It's a _phone_. Phone calls are it's primary function. If you don't want that, wouldn't a pad be a better option than a phone?
Besides, how would you handle calls from landlines and such?
No, it's not. You sound like a dinosaur. A phone's primary functions are 1) text-messaging apps, 2) camera, 3) dating apps, 4) banking apps, and various others. Phone calls are somewhere around #20.
Phone calls haven't forced full screen takeovers for several years on iOS, and have the same UX as 3rd party VoIP and Video call apps...
I haven't taken a phone call in over a month now (from the Amazon delivery guy). I use dating and texting apps every day. For actual talking to friends/family, I use voice and video chat functions in chat apps.
Phone = Telephone: The term telephone was adopted into the vocabulary of many languages. It is derived from the Greek: τῆλε, tēle, "far" and φωνή, phōnē, "voice", together meaning "distant voice".
Distant voice communication is the entire purpose for a phone.
Just because you want or expect your phone to do more, doesn’t make your desires the primary function of the device.
Names change much slower the function generally.
1. Allows an instant, full-screen foreground takeover over whatever else you are currently doing on the device
2. Rings and vibrates your device
3. Has a button that could allow an unknown person to send and receive audio to and from your device
4. All of this is triggered remotely, from anyone in the world, without any kind of user identification or authentication, besides a spoofable number
No app store's rules in either major ecosystem would allow such an abusive app. Yet, only because the legacy concept of a "phone call" exists, not only is the app allowed, but it's preloaded on every device out there!
Currently on iOS, #1 is not done by any app including the phone, and #2-#4 are in fact allowed by App Store apps.
The phone feature is a legacy feature that goes away with 2G. Soon carriers will only be moving data.
The providers have data to show that the phone functionality is not a primary use case. It is a legacy product whose overhead has a real cost on our economy.
When do we stop paying $10-$20 a month per lines of service, for the privileging of being interrupted? When do we stop calling it a smartphone and treating as such and recognizing it as as computer, a laptop for your pocket.
I expect those born in the last century to be most resistant to the deprecation of the 'phone call' as a concept. People also reminisced about having phone lines that were partied together. Imagine what scammers would do with that today.
Whatever telcos are doing these days would have led to jail time in the 1990s.
I would like to see a return to the government passing QOS laws for safety critical services, then enforcing them.
Since everyone is dunking on twitter these days: How is it legal for them to slap an auth wall on top of emergency response agencies' feeds? If I MITM'ed the emergency broadcast system with such bullshit, I'd go to jail. Twitter is used during emergencies by at least 100x more people than emergency broadcast.
Android tablets? Several.
There are some, but none of them would be suitable for consumer use.
I stand corrected!
Yes, it's primarily a phone by market segmentation. But it's a small tablet by features.
Direct to voicemail, of course, with a message saying 'text me' for automatic transcription. As they say, its a feature not a bug [to not be interrupted]. In a perfect world I'd have a secretary or AI to screen calls on my behalf, but I don't.
Now that I think of it, I might actually try this the next time a telemarketer calls.
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[0] - I haven't actually tested it, nor seen it in action - just saw it being mentioned when I reviewed "Tips" app after update.
If they made pads the size of my phone that could still use cell network internet and that I could put a custom OS on I'd consider it.
Not for about fifteen years or so, no. I don't even have the Phone app on the front page of my iPhone, let alone allow it to sit in the dock. Regardless, whatever the primary function of the device, there is room for improvement over "it's always worked that way".
To me, it's a good quality camera that I can fit in my pocket.
So? This is a way to improve phone calls.
1) Do they make devices that aren't phones that are the size of a note"pad"? The smallest non-phone tablet devices are now (with the death of iPod touch) the size of (at best) a small note"book", not a sensibly-sized-for-portable-usage note"pad".
2) That doesn't even solve the problem as tons of Internet-connected messaging software now supports calls, so I feel like you are missing the point in some sense: the person you are responding to is seriously talking about WhatsApp!