More is better
Going back to my childhood days, most homes had only one phone, which commonly lived in a centralized “public area” such as the kitchen or the hallway between bedrooms. Since everyone in the family shared it, it needed to be accessible. There was no caller ID and no answering machine, so when it rang the only way to know who called was to … answer it.
Luckily there were also far fewer spam calls and scam calls back then (and nobody would have known what you meant by the former term; that word only referred to canned mystery meat that we kids hoped our moms wouldn’t serve for lunch).
As phone service matured and got more affordable, we added “extensions” – additional phones in other rooms that shared the line and number of the main phone. Of course, anyone could pick up any phone and hear the conversation that was in progress on any other extension. We weren’t quite so into privacy back then.
The ultimate coup for a teenager was when your parents allowed you to have your own separate phone line with your own number. Many parents gave in to this desire not so much out of generosity as desperation to free up the main line for their own use, from teens who spent hours every evening gabbing to their friends. In most cases – unless there was a “business line” as well – parents still shared the same line and if there was more than one kid in the house, they often had to share one, too.
Today, of course, we’ve come to the point where everybody in the family has his or her own cell phone and phone number. It’s rare for mom and dad to share one phone, and many of us have two each – one for business and one for personal use. Kids as young as seven or eight have their own phones, usually given to them by parents so they can keep tabs on the young ones (cell phones can be used to track your location, after all) and the kids can call for help in case of an emergency.
Size does matter
For a while, the big thing in cell phones was increasing miniaturization and they got pretty tiny at one point. It made them easier to carry, but after a certain point, it also made them easier to lose.
Then after phones started to get smart, that trend reversed and bigger became better. If we were going to be reading and writing email, surfing the web and watching videos on our phones, we wanted big, high quality displays that we could see. And that’s what we got. Samsung’s Super AMOLED and Apple’s Retina screens are beautiful to behold.
Early smart phones had screens as small as 2.5 inches and the first iPhone (released in 2007) had a display of only 3.5 inches. Larger displays are more expensive to make and require more battery capacity to power, but it was inevitable that phone vendors would have to solve this problem as more and more people used their phones to do what things for which they used to rely on computers.
The Samsung Galaxy Note that debuted in 2011 ushered in the era of the “phablet” – a cell phone size that falls in between that of the traditional smart phone at that time (4 to 5 inches) and that of the tablet (7 to 12 inches). Its gigantic (for the time) 5.2 inch screen immediately attracted a following, and the next version upped the ante to 5.5 inches.
The Note 3 pushed the envelope further, to 5.7 inches. Then they held steady at that size for the Note 4 and Note 5, as well as the ill-fated Note 7 (it’s obviously bad luck to skip a digit in the numbering/naming process). Some other phone vendors, such as Huawei and ZTE, went further with 6 inch monsters, and Google’s Nexus 6 followed suit. Even Nokia and Microsoft bet on bigger being better with the Lumia 1520 – which, despite its lack of commercial success, was hailed by many reviewers as an impressive phone.
Samsung itself, while keeping the Note at the 5.7 inch “sweet spot,” came out with a phone it called the Galaxy Mega 2 that had a 6 inch display but lacked the high resolution that makes the Note special (on the other hand, it was a lot less expensive, too).
Some companies have dared to take that the next step across the line between “ph” and “ablet” to come out with what are essentially tablets that let you make phone calls. Huawei floated a 7 inch model, the MediaPad X1, and Lenovo’s Phab was almost as big, at 6.8 inches. Samsung, of course, wasn’t about to be outdone in the big phone arena, and tossed their 7 inch Galaxy W into the mix.
None of these really caught on, perhaps because they were just too big or maybe because they didn’t have the high-end features of the more costly flagship phones like the Notes. Rumors abound regarding the specs of the upcoming Galaxy Note 8. When it comes to dimensions, some say it will remain at the 5.7 inch mark, while others have suggested it could come with a screen as big as 6.2 inches.
At this point, the size and other specifications for the Note 8 are all speculation; we don’t even know yet when it will launch (guesses include August and October). What we do know is that there are a lot of brave souls (myself included) who are not deterred by the exploding battery fiasco of its predecessor and are eagerly awaiting the chance to buy it.
Phone as cultural icon
It’s interesting to step back and take a look at how the evolution of the telephone has mirrored the changes in society over the years. Back in the party line days, most of us lived in small towns and knew the neighbors with whom we shared the phone line.
Those were the days when women socialized over the fence while hanging clothes on a different kind of line in the back yard, and men borrowed one another’s tools and lawnmowers and all the kids on the street.
Today we live in cities and suburbs where we barely say “hello” to those who live next door. We stay indoors most of the time, we all have washers and dryers and our own fancy power-tool outfitted garages and the kids are glued to the TV or computer screen, playing video games and building their virtual treehouses online in the perceived safety of their own homes.
Ironically, as our communications technology has gotten better, we have become more isolated from one another in our real world lives. And as that isolation has grown, so has the importance to each of us as individuals of our primary communications tool, our phone.
Even as we share more and more – pouring out our hopes and dreams and describing our every experience, meal, and thought to our 776 social media “friends” every day – we also share less, jealousy guarding our privacy at the same time we’re giving it away.
We went from a phone line shared with our neighbors to one shared only by members of our households. Then we got extensions so we could retreat to our bedrooms to talk without others overhearing. Next we moved to our own private lines and now we have phones that lock so no one else can use them. And we encrypt the data on them and set them up so we can automatically delete it all from afar if the phone is stolen or lost.
Phone as status symbol
As our phones became more important to us, extensions of ourselves that we have with us every hour of every day, we began to see them as much more than electronic tools for communicating. With a lot of help from the marketing departments of the companies that make them, they evolved into symbols of our socioeconomic status, our level of geekiness, and with which “in crowd” we identify.
It’s not enough anymore just to proudly show off a smart phone. You need the “right” smart phone, the one that all the cool kids (or rather, the kids you consider cool) own and use. After all, the top of the line smart phones are expensive pieces of equipment and getting more so with each version – approaching the $1000 mark. A flagship smart phone costs more than a full-fledged computer these days, so it’s important to choose your model carefully.
Part of that choice is about features and usability, but part of it – for many folks – is about what sort of image it projects.
- iPhone users tend to consider themselves members of an elite club; they’re willing to pay the “Apple tax” for the name and perceived quality, and they want a “toaster” phone, something that’s simple and although it does less, does what it does do reliably and well.
- Android users tend to be the uber geeks. They’re willing to pay as much or more for a Nexus or a top-shelf Sammy in order to get the most advanced features and most flexible functionality available in a phone. They love being able to customize their interface, install alternate ROMs, dig into the operating system, and in short, do what geeks do.
- Windows Phone users are mostly hard-line Microsoft loyalists who appreciate the fluidity and elegance of an interface that’s not a copy of anything else, and are willing to endure the more limited selection of apps and smaller selection of hardware choices for greater compatibility with their Windows computers.
- Blackberry holdouts are a special group that by and large, are comfortable with a phone that does a few things very well and want or need the perceived increased security (although now some BBs run Android so the lines are blurring).
- Users of less popular mobile operating systems tend to be rebels, or need a particular functionality, or are on a tight budget.
And then there are those, mostly older people (or children given them by their parents), who still carry basic voice-and-SMS-only phones with no data capabilities. Their phones are still phones, rather than miniature hand-held computers, and they don’t want or need anything more.
Phone as safety measure
Because it came about so gradually, even those of us who are old enough to have lived in pre-mobile times often don’t fully appreciate how the cell phone has changed our lives in terms of personal safety. Once upon a time, a tire blowout in the middle of nowhere was much more than an inconvenience; it could put your life in danger.
Because you had no way to summon help, your options were to wait for a police car to come along, take a chance on flagging down a stranger, or walk to the nearest house or business to ask to use their phone (and sometimes the nearest wasn’t all that near at all). Now we can call a friend or relative and wait, safely locked inside our vehicles, for them to arrive or send help – or we can call 911 if necessary.
Prior to the proliferation of the cell phone, we had a dilemma if we saw a stranger stranded on the roadside, as well. Did we stop to help, risking that it was an ambush setup? Or did we drive on by, callously leaving a person in need all alone and at risk? Sure, we could stop at the next pay phone and call the police, but how long would it take to get there and what might happen in the meantime? Now we can call immediately (using hands-free dialing, of course) and report the problem to the proper authorities.
It was also far easier to wander into a dangerous area, or get lost altogether, before we had GPS and navigation-equipped smart phones with us at all times. We can also track where our children, spouses and elderly relatives are by their phones with apps like Life360 – and the location capability is a godsend to missing persons investigations.
Back in the day of the hard-wired landline, if someone broke into your house, you’d better hope you could get to where the phone happened to be installed. Now your phone is likely to be close by. Our phones can also send us alerts to warn us of bad weather, and last year when a tornado hit our town, wiping out houses just across the lake from us, we used our phones to keep up with what was happening while sheltered in our master closet. Afterward, power was out for three days and our phones were our means of getting news and making sure friends and relatives were okay.
Cell phones also provide more subtle safety features. They can function as flashlights when we’re in dark places, we can call for an ambulance and/or look up emergency first aid instructions on the web, and if something should happen to us that renders us unconscious, first responders can notify our emergency contacts (ICE contacts) listed on our phones. If we see a crime being committed, see a drunk driving weaving and out of traffic, or see a safety hazard in the road or a public place, we can quickly and easily report it.
Although we find the focus is often on the dangers posed by phones (texting while driving/walking, being contacted or tracked by predators, having our personal information stolen for identity theft, and so forth), our phones have also greatly enhanced our personal safety and helped to reduce crime.
Phone as security blanket
Not only do we depend on our phones for convenience, status, and safety; we have also become psychologically dependent on them. We feel “naked” without them. If we discover our phone isn’t with us, many of us feel cut off and less capable – even if we probably won’t be using it while we’re out and about. Most of us will turn our cars around and go back to retrieve a phone left at home, even if it makes us late for an appointment.
Losing track of our phones makes us anxious. Even when we know the phone is somewhere in the house, it’s disconcerting to not be able to find it (luckily we can call it, or use an app like Find My Phone to locate it). If we should lose it “out in the world,” we feel a sense of panic – akin to losing our wallet with all our money, credit cards and ID inside.
And why wouldn’t we? Today’s phones hold much more personal information than a wallet, often stores our passwords to numerous sites, including banking and online stores, may have our credit card numbers stored on them, as well as sensitive or confidential email, SMS conversations and private social media messages. In the wrong hands, the data on some people’s phones could get them fired, arrested, or even targeted for violence.
Our dependency on our phones isn’t just about practical fears regarding our private information, though. For many people, always-there phones and always-on Internet connectivity has led to a psychological need to be constantly in communication with someone. The compulsion to check email and Facebook every fifteen minutes can be strong, and even if we know that there’s nothing in those messages that we couldn’t live without for a few hours or days (or forever), we’re like drug addicts who get twitchy without a regular fix.
Parents used to make fun of teenagers’ hours-long conversations and say they were addicted, but cell phones have taken that to staggering new heights, and cell phone addiction (as a subcategory of Internet addiction) is now a subject of much study and serious concern within the mental health community. It’s not “officially” considered a disorder in the DSM-5 (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used to classify mental disorders) but many professionals would agree that it’s only a matter of time before it’s listed there along with gambling addiction in the “non-substance-related addictive disorders” section.
NOTE: One change in the fifth version of the DSM is that addictive disorders are now regarded as spectrum disorders, meaning an addiction can range from mild to severe. Certainly we see this in many addictive/dependency behaviors, and phone dependency is something affects some people to a much greater degree than others.
The future or non-future) of the phone
Phones have gotten more and more sophisticated every year. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, innovative hardware and software designers come up with something that’s even more magical and revolutionary.
In addition to previously mentioned functions, we can use our smart phones to make payments – not just traditional online bill-paying but by scanning the phone at retail point-of-sales. We can use them to verify our identities to networks or web sites as part of multi-factor authentication schemes; instead of using a smart card, I have Microsoft Authenticator installed on my phone and when I log into the Microsoft internal network with my password and PIN, it contacts the phone app, which opens up and asks me to enter a PIN or put my finger on the fingerprint sensor. Stealing my username and password would do a hacker no good unless he also had physical access to my phone.
Today, phones have replaced many of the small tools and devices we once carried as a matter of routine: watches, mini flashlights, paper day planners, music players, calculators, voice recorders, photo albums, paperback books and many more. Even so, most of us still have to keep up with many “essentials” when we venture beyond our own property. driver’s license, money and/or credit cards, a ring full of keys, various membership cards, and so forth.
A techie’s dream is the day when we only have to carry around one thing – our phone. The technology already exists for us to start our cars and lock or unlock our doors with our phones. We no longer need paper boarding passes at the airport, and one day it’s likely we’ll have our official identification – drivers’ license, passport, social security card – in electronic format. We won’t need physical credit cards; we’ll pay with our phones. We can unlock our doors remotely to let someone in who needs access on a one-time basis – without entrusting them with a key they could lose or make an unauthorized copy of.
Certainly there are security issues to be addressed before we’ll be comfortable with phone-as-everything, but it seems the day is coming and personally, I look forward to traveling a little lighter in the future. At that point, perhaps the issue of whether we’re “addicted” to our phones will be a moot point. The need to have them with us will be purely practical – and we may even be required by law to carry them and produce them for law enforcement in certain situations, as we are with physical ID cards today. And doesn’t that possibility open up a whole new and interesting can of worms?
A world without phones
Addicted or not, in today’s world most of us find it hard to imagine a world without cell phones. But if we think back to twenty-five years ago, we would have laughed at anyone who said in the future, homes would be built without phone jacks and then-ubiquitous landlines would be found in fewer than half of the homes in the U.S. So maybe it’s not so crazy to think that one day, maybe during our lifetimes, cell phones will also have started a disappearing act – at least in their current form.
Because there is still a problem with the current form factor: the bigger and better our phones get, the more of a hassle it is to take them with us. We want to see our data on a large screen, but we want a device that will easily fit into a pocket or small bag. In fact, it would be absolutely fantastic, in my opinion, to do away with the bag altogether (and we all know that most women’s clothing vendors refuse to give us anything with functional pockets).
The other problem with phones is that it’s easy to lose them, they’re easy to steal, and it’s easy to drop and break them. Wearables, on the other hand, solve most of these issues.
I have a smart watch, a Samsung Gear Fit 2, that I really love. It’s far more than a fitness tracker and health monitor, although it’s primarily marketed as that. But it also lets me read my email right on the watch face, shows me text messages and Facebook Messenger messages and lets me respond to them (albeit with short, preconstructed replies), displays who’s calling and missed calls, shows me the current and forecasted weather, lets me check my appointments on my calendar, and functions as a timer, alarm clock, stopwatch and more.
I love the convenience of doing all this without digging my phone out of my bag or pocket, but I want it to do more. I want it to surf the web, make and receive calls instead of just notifying me about them, read email attachments, and basically do most of what I can do on my phone – while remaining the size it is now. I want it to be the phone, and that means it would need a way to either project a display or easily connect to larger monitors and TVs, and those connectable displays would need to be, well, everywhere. In my car, in hotel rooms and cruise ship cabins, in public places. Or I can carry one with me.
I want a watch that does what Microsoft’s Continuum on Windows phone does: let me turn it into a computer, with a full size keyboard and mouse as well monitor. And I want it to have at least equivalent processing power and memory to my current phone.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be a watch. What if Google Glass came back in a much more functional and low-profile (and attractive) iteration? What if my glasses, which I wear all the time anyway, had a powerful but tiny computer built in? What if it displayed whatever I now see on the phone, right in front of my eyes and only I could see it? What if I could take a photo by whispering “snap” or compose an email message by voice command?
Does this all sound impossible or unlikely? Just think about how crazy it would have sounded to your great grandparents if someone had described the smart phones we take for granted today. Will the future be a world of wearables instead of carryables? I don’t know. I just know that the history of telecommunications proves that amazing things can happen in a very short period of time.
As I mentioned in the previous article, Your AI Relationship Status: It’s Complicated, some folks are very passionate about their choice of AI (indicating, again, at least a smidgen of emotional attachment). They get defensive at any criticism of their chosen digital assistant. They wouldn’t think of “cheating” on her with one of her competitors.
Next, no longer able to avoid starting my work day, I sit down at my computer and say “Hey Cortana, good morning” and she tells me that New Mexico has more cows than people. This is slightly more relevant than it seems, as this is the anniversary of NM becoming the I ask her “Where’s my package?” and she tracks the UPS delivery that she found in my email. I ask “Hey, Cortana, what’s on my agenda today?” and she shows me a synopsis of my appointments and reminders, along with a list of friends whose birthdays are today.
which looks pretty much like the Sony, the Gear, etc. 
Deb Shinder's Technology InSights 
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