Old Cell phones better than new ones!
http://smh.com.au/articles/...
The mobile telephone has evolved into a sleek multi-functional marvel. It can store email addresses and hundreds of phone numbers. It can emit any of dozens of ring tones or vibrate. It can be used to play games and double as a digital camera - even as it is small enough to fit in a cigarette packet.
But for all these wireless wonders, industry analysts, researchers and consumers say many of the new models are simply not as good as the old ones at being telephones.
"Not only is reception a lot poorer but the phones eat up battery life, so there's less talk time," said Michael King, a mobile data analyst. Games are nice, but "the major majority of the time, we're talking on these things". "If they can't do that well, what's the point, really?"
While the battery-life problem is one that manufacturers say users must accept as a trade-off for smaller size and more features, the reception issue arises from the trend of making phones sleeker by putting their antennas inside.
Research from Ethertronics in San Francisco indicates that, all other things being equal, the radio strength of today's phones with internal antennas is 15-29 per cent less powerful than that of phones with external antennas.
But several makers said that, generally speaking, their new phones were as good as the old ones, and met the needs of consumers and network carriers.
A Nokia spokesman said one reason the company had moved to internal antennas was that broken antennas were "one of the top 10 complaints about mobile phones". Users preferred the "ease and carryability" of phones with internal antennas, he said.
By netchicken:
posted on 11-3-2003 The mobile telephone has evolved into a sleek multi-functional marvel. It can store email addresses and hundreds of phone numbers. It can emit any of dozens of ring tones or vibrate. It can be used to play games and double as a digital camera - even as it is small enough to fit in a cigarette packet.
But for all these wireless wonders, industry analysts, researchers and consumers say many of the new models are simply not as good as the old ones at being telephones.
"Not only is reception a lot poorer but the phones eat up battery life, so there's less talk time," said Michael King, a mobile data analyst. Games are nice, but "the major majority of the time, we're talking on these things". "If they can't do that well, what's the point, really?"
While the battery-life problem is one that manufacturers say users must accept as a trade-off for smaller size and more features, the reception issue arises from the trend of making phones sleeker by putting their antennas inside.
Research from Ethertronics in San Francisco indicates that, all other things being equal, the radio strength of today's phones with internal antennas is 15-29 per cent less powerful than that of phones with external antennas.
But several makers said that, generally speaking, their new phones were as good as the old ones, and met the needs of consumers and network carriers.
A Nokia spokesman said one reason the company had moved to internal antennas was that broken antennas were "one of the top 10 complaints about mobile phones". Users preferred the "ease and carryability" of phones with internal antennas, he said.