I want a good phone. A phone I can carry around with me to talk to people. Not salespeople. People I know and want to talk to. I don't want it to be called a cell phone, mobile phone, wireless phone, work phone, home phone or megaphone. I just want it to be mine with one number. A single number is all people have to know to reach me.
I'd like it to plug into a standard charger. Then when power runs low, I could borrow someone elses. Heck, if it were standard, it would be cheap! I could have one at work and at home. Never again would I have to hunt down someone who has the same brand and beg like a drug addict for a few more minutes of juice.
Speaking of wires, my phone shouldn't need a super special, one-of-a-kind $49.99 3" cable to connect with my computer. It should do so wirelessly. Seamlessly. Smoothly. I don't care if it's Bluetooth or 802.11x or any other standard. As long as I don't have to sweat away hours at the keyboard reading arcane websites and tiny print trying to get my phone to talk to my computer. I want my computer to detect it and chat away in binary with it's new friend without me pushing a button. Okay, maybe a mouse-click...but only one.
I'd like a phone that I can put software on. My software. Software that I write, that I bought somewhere in China or that a malicious hacker wrote to steal my passwords. I bought the phone, I should be able to do that. I'd love to synchronize my address book so I don't have to type it into each phone that I buy, texting away for hours to get the simplest functionality. Typing using 8 keys to represent over 36. I hate typing on phones.
I want a phone that has my own ring that I chose and I don't want to pay a phone company to put it there. I want to set the rings for each person in my address book so that I don't have to look at my phone to know who is calling. Better yet, I'd like for others to read in their own name and have it come to my phone and that is the ring!
And if I miss the call? I want my phone to hold the message in memory. All the messages. I don't want to call the phone company and dial a secret code every time, my phone should figure that out. Then when I'm in the subway, I can listen to them at my leisure, perhaps even enter a response message and send it back to the user when I leave the subway. And yes, the phone could do that automatically.
I'd like to play games on my phone. Multiplayer games...wirelessly. Heck, the phone can talk to a satellite or a cellular pole miles away, why can't it communicate directly with the people sitting next to me? Why does the phone company think they are a gaming design shop? Why do they try to leech money for games that won't entertain a child?
Maybe I'm going to far here, but I want more. I want my phone to move from the cell network to my home network. And I'd like it to move with ease. I walk in from the street paying the cellular company and move into my house and start paying the company for my land line. I don't want to have to call people back because the reception sucks in my building.
I know, I know, I live in a fantasy land with these thoughts. The telephone industry is still in it's first century of development and needs time to think up these futuristic dreams. But someday my grandchildren will see one of these and the thought makes me smile.