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Comment by ToFab123 | Hacker News Reader

<rendering the phone useless for it's primary function (calling people).

Calling people is no longer the primary function of a °phone".

It depends on how you define primary function. Speaking as the parent of two young children, the ability to call 911 in an emergency is the most critical functionality my phone has, even though I've never had to use it.

This is why we got my mother in law a cell phone. Sharing photos is just a pleasant side effect :)

That was Apple's argument in their case against Qualcomm's licensing costs.

I always thought that was a weak stance.

An iPhone without calls is just an iPod touch, which clearly doesn't have the appeal of an iPhone.

Except the Touch didn't have a data connection. 'Voice calls' isn't the killer feature of a contemporary smart phone, an always-on internet connection is.

Indeed. If iPod touches had cellular radios in them, I wouldn't need an iPhone — but then they'd probably also cost the same, so I'd just get an iPhone anyway.

Is a celular radio really $400 or so? Or why is there such a different pricing scheme?

The iPod touches also have lower-quality displays, lower-capacity batteries, base units have less storage capacity, usually have older or slightly underpowered A chips, and lower-quality materials leading to a slightly inferior build quality compared to iPhone.

(Also, iPod touch hasn't been updated for three years)

That is true today, but when back when the iPhone was released they were almost identical, sans the cellular radio, speaker, and microphone.

I call about 2 hours a week and still manage to use my phone more than 20 hours a week. Is calling still the primary function of my "phone"?

We just call it phone because that's what we attached a computer to, but it's more like a pocket computer with LTE modem for most people. I'd call it Pocket PC if I could!

In many countries they're just called "mobiles" or something to that effect in the local language. Originally short for "mobile phone" but it shortens down nicely generic.

Microsoft's trademark on Pocket PC is most likely dead, as it hasn't been seen in commerce in a long time, so you can probably call whatever you like a Pocket PC

If I was forced to choose whether my device only had phone features or everything but phone features, I'd choose the phone features. Voice contact (without requiring that everybody I want to call has and pays attention to a particular voice chat app) is the most important thing to me by leaps and bounds. I realize that not everybody feels the same way, but I worry that it has become such a stark segregation that phone features are no longer given the attention they need to avoid these issues. It's frustrating, especially when some people are dismissive and snobbish about even the concept of calling people on the phone.

Wanting reliable and fully baked features is natural.

I interpret the parent comment not as diminishing the problem, but just reacting to that notion that calling is the main feature.

I genuinely think that ship has sailed since the iPhone, as every single aspect of pure voice calling got worse.

The first iPhone was so bad it was wise to keep it as a secundary device only. It got better with time, but there is still IMO no phone centric feature that is better than a decent dedicated feature phones.

I say that as someone who hates calling, and I’m still annoyed at how it’s half assed.

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