Keeping It First World
Getting a new mobile phone in the US is a losing proposition. Not only will you face near-criminal price gouging over contract renewal just to buy a phone that’s locked to one and only one carrier, you won’t even get that cool a phone. The major carriers act like they’ve done us a favor just by carrying slim-but-vapid phones like Motorola’s RAZR.
My Sony-Ericsson T637 is falling apart. Shortly after purchase it developed a warp in its screen, allowing dust and pocket lint to seep in. The phone is now all but useless in direct sunlight and only semi-readable indoors. The navigation stick periodically jams and the battery case detaches with great regularity. At least calls go through just fine, most of the time.
I’ve been waiting to replace it with a Nokia N70. Not any other phone. Not a phone of comparable features. That phone. I’ve been waiting for months, cash in hand. Broadcast: DEAR NOKIA I WANT TO GIVE YOU MY MONEY PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY.
It was announced a while back that Nokia was having to make some revisions to the N70 and other phones in the same line at the behest of the FCC. We still haven’t seen them here.
The N70 may not be particularly impressive to my international readers, but we have essentially nothing comparable Stateside. That the phone has a decent camera, wi-fi, a quality web browser (based on the same code Safari uses), FM radio, good media playback, and is extensible by both usual Symbian means and a special version of the Python programming language is a package totally unmatched here. Our “smart phones” are clunky PDAs with mobiles grafted on to them running crippled versions of Windows. No thanks.
Yesterday it was noted that Nokia is about to announce revisions of the N-series phones. That’s right: revisions before we ever saw the first version here. Chances of the revisions making it here in a timely fashion are, I’d say, slim.
Complaining about not being able to get the latest in high tech is mostly incredibly shallow; it’s like criticizing the fruit in the Garden of Eden for not having enough flavor. But as the tech gap between the United States and other countries grows the complaint turns from petty to serious.
It’s serious when consumers like me start taking our money out of the country for the technology we want. I’m considering purchasing my next mobile from an international reseller of unlocked phones despite the likelihood that whatever I buy won’t work across all US spectrum bands. It’s a proposition I’m willing to accept because my carrier, Cingular, probably won’t ever offer the phone(s) I’m interested in. I don’t expect Helio to bring me anything more than tacky, cobranded content I don’t care about despite it’s much-hyped mission of bringing hip Asian phones to the US market.
It used to be that only a small minority of hardcore geeks were willing to shell out for the latest in (usually Japanese) technology. Now I observe more well-to-do folks picking up a new phone in Asia or Europe while on business, just as one would get a suit made while stopping over in Hong Kong. You just can’t get the same quality for the price in the US.
That’s all relatively small potatoes when you’re talking about mobile phones, but it’s endemic of a bigger problem for the US. When American businesses start migrating to countries with the affordable, widely-available technological infrastructure they need to be agile and efficient it’s seriously serious. From high-capacity broadband to next-generation wireless services to, yes, things like smart mobile phones that keep workers connected, other countries are flogging the States. Meanwhile our telecom infrastructure behemoths are too busy wiretapping citizens and inventing fees that stifle innovation to take us into this new century.
Like scientists running scared at the Bush administration’s Stone Age bio-med policies, all this makes me wary and embarrassed to be both a technology consumer and a technology professional in the US. It means today that I can’t spend my money in this country. It might mean tomorrow that I can’t earn money in this country. This is bigger than not being able to get a hott new phone or a fast internet connection for a reasonable price. It’s a succinct example of this country’s near-total inability to think in the strategic longview, particularly about infrastructure. That’s worth getting worked up about.