracts, you end up with an emachines netbook for a contract value of about 4-500 pounds. Buying the phone alone costs about the same or sometimes even more.

The only thing it proves, as far as I can tell, is that the phones cost pennies to make and everyone who buys them is getting ripped off and laughed at.

It's depressing really.

Yeah. I never even spent a second thinking about a contract. In Tanzania, where I got used to mobile phones, only pre-paidexists. You buy a phone, then you buy a simcard, and then you buy airtime whenever you need it. You may even have multiple simcards from several networks, and switch between them (usually using the same phone; if you can afford it, you may have more than one phone), depending on which network has the best coverage in the area you're in (bonus points if you manage to get the same phone number from the various companies).

So, naturally I went for the cheapest sim-lock free phone and a pre-paid card, which allows for a maximum of cost control. I expect to spend about 10–15 euros per months for my calls and sms (equalling roughly 100 sms), more than that would be ludicrous, given that for normal everyday communication I can use a landline, which I simply didn't have in Africa.

[Commander McLane]

I was a little shocked to find out that German phone companies charge their customers for receiving calls

That really only happens when you leave the country with your German SIM card and receive calls. Within Germany I haven't heard of this practice. At least not in the past 10 or so years.

Yes, my provider also only charges in case I am abroad. However, that meant that when somebody from Tanzania called me for about four minutes when I was in Switzerland last week, I was charged more than 5 euros, which I found hefty. If I would have used my Tanzanian phone and number, I wouldn't have paid a single cent. And the cost for the Tanzanian caller would have been exactly the same. Which means that my German network provider is making a nice fat profit where Tanzanian network providers don't, although they may even belong to the same mother company.

So, next time when I leave Germany, I will take my Tanzanian simcard with me, not the German one.

[pagroove]

Anyway a bit back on topic. The reason why I posted this is that 10 years ago you needed a pretty hefty studio to make such a tune. It's so unbelievable how fast the 'miniaturization' goes.