Yes, says 80 year old Martin Cooper, who was a lead engineer in the team that developed the first mobile phone and who made the first wireless call back in 1973.
Cooper was talking at a conference in Madrid and said that mobile phones are trying to do too many things for too many people.
“Whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do any things well,” he said, according to the BBC.
“Our future I think is a number of specialist devices that focus on one thing that will improve our lives,” said Mr Cooper.
That’s all very well but we don’t want to carry around a mobile, a netbook, a laptop, a camera, an eReader and whatever else, that’s not cool.
“The first cell phone model weighed over one kilo 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” he added.
Yes how could anyone forget the brick, even if you’re too young to have owned one, they are a real indication as to how far we’ve come in mobile technology.
These days we rely on a connection all day every day for business and pleasure. We want to be able to do as much as possible on our mobiles.
Nowadays some mobiles are functioning like mini computers and we like that as can be evidenced by the 140 percent increase in sales of SmartPhones in the past year alone according to research by GfK.
Dr Jon Agar, a technology lecturer at University College in London and author of a book on the history of the mobile phone doesn’t agree with Martin Cooper.
“Martin Cooper’s assertion flies in the face of current trends, and I see no particular evidence to suggest that the trend towards more ‘universal’ mobile phones is going to change direction,” said Agar.
“The future of technologies is ultimately in the hands of users – and the vast majority of users have historically been loath to add to the very small number of technologies that we carry around with us” he adds.
I couldn’t agree more. That’s why the boundaries are blurring so much between SmartPhones, Netbooks and Computers; we actually want our devices to do as much as possible.
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But how many people buy this stuff because it is COOL but don’t use anywhere near what it’s capable of. But then companies have to come out with even more sophisticated phones to be even MORE COOL because people will buy them to BE COOL.
It’s not about technology it’s about dummies showing off. I have a DUMB phone but I also carry a PMA400 Linux computer. It’s an e-book reader an MP3 player and it has a web browser that I almost never use because the screen is too small even though it is bigger than what is on most smartphones. I want my phone to stay dumb.