My sporadic search for a new cell phone took me to an ad for the highly overpriced Motorola Ultimate U6 Quadband Bluetooth. The ad includes the usual marketdroitspeak (“Quadband operation and an integrated digital video camera makes the Motorola Ultimate U6 the perfect phone for your active lifestyle.”). But it also touts a feature I’ve never seen before in an ad for a phone:
Fungus resistant coated mini jet black clamshell design
The mind boggles. Is this a common problem with cell phones? With Motorola phones particularly? Are buyers of overpriced phones especially fungus-phobic, making this a selling point?
I would have thought it was a turn-off, myself…
“The mind boggles. Is this a common problem with cell phones? With Motorola phones particularly? Are buyers of overpriced phones especially fungus-phobic, making this a selling point?”
Could be. I thought the reference to telephone sanitizers in one of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books was a joke until I found a listing for same in the Yellow Pages in my home town of Brisbane, Australia.
My current Motorola, a V330 — basically 80% of the ROKR featureset in a clunkier old flip case — has this blue rubbery coating on most of it. Can’t speak for its fungus-killing qualities, but it does seem to be nicely scratch- and scuff-resistant considering the amount of time it spends in a pocket with keys and coins without a case to protect it. Much better than my two previous phones with their silver-painted plastic cases.
I like this bluetooth Motorola more than my last couple of phones. It fixed the stupidest UI gaffe of my previous bluetooth Motorola so I can now switch on the speakerphone as soon as I dial and not have to wait until a few seconds into the call and watch for the key functrions to change. That was stupid. Also, at least with T-Mobile, I can transfer files to and drom it via bluetooth, including my own MP3 files as ringtones.
I still don’t know why I can’t take a picture, start composing an MMS, and take another picture to put on the next page of the MMS. And the buttons to toggle ringer modes are still on the outside and work when the phone is shut, which means that if you keep it in a pocket or a belt clip, you can’t trust it to stay silent and have to shut it off completely when in a movie, important meeting, etc.
This unusual feature are harmful for cell phone?