Phone envy

RantWoman first of all directs her readers to the following product review for the new Samsung Haven cellphone.

http://www.aisquared.com/blog/2011/03/verizon%E2%80%99s-samsung-haven/?utm_source=ZoomNews+from+Ai+Squared&utm_campaign=fc68cbf385-Blog+Summary+%2319&utm_medium=email


For a really prosaic, not very smart, granny phone with comparatively large text, very nice tactile buttons, no camera or internet and even the ability to respond to voice commands AND read things aloud, Rantwoman thinks her readers could do MUCH worse than the phone above.

RantWoman thinks this partly because the Samsung Haven sounds a lot like the samsung Knack, the very model of granny phone dangling from RantWoman's neck. The Haven sounds like the Knack only with speech in a wider range of functions.

But who has phone envy and WHY?

RantWoman of course has phone envy--for something she suspects does not exist. RantWoman wants something that can be hooked up to both a full QWERTY keyboard and a braille display. RantWoman wants to be able to read content in a wide variety of formats. RantWoman wants plain phone. RantWoman wants accessible internet. RantWoman wants this all for substantially less per month than she is now paying. RantWoman wants this NOW. Who said anything about reasonable?

Instead, RantWoman has the Samsung Knack. RantWoman considers this less than adequate even though the salesguy at the mall was reasonably forthcoming when RantWoman acquired this model. RantWoman was fiddling around with a few different models with type too small and various other vexations. Finally RantWoman just asked for the plainest simplest granny phone the guy had and Voila!

The more important point: RantMOM has phone envy. RantMom, last time she migrated cellphone matters, went to the mall at the same time as Little Sister. Little Sister wanted a phone that takes pictures, walks the dog, slurps substantial volumes off the internet, solves quadratic equations, rearranges the international debt and addresses world hunger, all before breakfast. Little Sister suggested RantMom get the same model and RantWoman imagines there were some good intentions verbalized about helping RantMom learn her way around.

Good intentions are good intentions. Many months into this form of cell phone ownership, RantMom still gets lost in her menus. RantMom has not interacted with the opportunity to take gushy pictures of the Grandkid. Instead, every time RantWoman gets out her granny phone with big tactile numbers and simple display and not keyboard to lead anyone astray, RantMom just gets phone envy.

Dear Marketers:

RantWoman suspects there are a LOT of families like ours out there.