December 7, 2007 at 4:16 pm · Authored by Ewan · Filed under Annoying, SMS

Six people emailed
3 people got me on instant messenger
11 people have skyped me
7 people have texted me
2 people have phoned me

Why?

To ask why I haven’t posted anything about the 15-year anniversary of the text message.

I got a story in from Airwide about it - their chap, Neil Papworth, was the first to send a text message… ever! It read ‘Happy Christmas’, incidentally. I’m going to do a piece on Airwide shortly.

But I am supremely unimpressed at the fifteen year anniversary of text messaging. Supremely unimpressed.

Not with the medium of text. I’m fine with that. It’s amazing, etc. [ Insert glowing examples of how texting has changed the planet ]

My issue is that such an anniversary reminds me of just how shit the mobile industry is. It reminds me that 15 years isn’t that long a time. We’ve come so far… or have we? No. Not really.

It’s been fifteen years and yes, we’ve got texting right. Sort of. Maybe. It’s still 10 pence a text, 12.5 pence if you’re a Vodafone UK customer out of your monthly text bundle. Oh there are deals to be had. Various unlimited deals. But the vast majority of the dumb UK public is still paying for text messages. Many will argue that it’s “the right price point, because people pay for it”. Others will argue that you need to pay to “keep the lights on” at the operator.

I argue that the mobile industry is 99% shit.

It’s 1% successful. 1% in the context of me being able to sit in Los Angeles and write an email on my Nokia E61, courtesy of Good Mobile Messaging and send it via AT&T via my T-Mobile UK extortionate 7.50/meg connection.

The rest — the other 99% equates to just how appalling the collective mobile industry is, right now.

I’m right annoyed. Well annoyed. Really annoyed. Pissed right off at the fact that my mother has ONLY just started texting properly.

Why?

Because I gave her an iPhone.

She is now LIBERALLY texting away, snapping pictures, emailing them to her sons and, occasionally, even listening to the Dido tracks she downloaded on iTunes that were ‘magically’ sent to her iPhone when she synched it.

Whilst the iPhone isn’t issue free, I lament the fact that it’s taken Steve Jobs and his smarties at Apple to get my mother properly texting. And I’m using this example as a global indicator of how bad the collective industry is.

In 15 years, trillions of texts have been sent and the industry has done a reasonably good job, eventually, of getting it all to work. (Witness, for example, the total DICKHEAD moment when I bought my One2One [T-Mobile] handset and COULDN’T text someone on another network because of ‘incompatibility’).

But it’s working their way.

It’s working the Nokia way. Or the Samsung way. Or the Sony Ericsson way. Or worse, the operator way.

The population has been fitting themselves round the technology. They’ve had to. Want to text someone? Well learn how to use the Nokia interface. Yes it will take you a while to figure it out, especially if you want to put on T9, but stuff it. It’s your fault for being stupid enough for not knowing how to do it. Learn you stupid idiot! That was the message — and is, indeed, very much STILL the sodding message from the global mobile industry.

Arguments that billions of texts are sent a month are invalid. They’re sent because humans have had to sit down and arse about with their dumb devices to learn how they work. Rather than the industry collectively evolving it’s offerings to the point that everyone and anyone can use them without friction and without stupid cost levels.

When I sit back and think of the various technologies introduced over the years, I can’t help but sit and lament how badly they’ve been implemented.

Multimedia messaging here in the UK. Shite. 100% shite. It only just works. But no arse uses it because “it’s too expensive”. Why does that perspective pervade the country? Because the DUMB mobile industry introduced picture messaging at stupid amounts of money per message. People tried it anyway, as they’re wont to do. Then wondered why they were paying 50p + VAT to send a 100 pixel wide shite image to their mate.. that never actually arrived, because their mate was on a different network and his handset wasn’t correctly configured for picture messaging. Or if he was lucky enough to have his phone off when the message was delivered, he’ll have got a text message to asking him to log on to a desktop PC, type in a stupid array of annoying ’secure’ passwords in order to view the shite 100 pixel image….

Piece of shit.

Then let’s talk about video calling. Great concept again. Unfortunately it fries your handset battery — and your hand — within 2-3 minutes of using it. After 10 minutes you need to put on special gloves in order to hold the glowing handset. After 12 minutes the handset inexplicably turns off. Completely off. You what? Yes. It ran out of battery so quickly it didn’t even have time to play a ‘battery low’ sound. THEN you get billed for the privilege. Rubbish at 50 pence a minute. Or, try this party piece: Get four handsets on the same network in the same room and make them call other people via video. You can’t. The signal will degrade so badly you’re reduced to viewing a 5×5 block pixel screen … why? Because the local cell can’t take the traffic.

The poorly coordinated industry winds me up no end.

Why give the consumer a Nokia N95 with a 5 megapixel camera when you know it would cost them a pound, thanks to your data charges, to send the picture from their handset to their friend’s email? Don’t worry, they’ll discover bluetooth and bluetooth it to their PC and use their unmetered PC internet connection to send the image to their friend. Geez.

I’m making huge assumptions in each of the above statements, however they are defendable ones.

Who’s to blame? Operators? Aye. They’re still run, in the main, by engineers who don’t get that they’re providing a service for consumers. Handset manufacturers? Definitely at fault. But then their biggest customers are the operators, not you or I. Mobile applications developers? No. Not at fault. They and the other entrepreneurs around the planet do their best to fit into the ecosystem that the operators and handset manufacturers have created.

If I had a big stick, a billion dollars, a smart set of people and I’d fix it. But meantime I sit back, lament and go absolutely crazy with excitement when the industry moves forward ever so slightly.

Just sitting back and considering the 15-year-anniversary is too shocking for me. Just too shocking. Fifteen years! Deary me. Goodness me WHERE will we be in another 15 years?