Goodbye numbers, hello QWERTY

The entire world is invited to a retraining course

Last week, after much deliberation on the matter, I applied for and received an Online Cash Advance. This was no frivolous action. All my life I have managed to stay just over the red line of solvency and I cannot remember ever having resorted to a loan. But my cell phone died one evening; rolled over onto its back and gave out a weak off-key rendering of the Nokia tune and closed down forever. I poked around inside it with a paper clip but to no avail.

I took the loan money and went into my cell phone provider for something new to replace my old phone. I came out with a shiny black third generation model with a camera. So far, I’ve taken a lot of pictures and made zero calls.

This morning I open the paper over breakfast and find a most distressing article.

What’s QWERTY?

“Goodbye, numeric cell phone keypads. You’re going the way of the rotary dial. Touch screens and QWERTY keyboards will take over from here, thank you.” At North America’s largest cell phone trade show, running this week in Las Vegas, there were few new phones for the U.S. market that had a numerical keypad instead of an alphabetic keyboard. Touch screens also were out in force.

These changes are recognition of the popularity of text messaging and wireless Internet use. The industry organization CTIA Wireless, which hosts the show, said U.S. subscribers sent 1 trillion text messages last year, three times the 2007 volume. Meanwhile, the same people used 2.2 trillion minutes of voice calls, an increase of less than 5 percent.

Wait, I just bought a new phone!

Why is the whole world so obsessed with pandering to the teenagers and twenty somethings? We oldies use phones too, you know! For me the purchase of a new phone was a traumatic event. It means I have to learn how to use it with the help of my 8 year old grandson, my electronics consultant. I am in the middle of a course right now, spending good money on ice-creams, movie tickets and burgers and the phone industry is telling me that before I have even paid my first month’s account, my phone is out of date, obsolete, a throw-away?

Look at these phones

AT&T introduced six phones this week, all of which had either a touch screen, a typewriter-style keyboard, or both. At Samsung, the largest seller of phones in the U.S., there were no new keypad phones. Motorola’s big news was a model called the Evoke, which has a touch screen.

I know what’s going on

This change in mobile phone design is due to a very simple reason – text messaging. The kids are forever sending text messages, they sit in class at school, on the bus, in the movies, in front of the TV and any other place you can think of sending text messages. Why? Because they are cheaper than calling and Dad has put a limit on their phone bills. They can probably send 10 SMS’s for the price of one call. The phone companies are in a panic at the loss of call revenue so they change strategy and say we’ll get them by the SMS.

Result for me? Disaster. I can never learn to SMS, no matter how many grandchildren I have teaching me.