Worst of the Week: Programmed to fail

Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
This past week I was in the enviable position of being put in charge of acquiring a new mobile device for a pair of my teenage nieces. Normally that sounds like something that someone (me) with some experience in the mobile industry should be able to knock out in about 15 minutes. And in most cases I am guessing that would be correct.
However, if you failed to comprehend the first sentence of this diatribe you will have missed the fact that the acquisition was for a pair of teenage nieces. As in two young women, one just now of legal age though not possessing any skill to drive, and the other slightly younger, but with way more attitude.
(Side note on this acquisition. One of the nieces had managed to keep her current phone in one piece for more than one year, though that device’s functionality was severely hampered by many of the buttons no longer doing what they were supposed to do, while the other niece managed to destroy her phone in a matter of months. Not sure how this is possible, but I recommend any device manufacturer looking for a real torture test of their devices should skip those hydraulic gizmos in their labs and just give their new gee-whiz device to a teenage girl. If it can survive there, it will survive anywhere.)
The process started off painfully enough with both quickly disregarding my recommendations for which device might be best for their particular needs and instead both ventured to a higher authority, friends, for their device selection. (Another note to device manufacturers, maybe instead of sending demo devices to reporters and other “industry experts,” I would suggest you hang around school yards in creepy window-less vans and hand out new devices. Might want to keep a lawyer handy for this tip.)
With devices finally selected and ordered, the real fun began as once the new phones arrived the process of programming said new devices and transferring information over from old to new began. As I figure I have some background in the mobile space and being an uncle rather than an aunt, I of course thought I could handle this easily and swiftly. But, as is often the case, a little knowledge is often the most dangerous as through a hilarious set of circumstances that would have made Benny Hill proud, this process took up more time than I cared to spend on it as well as more time than the owners of the new devices cared to wait.
I will admit that I cannot blame the carrier involved in this process as there were ample directions on the topic available from its Web site, though I will say that for those without a cursory knowledge of mobile phones or the technology could find the self-service process perplexing.
I will however blame the device manufacturers or the Bluetooth SIG for making any form of Bluetooth connectivity between two devices still akin to programming the space shuttle. Thanks to incompatibility between Bluetooth devices (and wasn’t that part of the allure of Bluetooth? To allow devices embedded with Bluetooth to talk to each other and even exchange some non-IPR information?) the transferring of contact information was a total failure and was usurped by good old sweat. There is nothing like having to manually enter contact information onto a new device to highlight the intoxicating allure of high technology.
In the end, everything eventually was completed and I now have two happy nieces that are already starting to wear out the letters on their keyboards telling all of their friends that they have a new phone. Now the fun really begins as I try to redeem mail-in rebates. If you are (un)lucky that might just be painful enough for a future WOTW.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–I am as skeptical of the legal system as the next conspiracy nut, but this week’s tangle between Apple and Google over some technology aspects of their respective mobile operating systems is juicy enough for me to buy front-row seats in any courtroom. (They charge for seats in courtrooms, don’t they?) Everyone has acknowledged the advancements Apple’s OS made in the mobile space, but now that other companies are starting to match some of that functionality using “similar” technology, Apple is unleashing its lawyers. I am just hoping this gets ugly and in a hurry with the end result being all new devices have to revert back to monochrome screens and retractable antennas.
–This did not quite make it in time for last week’s WOTW, but Novatel Wireless should be applauded for expanding its product line using Qualcomm’s wearable mobile device module. (That’s right, I said wearable mobile device module. Let that sink in for a moment.) Unfortunately, Novatel did not go into any great detail on its plans for the WMDM, but let’s just assume those plans will be wildly hilarious.
–Received an invite this week to attend this year’s Mobile Voice Conference event in San Francisco. I am sure it’s a nice event and even appears to have some credible speakers on the schedule, but Mobile Voice Conference? Really? Could there be a more boring name for an event? Not that there is anything wrong with mobile voice or trying to improve/take advantage of the service, but I could see there being some difficulty in trying to get approval to attend an event with such a come-hither title.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at [email protected].