The SMS Text News San Francisco Normob Challenge

I’m heading to San Francisco for a few months in the next few weeks to check out what’s happening with the mobile industry in a little more detail. If you recall, I was in Los Angeles last month for the Unlimited Drinks event (thanks to sponsors, Frith PR, WOM World and The Edison) and I took a spin around the normob public to see what they were doing with mobile.

I arrived back at my hotel in a right state of annoyance which spawned my post, ‘America’s Dire Marketplace Revisited‘. Truly shocking.

I’ve nothing against shitty Motorolas, LGs and Samsungs… those handsets that could ONLY call or text were great, back in 1999, but almost 8 years on, I despair that they’re still being put into innocent normob hands.

Case in point: Pop into an AT&T Wireless store and you’re presented with a raft of comparatively useless devices. YES they make phone calls. YES they can now send text messages (and, hey! Even PICTURE messages — woo!). But they sport crazy operating systems with ridiculous limitations. You have to worry when one of the bullet points selling the phone’s features is ‘Flight Mode’ or ‘Calendar plus reminders’ as the AT&T LG CE1110 does.

Hopeless. Hopeless in the context of stimulating and encouraging the development and consumer adoption of the mobile internet. Because they’ve had to take a 24 SODDING MONTH contract and stumped up $200 for the privilege.

Anyway: To the challenge.

Last night, an SMS Text News reader contacted me to suggest the following challenge:

I challenge you to go into an American phone store and purchase a standard ‘normob’ (‘normal mobile phone user’) handset and price plan — and stick with it, nay even USE IT as your PRIMARY HANDSET — for at least 30 days, to see how you get on.

I thought of a nifty way around this – I suggested getting an iPhone from AT&T. Heh.

But no. The reader insists that if I accept the challenge, I need to get a bog standard LG style handset. Not a Blackberry either.

Hmmm.

And use it for 30 days as my primary handset?

The first problem is that I’ll need to manually put in all my sodding phone numbers into the address book (The LG only stores 1,000 contacts, so 1,500 other contacts will have to be relegated to the non-synched list!).

Hmmm.

Well, I accept.

I think it will be an interesting task. I don’t know how I’ll get on. I might have to bow out 15 days into it. I’ll keep you posted.

If you’ve got some suggestions for a really SHIT handset that I should get when I arrive in San Francisco (it needs to be purchasable from a standard Wireless operator shop), please do go ahead and post them.