A week ago, my wife and I were walking around downtown Bellevue (and I don't say that facetiously, like when I referred to "downtown Provo" the other day), in a fairly upper-class mall, when on a whim we went to the Verizon Wireless store. I had a hunch that we were probably supposed to be up for new phones with the new-contract discount by now.
Basically the general idea is that you get a free or discounted phone if you sign a two year contract. Then you do the same thing two years later. Our situation is "special", however - our plan had changed a few times before that two years was up. Once this was because we changed plans (I think we got more minutes or something, I don't remember exactly what the point was), and again when we changed our phone numbers to Washington phone numbers. In spite of already having basically signed another contract, my hunch turned out to be correct that we still could get the discount on new phones to replace our old crufty ones in October, two years after the original contract started. This was contingent on our contract being extended to two years after we got the new phones, which is only maybe half a year longer than our contract already was.
In addition to getting lower-priced phones, basically all phones had some kind of $50 mail-in rebate, and my wife (being the primary account-holder) had an additional $100 discount on her phone from Verizon. What this basically meant was that we could get one OK phone and one fairly nice phone for free (after rebates), but we had to buy any accessories ourselves. We decided to give me the nicer phone (on the premise that I'd probably enjoy it more I guess). They're both Samsungs, and they both have cameras included.
This camera thing is strange to me, since just a few weeks ago, we were looking at all these pictures taken by Sariah's cousin's phones and were complaining about how all theirs were grainy or pixelated compared to the clear, high-resolution pictures taken with our real camera. I certainly don't think we're planning on doing any real photography with our phones (any more than Jonathan would), but I've been surprised at the ways we've found to make it useful.
There's the obvious point of having a good way to set a wallpaper on the tiny medium-resolution screens that are becoming typical on cellular phones now. Then, in my case, there's the ability to take pictures of Gwynneth really quickly if she's being cute - not to leave digital photos for our posterity - so that I can show them off to people at work or when I take a trip. In addition to taking pictures, my phone is capable of taking a few seconds of low-resolution video (with sound!). This integrated A/V is just what it takes to make some people (particularly some females) smile and say things in goofy high-pitched coos.
The point where these things get really interesting (and I suppose one of the big ways they get advertised) is where you can start sending these pictures and videos around to other cell phones for a couple extra bucks per month. While I really don't think it's happened yet (sure, in some circles, sending pictures along with text messages is a really big deal), I think the media-centric cellular phone may some day do for telecommunications what DVDs did for home entertainment. Let me make the analogy.
In film, for decades (heck, nearly a century even), the only truly great way to watch movies was in the theater. For about half that long, after the movie's earnings at the box office started going down, you could also get the movie on a VHS cassette and watch it on your television through your VCR. Maybe I'm being generous or stingy with the dates, I honestly haven't done a ton of research around recorded video media. And there's been some other sorts of media for video as well, like laser discs and the infamous betamax, and slightly more recently, hi-8 tapes. And while I'm sure I'm missing tons of them, the bottom line is that VHS was the standard format to buy movies in simply because it caught on - whether or not it was better than anything or everything else, there was just a lot of movies already available for it. Now, many times, if there appeared to be a reasonable demand, it was fairly easy to start producing these same movies on the other types of media - you just had to record the data in the other format. If you could copy it from the original film real, you were basically guaranteed that it would be the best that movie could be on that type of medium.
But when DVDs started coming out (mid to late '90s, if I'm not mistaken), it started to look like the extra level of interaction possible with a video recording was something that we just hadn't even thought about before. The result is that some early movies ported to DVD didn't take full advantage of the interaction model, but then again, nothing takes full advantage of a brand-new technology. What was really interesting is that within a few years, it would almost be silly to release a DVD recording of a movie without special features. I daresay that some movies can be better experienced in the home though a DVD player than in the theater (although it's hard to beat a real movie theater when it comes to big explosions and stuff :-) ).
The (potentially negative) side effect of this is that older movies on DVD come in two general categories - movies that just get re-recorded to DVD with no extra features, and movies that need to be revisited to pull the special features out of some retired producer's butt. When buying or renting the first category, the consumer feels gypped, as if they didn't get their full money's worth from the DVD. In the case of the second, the consumer may wait for years before being able to enjoy the movie on DVD. Ever notice how Disney feels like it's never quite done moving things over to DVD? It can be expensive and challenging to make the DVD version of a movie from the pre-DVD era DVD-worthy. The reason? People weren't saving those deleted scenes, shooting extended scenes, keeping interviews with the actors, and doing behind-the-scenes documentaries for every movie they made 10 years ago.
Ok, enough about movies. This post was supposed to be about cellular phones, remember? My point is that we've been using telephones for a century as well. For a couple decades now, people have slowly started to adopt mobile phones (well, rather quickly in the last five years). This transition brings a few changes - people are easier to reach, it's way easier to pick people up from the airport, and almost everyone has a way to call someone in an emergency, or when they're lost. But these aren't sweeping changes - people still have the same format of phone numbers, they call people's home phones and business phones, it's all just more convenient for people who aren't at home or in the office.
But when telephones start getting used more and more for things other than telephony, there is potential for this sweeping conversion to a telecommunications medium that just plain can't be understood by the traditional medium. My home telephone just plain doesn't receive pictures, videos and text messages and do anything useful with it. With the exception of text messages, neither can my old cellular phone. This means that if there is a point where these sorts of things are what people expect their cellular phones (and those of others) to do, one of two things needs to happen to the older phones (including those on land lines here) - either they need to start talking the talk of the new cellular phones, or they will stop being people's primary communication medium.
Of course, for some people, the idea that one's primary phone number is their mobile phone is hardly something to look for in the future, but other people like having slightly larger, more comfortable phones in their home, particularly for local calls. Does my grandfather want a phone in his home that can receive pictures of my baby fresh off my camera phone? If it were easy and inexpensive enough to do, I'd say the answer is yes. But until someone invents the DVD player of home telephones, it just won't happen.
