Cell phones: Ever-evolving, rarely improving...

Did we forget what cell phones were created for? I got my first cell phone in '97 because I wanted the safety and security of having a phone available for emergencies and such when I wasn't close to a land-line phone. True, it was the size and weight of a landscaping brick, but in the few instances when I needed it--it was there. It stored 50 numbers, (which at the time I thought was HUGE) but I only needed to know three: home, work, and 911. Ironically, it had the best reception (even out in the sticks where we lived) of ANY of the four cells I've had to this day.

Fast forward to the present day.

My current cell phone has a full-color display, a built-in camera, capabilities for web-browsing and email, voice-activated dialing, a calculator, text-messaging, an alarm clock, notepad, 46235 ring tones, a world clock, and it's no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. Regardless of how convenient and or "necessary" those features are, it lacks the original feature that prompted me to get a cell in the first place: reception and security. I live in the state's capital city, yet I still have to stand in the middle of my front yard with a wire coat hanger up my nose in order to place a call. And if I'm out on the highway and need to make a call? Good luck. If I were to get in an accident, it's unlikely that I'd be successful in getting through to 911... but hey, at least I can take a picture of the smashed-up car, type the other drivers info on the notepad, calculate the speed of passing cars, set my alarm clock for the next day, and slip it comfortably back in my pocket until I need the EZ-Tip Calculator to figure out how much I owe the waitress when I stop to eat lunch.

With all of the commercialism and competition in the cell phone market, don't you think at least one of the providers would think about doing something to improve the service and range of these silly things?

LOL!!! I had to call 911 on my cell once... I got put on hold for 20 minutes.

I'm not surprised. A few years ago I was headed home from class during rush hour downtown, and almost ran over a man who was lying in the street. I figured he had been hit by a car, and I barely avoided him myself. Fearing that another driver would run him over, I spun my truck around, parked near him and lept out. He was out cold and had blue snot coming out of his nose. I first tried hitting the OnStar emergency button in the truck--but didn't get through. Then I tried 911 on the cell phone--no luck. Fortunately another guy had stopped shortly thereafter and was able to get through on his phone. If he hadn't, who knows how long it would have been until the EMS and police arrived.

Coincidentally, I found this today. Our secretary forwarded to us warnings of eletrocution risk from using charging cell phones, )which I would not do anyway). I found no corroboration for that hazard but did find this interesting article...



August 8, 2000
Web posted at: 10:27 a.m. EDT (1427 GMT)


by Jennifer Disabatino

(IDG) -- A Maryland neurologist filed an $800 million lawsuit this week against several wireless providers and two umbrella organizations claiming that radiation from his cell phone is responsible for his malignant brain tumor.

According to the lawsuit, Dr. Christopher Newman, 41, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 1998 and can no longer work as a result of his disease.

His attorney, Joanne Suder in Baltimore, wasn't immediately available for comment. However, her office is keeping personal information about Newman private to protect her client.

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The suit was filed Tuesday in Baltimore City Circuit Court, and claims that years of use of wireless handheld telephones caused Newman's cancer.

Named as defendants in the suit are Motorola Inc., Verizon Communications Corp., Bell Atlantic Corp., Bell Atlantic Mobile Systems, Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems, Washington/Baltimore Cellular, SBC Communications INC., the Cellular Telecommunication Industry Association (CTIA) and the Telecommunication Industry Association. The suit seeks $100 million in compensatory damages and $700 million in punitive damages.

"Groundless and Unsubstantiated"
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Norman Sandler, Motorola's director of global strategic issues, said he's aware of the lawsuit, but hasn't been officially notified.

"The issues aren't new, the claim isn't new," Sandler said. "The assertion at the core of this is groundless and unsubstantiated by the science."

There have been a "handful" of similar lawsuits before this, he said, but none would support Newman's claims.

"One by one they have slowly but surely been dismissed by the courts or withdrawn by the plaintiffs," Sandler said, and none of the suits was settled out of court.

"It is an area that has been heavily researched for more than 50 years," he said, and the newer uses of radio frequency radiation, like wireless communications, have undergone heavy scrutiny in the past 10 years.

"The fundamental scientific judgments certainly haven't changed."

Some evidence of risk
The lawsuit came one day after Dr. George Carlo, a public health researcher, released a summary of research in which he raised questions about the safety of cell phone use.

Carlo's research found radio frequency radiation from wireless phone antennae "appears to cause genetic damage in human blood," while another case study uncovered a "statistically significant increase" in neuro-epithelial brain tumors among cell phone users.

Carlo had been hired by the CTIA to oversee research on the effects of cellular telephone radiation, at a cost of $27 million. The CTIA has since disavowed Carlo and his conclusions, and at least one of his researchers has publicly disagreed with Carlo's conclusions.

Dr. Henry Lai, a researcher in the Bioelectromagnetics Research Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle, said there is preliminary evidence that cell phone radiation has an effect on animal cells, but the evidence is far from conclusive.

"Biological changes do not always become health hazards to humans. Of course there's a question there." Lai said, but without having done studies on humans, "I don't know."

Heh, I always knew cell phones were EVIL. LOL.

I don't have one. (Gasp, choke....did she say she doesn't have a CELL PHONE???)

Yes, I live in the dark ages, and I like it that way. I figure that 99.9% of the time, if I'm somewhere I can't be reached by a "normal" phone, I probably don't want to be reached anyway. The one time we borrowed a cell phone in case of an emergency was when we went on the Harley out to Yellowstone/Grand Tetons....and we couldn't get any reception for most of the trip anyway. Go figure.

But yeah, all in all..you would think that the cell phone manufacturers would be more concerned (or at least AS concerned) about actually allowing you to make a call in an emergency as they are about making sure you can have the latest rap song as a ringtone and being able to take pictures of an accident with the camera in the phone.....but I guess that's why they make the big bucks, and I sit here without a cell phone. LOL.

Well actually, my wife and I haven't bought into the cell phone generation either. I have a Motorola bag phone, which is probably what Paul is referring to as his first, but only got it so I could run credit cards at shows. Of course, that was before I got a wireless IP credit card machine, so now I guess it's mostly for security for trips. However, I don't even know if it still works, since I have had no reason to use it lately. I don't get (much less accept) any incoming calls on it at all. Matter of fact, if you offered me $10,000 in cold hard cash to tell you what my cell phone number is, I couldn't collect, because I just don't know.

Now I have heard that the analog cell systems are going away (or maybe they already have) and my cell phone will be Smithsonian material. I don't know at this point if I would even get another one. Coverage seems iffy, and really, I don't have a need for all the gadgetry. Who needs a phone with a manual the size of War and Peace? Quite frankly, if I am out to dinner, taking a drive, or doing ANYTHING other then being at home near the phone, I really don't want anyone bothering me anyway. I got out of the house for a reason: Not to be bothered. If it is important enough to bother me at dinner, then it is probably just bad news anyway, and I really don't want it to spoil my night. Leave a message and I'll get it when I get back home. You can spoil my night then.

Personally, I think people having their cell phones in a restaurant beeping and chortling should be boiled in Crisco oil along with the french fries. Even worse are those that answer it and speak as if the person on the other end MUST be terminally hearing impaired. And for those people weaving side to side on the road with that cell phone stuck to your head, PLEASE, GET THE HECK OFF OF THE ROAD! Used to be if you saw someone weaving on the road, you could bet money it was some drunk. Now when the wife and I see that, we just look at each other and say "cell phone".... But they are every bit as dangerous as a drunk behind the wheel. Most people just can't spare the concentration effort of driving to be talking on the phone at the same time.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Who needs a phone with a manual the size of War and Peace?

...and in seven different languages, I might add.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Personally, I think people having their cell phones in a restaurant beeping and chortling should be boiled in Crisco oil along with the french fries. Even worse are those that answer it and speak as if the person on the other end MUST be terminally hearing impaired. And for those people weaving side to side on the road with that cell phone stuck to your head, PLEASE, GET THE HECK OFF OF THE ROAD! Used to be if you saw someone weaving on the road, you could bet money it was some drunk. Now when the wife and I see that, we just look at each other and say "cell phone".... But they are every bit as dangerous as a drunk behind the wheel. Most people just can't spare the concentration effort of driving to be talking on the phone at the same time.

ARRGHH... That irritates the living crap out of me. I just love it when I'm waiting in line at a convenience store, the bank, etc. and the person at the counter actually ANSWERS their phone when it rings, and CONTINUES to talk to whomever about the most mundane gibberish--OBVIOUSLY slowing things down and making everyone waiting behind them wait longer!!

And yeah... driving while babbling should carry mandatory jail time. I know exactly what you mean, Rich. As soon as the driver in front of me starts bouncing off the lines or varying their speed a lot, I immediately think "cell phone". Just yesterday on campus I watched a kid on a moped who was trying to talk on his cell phone while driving. He didn't do so well at the bottom of the hill where it's icy, and almost made friends with the side of the metro bus. It would have been hard not to laugh.

I won't deny having used the nifty camera thingy on occasion, but it's just goofing around and definitely NOT while I'm driving (that's what the good camera is for. j/k). Heck, a whole week can go by and I won't even have a clue where the darn thing is. Once in a while someone will call the house phone and get all irate "WHY DIDN'T YOU CALL ME BACK?" and I'm thinking... uh, when did you leave a message? "ON YOUR CELL PHONE THREE DAYS AGO!" Oops. I should probably change my voicemail message to something like, "Hey this is Paul. Don't bother leaving a message because my phone is a p.o.s. and I don't bother checking voicemail for weeks at a time."

Everything said is all so true! I do have a cell phone, but I never bought one myself. See, my sisters and even my father do chase the newest models of cell phone, and sometimes, they'll give me their "old" phone for free. These days, finding a model without a built-in camera is so difficult. The cell phone I'm using now has camera function, and I have only taken one photo using it, and that was a pic of my gecko which I used as wall paper for the phone.

I agree that people using their cell phone in public are getting incredibly annoying; that includes talking loud, playing built-in games with the sound turned on, and also, I especially get ticked off when some people let their phone ring a long time while they check out the incoming phone numbers or wait till that sentence of their "rap song ringtone" gets finished before they answer the call!

Do you guys have advertising/junk phone calls in America? Here in Hong Kong, there are an increasing number of advertising phone calls, and the other side of the phone is not even a real person, they have a machine to make calls to everyone (don't know how they got all these cell phone numbers) and then just play the tape of whatever they're trying to sell. Although the government is now working on new law to prevent these sort of things, but it'll take a while before these things will go away.

I have my cell phone turned off most of the time; I only use it if I need to make a phone call.

I put off getting a phone for as long as I could. I think I was the last of my friends to get one. What finally made me hop on the bandwagon? I really, really liked a guy I had just started dating and wanted to make it as easy as possible for him to reach me. Up to that point, I lucked out in emergencies by borrowing other people's cell phones.

I used to work in a restaurant. I remember waiting on a couple who were regulars. I can only assume they were brother and sister because they would spend the entire meal talking on their phones, obviously carrying on separate conversations, then split the check at the end of the meal. They did this every single time they came into the restaurant. It always made me wonder, what was the point of going out to eat with each other in the first place?

Anyway, I'm pretty good at tuning out the rude people who talk on their phones, but what I find annoying is when my friend text-messages other people on his phone while I'm talking to him in person. Or worse, being the person my friends call just because they're idly standing in line somewhere and felt bored.

Good point! Don't call ME on the phone then put me on hold when another call comes in. If it isn't important enough to talk to me and you can't leave the other call wait, then don't call me in the first place. I've had people call me and 2 seconds after I answer the phone, they will say "Hold on, I have another call." Like I have all the time in the world to just stand there listening to dead air time...........