Recent Mobile Phone Advancements
Today, nearly every person owns at least one mobile phone. Some own even more, with a separate mobile for work and for family. As the popularity of phones have increased and more and more are being purchased, phone companies have looked to increase their market share by creating new technologies. Some of these technologies include capacitive touch screen capabilities, which detect the way in which sensors on the phone are being pushed, and FTIR multi touch, which can accurately read differing levels of pressure over a large space. These technological developments get many people excited with what the future holds for mobile phone technology, and could change the way we communicate in the future.
It’s been surprising to see over the last decade that mobile phones have had many changes in style and fashion, just as clothes have. While ten or so years ago any mobile phone was seen as a sign of status, the large “brick” look that the first phones had quickly went out of fashion, and cheaper and smaller phones began to be developed. Today, color screens are a virtual requirement, and screens that take up the whole screen are now used by those wanted to keep up with the latest trends.
What actual enhancements to the phone does this latest trend provide? Since there is no keypad to these new phones, it’s meant touch screens are now used. This doesn’t just involve users pressing buttons that appear onscreen. The user can actually appear to be contacting the programs they use physically. Pages can be flipped through, websites can be scrolled down and folders can be opened in finger pushes that recall real word activities.
Not only are these technological improvements attractive to the buyer, they’re required to get people to continue purchasing mobile phones even when the one they have works perfectly fine. This is called “perceived obsolescence” and generally means the same thing as fashion. Many young children and fashion-conscious adults feel a twinge of embarrassment when exposing that the phone they own is a model over a couple of years old, and does not have all the latest features of something like the iPhone. The developers of the latest developments of course encourage these feelings of embarrassment, as this means their customer base will increase in size.
Perceived obsolescence has an unintended constructive result. Third world countries depend on what the first world throws away, in order to get these items at a cheaper rate. This means they are able to have clothes that look fine that went out of style in the West a couple of years ago. If you ever go to Africa, you’ll also see the phones of a couple of years ago being sold, as the first world purchasers have gone on to the next technological advancement and are uninterested in buying the old phones. This means that in Ethiopia, where people make in a month what a Western person makes in a day, these disadvantaged people are able to own very decent phones, with mp3 playing abilities and camera capabilities.
The use of phones around the planet has drastically changed due to people’s self-consciousness over style. It’s preferable to purchase phones based on the technological advances they provide, rather than worrying about the style of the phone you buy.
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