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World’s Highest Mobile Phone Call – Relevant?

By The Guru on May 23, 2007

Everest
I normally don’t tend to skew off topic of Symbian/S60-related news, but this I think has some sort of relevance. So on the 21st of May, a climber scaled Mt. Everest with a Motorola Z8 and made 2 phone calls and sent a text message. Why? Not sure. Does it matter? Not really. This is a pretty pathetic publicity stunt, in the opinion of many. However, I think it further hammers in the recent realization of many that Motorola is a dying company.

Dying? Yes. And by dying, I mean they’ve stopped innovating. They had the RAZR, what, 5 years ago? 6? It was an incredibly innovative device. The thinnest handset ever manufactured, and it was a resounding success. It initially retailed for $600 (with contract, sound familiar?) and within MONTHS had dropped to $200. Which means it was just a pretty tin can, without alot of meat. In fact, it’s fatter cousin, the V551, had been out and was easily available for ~$50 with contract. Same EXACT feature set, other than the dimensions.

Fast forward 6 years. What’s new with Motorola? Well, there’s 15
different colored RAZRs, a few different form factors, but have the
features been improved? Slightly, but not beyond what every other
manufacturer has had for a long time. I think the most recent edition
of the RAZR has a 2mp cam (no autofocus), memory card slot, 3G, and
stereo bluetooth. How many other phones on the market have the same
features? At least 2 from every manufacturer. How many manufacturers
have a thin model? All.

Oh but wait, a few weeks ago, Motorola announced that they had a
Multimedia Monster ready to be announced. Oh man, the internet went
NUTS. What could it be? Would it be something groundbreaking? Nope.
Just a re-announcement of the MotoRizr Z8 that was announced several
months ago.

And now the Mt. Everest thing. The towers that it connected to were
temporarily put in place. And how many people actually climb Mt.
Everest? Few. How many do it to make a phone call? One. Did this stunt
help drive innovation in the mobile industry? Nope. Did it enable us to
do something we’d never done before (talk on our phones really really
high)? Nope. It added ZERO value to anything currently in existence.

Now let’s be fair, is anyone else innovating in the mobile arena? YES!
Apple has the iPhone. Bomb though I think it will be, it’s innovative
in several ways. UI, form factor, integration, etc. Nokia has the N95.
5MP cam, WiFi, GPS, TV-Out. That’s ALOT to cram into as small a device
as the N95. SE has their new P1 UIQ device that everyone is RAVING
about. And they have killer cameras on their phones. Samsung/LG?
MediaFLO in the US. Innovation.

No doubt the RAZR has been successful. Does  America *want* innovation? Are we perfectly content in blissful ignorance of the better featured phones out there? Is Motorola trying the same thing that Nintendo did with the Wii and forgoing the feature cockfight and keeping it simple, hoping to appeal to the mass market? Are we better of like this, or are we suffering because of "dumbed-down" phones?

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The Guru

The Guru, aka Ricky Cadden, started Symbian-Guru.com in November 2006, out of his excitement for the S60 3rd Edition version of Symella. The Guru has used Symbian devices since the Nokia 6620, and is known for his perspective as a power user. You can follow The Guru on Twitter at @Rcadden

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  • JonnyBruha

    To the Z8′s credit and for relevance to your blog post, I seem to remember reading that the Z8 is indeed running Symbian s60, but don’t quote me on that.

  • JonnyBruha

    To the Z8′s credit and for relevance to your blog post, I seem to remember reading that the Z8 is indeed running Symbian s60, but don’t quote me on that.

  • JonnyBruha

    I take that back. It’s running Symbian, but it’s UIQ 3. So, as you said, who cares?

  • JonnyBruha

    I take that back. It’s running Symbian, but it’s UIQ 3. So, as you said, who cares?

  • http://www.howardforums.com/ Donald

    Point of order: The V551 actually added in EDGE data, so it couldn’t do much more than a RAZR, but it could do it a little faster.

    It’ll be interesting to see what might happen with the Motorola/Kodak deal, but it does sound like Moto is trying the Nintendo technique.

    Of course, given Nintendo’s success with the Wii, maybe that’s not a bad idea after all…

  • http://www.howardforums.com Donald

    Point of order: The V551 actually added in EDGE data, so it couldn’t do much more than a RAZR, but it could do it a little faster.

    It’ll be interesting to see what might happen with the Motorola/Kodak deal, but it does sound like Moto is trying the Nintendo technique.

    Of course, given Nintendo’s success with the Wii, maybe that’s not a bad idea after all…

  • Steve_R

    I agree. Why bother? The current crop of satellite phones are perfectly capable of making calls in far out places of the globe.

    Come to think of it, the last satellite phone i used in a hostile sandy land far away, was a Motorola. You had to have a degree in astrophysics to work out the menu system…… Hmm…..

  • Steve_R

    I agree. Why bother? The current crop of satellite phones are perfectly capable of making calls in far out places of the globe.

    Come to think of it, the last satellite phone i used in a hostile sandy land far away, was a Motorola. You had to have a degree in astrophysics to work out the menu system…… Hmm…..

  • Robin Ashe

    Nintendo was more innovative than Sony or MS, so that analogy doesn’t really hold water.

  • Robin Ashe

    Nintendo was more innovative than Sony or MS, so that analogy doesn’t really hold water.

  • http://profile.typekey.com/symbianguru/ Ricky Cadden

    @Robin in a way, you’re correct. However, both Sony and Microsoft kept adding new and more sophisticated technology, faster processors and whatnot. Nintendo merely reboxed the Gamecube’s innards and added motion-sensing, pretty much.

    Same for Motorola compared to the rest. Everyone else is increasing camera quality, feature sets (gps, wifi, etc) and totally new things like MediaFLO. Motorola just keeps repackaging old technology.

  • http://profile.typekey.com/symbianguru/ Ricky Cadden

    @Robin in a way, you’re correct. However, both Sony and Microsoft kept adding new and more sophisticated technology, faster processors and whatnot. Nintendo merely reboxed the Gamecube’s innards and added motion-sensing, pretty much.

    Same for Motorola compared to the rest. Everyone else is increasing camera quality, feature sets (gps, wifi, etc) and totally new things like MediaFLO. Motorola just keeps repackaging old technology.

  • bamberro

    ok, idefinately agree with what you said, however I believe that Z8 is a pretty innovative device in being the first UIQ based device without a touchscreen. I don’t see the point of using UIQ in this case, S60 would be a far better choice, however I have to admit that Z8 is a nice phone (I had 5 minutes to play with it), however the most intresting thing is its form-factor – by sliding it turns from a candybar to a banana-shaped device :)
    Some other advantages are the size- it really is pretty smallfor a symbian phone, and presumably price, as it is not a high-class phone (the specs are not too impressive)- it should be relatively cheap.
    Well all that said, I still have to admit that I am going to stick with S60, but I would like to see more and more symbian phones from Motorola, and other manufacturers.

  • bamberro

    ok, idefinately agree with what you said, however I believe that Z8 is a pretty innovative device in being the first UIQ based device without a touchscreen. I don’t see the point of using UIQ in this case, S60 would be a far better choice, however I have to admit that Z8 is a nice phone (I had 5 minutes to play with it), however the most intresting thing is its form-factor – by sliding it turns from a candybar to a banana-shaped device :)
    Some other advantages are the size- it really is pretty smallfor a symbian phone, and presumably price, as it is not a high-class phone (the specs are not too impressive)- it should be relatively cheap.
    Well all that said, I still have to admit that I am going to stick with S60, but I would like to see more and more symbian phones from Motorola, and other manufacturers.

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