Zimran Ahmed writes that he doesn't think SMS will do well in the US, but cameras will.
I find SMS text-entry slow and painful, and belive it's popularity in Europe stems in large part from the high per-minute charges Europeans endure. But taking a picture with your phone and mailing it to someone is quick and easy, so I think it will prove quite popular.
In Europe you are generally charged per second (not per minute), so
giving a quick message "via voice" might not be more expensive than
sending an SMS. The per minute charges are comparable to our charges here and sending messages is actually often more exensive there than here in the US. Sending messages is less intrusive than making a call, both for the people around you and for the recipient.
Entering a short message on a reasonably modern phone with T9 is quite fast. Even on my 3(?) year old T68i it's pretty good. I'm sure it's even better on newer phones. And besides, we did pretty well way back when when entering a "c" always meant three key presses. :-) Practice, practice.
Sending a picture serves a completely different purpose. I can't imagine how you can (quickly) send a picture to tell that you'll be 15 minute late. And you can't always call either, because the meeting might be started and noone will pick up their phone to take a call.
Getting a GSM phone here, I was surprised to find that the providers finally have figured out to let you send SMSes to phones on the other networks. Without that it was no wonder that it wasn't in common use.
And unrelated to my point above, did I tell how neatly OS X integrates SMS'es when you connect your phone over bluetooth?
Hand write a note, take a picture of it and send it =)
Do speed comparisons.
The resolution on the phone displays is still Really Bad. :-) The handwritten note could not have many letters before they'd get too small and hard to read.
It probably hasn't been as successful in Europe because of what you said about inter-network SMSing being only recently available in the US. Give it time and we'll catch up.
Czesc Madziu, tu Maciek i Damian, jak dostałas tego sms-a to daj nam znać bo nie wiemy czy doszedł> Pozdrowienia
Actually, Europeans have smaller fingertips. It's a fact. ;)
adqd
Who cares about the Europeans anyway? It's not like they're trend setters in any regard. They've been riding the coat tails of the US for 50 years now and want nothing more to be as influential as the US. Nothing original comes from Europe anymore, so it's no use trying to compare their social practices to those of people living in the United States. SMS is a pretty inefficient way of communicating, which is probably why it's popular in Europe. :P
"Sun Temple",
You couldn't be more wrong. Just to stay on the current topic: Most new cell phone technology comes from Europe (and to some degree from Japan). Approximately none of it comes from the US.
- ask
Just the same with MMS. The Scandinavian countries, especially sweden, are cutting-edge of the new upcoming cellphone technology MMS. Just heared about a german service named OpenMMS which offers a MMS service that should be less expensive than SMS - at least in germany.
http://www.openmms.de would be the url, but it is in german only.
tati wie gehts
There is nothing wrong with Europe that a little American know-how can't fix. Anyway, isn't it time that the US reoccupied Europe.
Regarding SMS's: 95% of all such messages fall into a few simple catagories such as "I'm late" or "You're late" or "I love you" or "I hate you". Why not assign a number code like 21="Don't forget to pick up condoms on the way over." for the usual messages. After all there are few philosophical tracts being communicated on this medium.
In Japan SMS is usually up to 1 or 2000 characters and sometimes 5000. Input is much easier for Japanese, but they still aren't using T-9 so it is still rather lame. But the bottom line is once you know how to type on a telephone key pad it is actually faster than a QWERTY keypad and more effecient since there's not all this hyperbabble most people choose to communicate with ~
regarding http://www.openmms.de/ only being in German ~ would you please wake up!? go to Google.com and use language tools to translate any web page in to a number of languages. and there are better services if you look.
Have a nice day :)
soy amigop de todos
doszedl do Ciebie ten sms??bo z neta wysylam,jesli tak to jeden sygnal/anka
hai
i have a question here...
let's say i reply to a sms on my phone, is it possible if the sms i sent goes to another recipient even if i replied using the reply keys?
thanks heaps!