Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => Ctrl-Alt-Del => Topic started by: Phil W on 19 February, 2020, 06:54:19 pm
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An astronomy instrumentation engineer designed and built a rotary dial mobile phone.
https://apple.news/AliWeP3_eRe26sFoOCK6kIQ
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Paging Diver300, Diver300 to the GSM Trimphone please... ;D
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Bang & Olufsen did one in conjunction with Samsung, sometime like 2005.
TBF, it was a rotary dial arrangement of membrane switches.
But I suspect the thought behind it was along similar sentiment to that of your astronomy instrumentation engineer.
A friend of mine had one.
By no strange coincidence at the time, he also had the franchise for branches of B&O in Swindon Old Town and in Bath.
I don't think even Nick would've been sufficiently daft to drop the full £2K+ on a handset.
In 2005.
And a handset which wasn't all that good.
Apparently.
ETA: Just remembered. The clamshell opening arrangement was motorised. For truly effortless access.
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It's weird that the inventor has it so they don't have to text. About the only thing I don't do on my phone is talk into it. Phone calls are so insistent and immediate, those are the things I want to not do. We can't all only phone out- who would ever answer?
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It's weird that the inventor has it so they don't have to text. About the only thing I don't do on my phone is talk into it. Phone calls are so insistent and immediate, those are the things I want to not do. We can't all only phone out- who would ever answer?
Organisations that don't use the internet effectively, mostly. That's usually why I have to make phone calls. And I tend to avoid doing that from my mobile, because the codec makes it more difficult to hear. At least callcentre monkeys and reception staff are being paid to do it.
But hey, I appreciate the telephone dial as much as any other piece of clever but anachronistic mechanical witchcraft, and building a mobile phone around it is a lovely work of art. Prolonged exposure to nikki OTP has made me appreciate that the art in this case is as much about making people think about how they use mobile communications as it is about the device itself.
That I inevitably come to the conclusion that a mobile phone that can only make voice calls is basically useless[1] to me is probably fine. Also, other people are not me. Some people find written material difficult, for whatever reason, and are likely to have very different feelings about telephones. Some people are much worse at ignoring non-urgent interruptions.
[1] I mean sure, it's probably worth having, in the sense that a distress beacon is worth having.
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Gosh, she has some interesting things to say:
And now technology is increasingly like magic, so you really can’t disassemble things. So I do wonder how the next generation of engineers, how they’ll bridge the gap between being interested in something and being able to actualize it.
Spot on.
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^ agreed
My mum only has a mobile for emergencies, and has a smart phone as that was what the shop told her to buy.
She'd probably like one of those.
With a rotary phone you can feel what you're dialling: for 999 put 2 fingers in the 2 holes next to the wotsit and dial with the leftmost one, repeat twice more. No idea what the smartphone equivalent is. It's the sort of mobile phone we may actually have persuaded my dad to use*, it looks enough like what he grew up with.
*because dementia, forgot where he was etc.
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iPhones have a feature where you can dial 999 by mashing the side button five times. It’s on by default. It can also be activated by putting the phone in an ill-fitting case intended for a different model. DAMHIKT.
Apple Watches have a feature where they can tell if you’ve fallen off a ladder/bicycle/hovercraft and dial the emergency services with your location automatically while you’re unconscious.
At which point the operator asks the watch to download the What 3 Words app and read out what it says.
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Can you still use pulse dialling on a landline?
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Can you still use pulse dialling on a landline?
You can on BT. With Virgin etc YMMV.
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Can you still use pulse dialling on a landline?
You can on BT. With Virgin etc YMMV.
My bold.
Really?
I have a dial phone connected to a BT line in the front room, on account of enjoying the ringing noise it makes, in preference to the digital noises emanating from other phones around the house.
It has a wonderfully crackly dial tone.
Once you have dialled out, all you get to hear is a wonderfully crackly dial tone....
ETA - It was working, capable of making outgoing calls when I first fitted it. A good few years ago. And hasn't been used for anything that might break it (like making outgoing calls) in the interim.
FWIW - I'm on a copper connection less than half a mile from the exchange.
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Ah well perhaps BT have been upgrading exchanges with new kit that doesn't support it, wouldn't surprise me.
You can get pulse to tone dial converters for old phones by the way if you want to use your phone for dialling out.