The Null Device

Mobicq

Futurephones seem like a bit of a gimmick to me. I mean, it would be cool to have something with a naff 640x480 camera that can zap blurry, authentically crappy-looking pictures to your friends/moblog in realtime, and that you can kill hours of your life playing Java games on. And polyphonic ringtones would be cool too; I must confess that the bleepy version of the City of Lost Children theme on my Nokia 3310 is getting old. Nonetheless, I couldn't justify the enormous financial millstone of buying one of the damned things, while my 3310 still does the job I use it for and does it admirably, and there are CDs/VST plugins/airline tickets I could better spend that money on. But this has made me think again about my priorities, and has nudged a Java-enabled phone up the list a little. The ability to run ICQ on a mobile phone, keep in touch with people on the Net worldwide -- and pay a fraction of what SMS messages cost for the privilege -- would be hella doovy.

Now let's hope they port Gaim or Trillian or something to J2ME, so AIM, Yahoo and Jabber (and MSN, if Microsoft don't insist on being asshats about it) work as well.

(Btw, does that mean that each futurephone has an IP address and is pingable whilst switched on? Or would Mobicq and such apps open a socket through a proxy at the telco's gateway to the Internet?)

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