By: Chris Piedmonte

Those of you that have read my articles in the past know that I don’t usually write in the first person.  This article, however, is different.  It’s personal. Not only to me, but to billions of people on the planet walking around with smartphones in their pocket.  This month, I’m going to tell you and the rest of the industry why I still hate my cell phone.  I’m also going to tell you what I’d like the industry to do about it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my cell phone too.  It has become an essential piece of my business and social life.  So much so, I can’t imagine getting through the day without it.  I’m sure many of you feel the same way about yours.  On a recent trip to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, it was an essential tool for navigating the city, finding good restaurants, making and confirming appointments with various Pipeline sponsors and readers, checking in for my flight home and much more.  Without it, my trip would have been much more difficult and not nearly as successful.  But then there were those moments when it frustrated the hell out of me and, once again, made me realize that there are times that I still hate my cell phone; and despite how far we've come as an industry there is still far to go.

The Late, Late Show

What are the reasons for this hate-love-hate relationship with this great little piece of technology?  Let me run down the list for you.  In fact, since I’m writing this to you in New York City only a few blocks from the Ed Sullivan Theatre (home of the Late Late Show with David Letterman), I thought “why not do a top ten list?”  So, here we go, the top ten reasons I (still) hate my cell phone:

Reason Number 10:  Crappy charging and connection cables.  They’re cheap.  They’re flimsy and they don’t hold up very long.  The ones that claim to be durable sometimes cost as much as $15 to $20.  And they’re not compatible across manufacturers (although that is slowly changing).  I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S5, my traveling companion had an Apple iPhone 5.  Different connectors, so we had to bring two of everything with us.  And if one of ours broke, as they often do, it was off to the nearest cellular store.  There is NO REASON for this other than vendor lock in.  Solution, lets standardize on one connector for these devices.  And throw in the tablets and other devices too.

Reason Number 9:  Fragile phones need to be put back in their shells.  So why can’t my phone come with a decent shell on its own?  Why do I have to buy a case for it to protect it when it’s made of the same or similar materials as the phone?  This is another area in which I hate my cell phone.  I refuse to use one of these external cases myself.  It makes the phone thicker, it adds weight and I don’t care if it has Hello Kitty or DKNY logos, it doesn’t make it cool.  Let’s work on the casing so that they’re a little tougher on their own.  A great example is the Panasonic Toughpad.  Panasonic has been a leader in hardened technology for some time, going back to the Panasonic Toughbook typically used in police, military and industrial applications.

Reason Number 8: Bill shock over Wifi, really!? Fact is that the devices aren’t very good at switching between cellular and Wifi as automatically as we’d like them to be.  For that matter, they’re not so good at switching from Wifi to Wifi either.  Going back to this year’s Mobile World Congress, my phone connected to a variety of Wifi sites throughout the Fira, BUT it would also sometimes switch back to using cellular data, running up my international cell data bill at around $0.25 a MB, even when a good Wifi connection was available.  I’ve also heard rumors that the smartphones select the connection type based on quality of service, NOT potential costs; so sometimes they actually prefer the cellular network over the available Wifi. Let’s improve the software on these devices to give us better control and choices over how and when these smartphones use cellular versus Wifi, and ALERT US when we’re about to potentially make a costly switch in service modes or modes outside of our rate plans.