Ideas & Opinions, Products & Services
Announcing The 1100 Club (aka ‘Ditch your smartphone. Go dumb!’)
By Charlie on 03 September 2008
LONDON, UK - Do we really need smartphones? Indeed, why are they called smartphones? Are all other phones dumb?
I’ve been using cutting-edge Internet-connected mobile devices for around ten years and over time pushed the envelope so far, it’s even got ripped in a few places. Lately I’ve come to see that, in the end, it’s connecting to people (where have I heard that line?) that matters most to me and, for the most part, voice and text seem to do the trick.
Therefore, I hereby announce the formation of The 1100 Club (not to be confused with The 1100 Club).
The most popular electronic device
The club is named after one of the most popular Nokia devices, the Nokia 1100 (in the picture). Nokia has sold over 200 million (almost more than all the smartphones in the world combined) and it wasn’t coincidence that Nokia said that their billionth phone sold was, you guessed it, a Nokia 1100.
Particularly relevant here is that it’s a very simple phone that makes calls and does text messages, just like every other one of the three billion GSM phones out there.
Keep it simple, stupid.
Why is it so popular? Why are there almost two and a half billion phones that are not so smart and not much different from the Nokia 1100? And even though they’re not ’smart’ doesn’t mean that they’re not brilliant at making calls and sending text messages.
Which is where The 1100 Club comes in.
The team here at Nokia Conversations are wondering if one or all of
us (that means me) should walk the talk and be the poster child for The
1100 Club. The idea is as simple as the phone itself. Find out if we could live without our smartphones and survive with the gentle pace of a Nokia 1100 for one month.
I really want to know what you think. Would you be willing to join The 1100 Club and be content with just making calls and sending text messages?
Related posts:
Tags | Emerging markets, Nokia 1100, smartphone, sms, text, voice
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Do we still sell the 1100? I thought we’re up to the 1200 according to http://europe.nokia.com/products and then click on sort by model.
I would prefer the 1680 since it has GPRS, but the 1200 will do.
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Scoox Reply:
June 20th, 2009 at 12:31 am
I bought the 1200 because the 1100 has been discontinued. The 1200 does pretty much the same things that the 1100 already did, but it has 4 extra buttons under the screen, which makes it harder to use. I just think it is stupid, the 1100 was fine, why the f**k do they have to spend money to make a phone worse?? I mean the 1100 sold 200 million for a reason!! The world is already complicated enough, and most of use actually prefer to keep things as simple as possible. It always makes me chuckle when I see mobile phones packed with features. My wife’s phone has a calendar, music composer, games, mp3 player, a crap camera… all she ever uses is thee phone feature, and since I bought her a tiny mp3 player she no longer uses the mp3 feature. Nobody who owns a 1100 is going to go out of their way to “upgrade” to a 1200 and ditch their perfectly working 1100. I gave my Nokia 1100 to my mum and fully regret it now because I can’t find one anywhere. Many 1100 are sold on eBay, but usually have fake fascias which don’t fit well. I bought two this way and they both were fake. Alas, long live the Nokia 1100.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 8:56 pm
I think “smartphone” is even no longer relevant these days. Some “smartphones” are as powerful as low-end laptops.
When I first bought my first phone, I just want to have a phone with voice call and text message only. I didn’t want any other features. Now, I can only live with phone that has WiFi and GPS. I think it is because our lifestyle has changed. There is no way back.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 9:26 pm
NO!
Well, at least not now, heh. I’m moving to another country next week and I need Maps, dictionaries, organizers, camera, music, games, web, money manager, alarm and reminders, all in one handset.
So I am passing on this one. Ask me again in a few months
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September 3rd, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Ok, I wouldn’t join the club but I relate to the idea. I love everything clean & simple. But I just really don’t understand why good simple phones have to be made from cheaper materials and have plastic stripes on them (no offence to the 1100). ‘Cause, it’s like, if you love writing notes or sketching, you’re likely to get a slightly more expensive Moleskine notebook and a nice pen, because it makes the experience even nicer. It’s not the same with a cheap ballpoint pen and a post-it. The low tech phones are always called entry-level phones, or developing markets phones. Why really so? I think there would be a rather cool market growing for lowtech/analog lovers, the people who like their material things to have some character and ‘realness’.
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September 4th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Of course we could live without smartphones. For “us” who use smartphone’s maybe it would be not that easy to give a smartphone away to use a 1100 device, but let’s think well, for almost every place we go we take our laptop with us, so what do you prefer, access the internet in a computer or in a mobile?
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September 4th, 2008 at 4:10 am
Hell Yeah!
If you were in India you would know that we still need the 1100. And a lot of them. If you have a Pilots project on making a worlds cheapest cell, count me in.
Charlie please bring up something like 1100 back, India needs it bad. People hardly know how to use GPRS or can hardly afford these new services. I hope Nokia is thinking on the lines of reviving it again.
besides the Torch/Light feature and long batter life were the best parts of the 1100.
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September 4th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Charlie,
Luv ya, but……..
If it doesn’t have a good camera and an internet connection, I won’t put up with the damned thing ringing.
How about an 8 megapixel small hand held camera with physical zoon, internet, it rings on occasion and no texts (ever). ;oD
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September 4th, 2008 at 7:58 am
I would carry an 1100-style device–as long as I could also carry a smartphone also. I would use the smartphone to do smartphone things and the 1100 to make calls
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September 4th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Do it; and I’m in.
I just transitioned from my constantly email-connected RIM Blackberry Pearl to a Nokia N95-2. I found with the Pearl that I primarily communicated with people via email, even when a simple voice call or text message would have sufficed.
Composing an email on the N95’s traditional phone keyboard takes a bit of work, so more often than not I’m turning to voice calls, and less so text messages. The retro-ness pushes me/us to further interact with others in our vocal/physical space and have conversations that likely would not have occurred if we solely used our smart phones.
For the Nokia Conversations team I’d propose returning to the 1100 for a period of time and chronicling your experience. How did you figure out where to go without GPS, or who won the game last night?
How could these interactions inform and guide the team’s efforts to make the now/future smart phone experience even better?
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September 4th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
How about - because it is cheap?
No, seriously, do you have any information WHERE in the world 1100 is mostly popular? If it sells equally in proportion to other Nokia phones everywhere in the world, THEN you make conclusions that it is because people need simple phone.
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September 4th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Is this the model with a built-in flashlight? If they’re going to trap me inside one of those haunted houses that you see on TV, then I’ll probably be glad if I can at least take this one with me.
Ah, but in the real world, no.
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September 6th, 2008 at 6:40 am
No thanks. Email, internet and multimedia on the mobile have become a part of my lifestyle and I’m not willing to give it up
http://sachendra.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/mobile-is-quickly-becoming-a-lifestyle-assistant/
Personal preferences aside, I’m surprised to this initiative on a handset manufacturer’s blog. Business model for Low tier phones like 1100 are “high volumes, low profit margin”. If we were to take your argument that 1100 outsells all Smartphones combined they still bring in 1000 times more profit than 1100 because they play in “low volume, high profit margin” bracket. It would be disastrous for handset manufacturers if a majority of people were to shift to low tier phones.
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September 9th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Hey Charlie, on a second thought, a smarphone is only smart if its user is smart.
So its actually the way the owner uses his device that actually makes it smart.
Thus the title of the post needs reconsideration.
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September 12th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Well, i’ve thrown my hat into the ring with this blog post:
http://www.mobileshop.com/blog/mobile-phone-news/can-you-give-up-your-smartphone-for-month-take-the-nokia-1100-challenge/
I’m willing to give it a try! I don’t think for one second I’ll be able to manage a full month, but I’m going to give it a shot!
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September 12th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Hell yeah,
I would join
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September 12th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Dude, i’m in. Break me of my Blackberry addiction please!
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September 12th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
ive actually been using one of these for the last 2 months after my tytn2 was ran over by a car, forgot how easy to use a phone could be!
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September 19th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Charlie, I’m with you — because I need to break my internet addiction when I’m home. And S60 makes that impossible.
So I want a dumb phone to use outside of work. Anyone know if any of these work in the US? And where to get one?
If not these, what is a good basic phone for the US? The one extra feature I’d like is calendar sync.
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November 17th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Very old….but easy to use mobile phone…will surely use it for atleast for 2 months….but its strange Nokia is still selling it….http://www.mobilephonesuk.org.uk/manufacturer.php/Nokia
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November 21st, 2008 at 11:45 am
Video update: Club 1100 - I’m in it!
ESPOO, Finland - A while back I mentioned my on and off frustration with what computers have become… I mean, smartphones have become. I suggested we all drop smartphones and use simpler phones, such as the iconic Nokia 1100, which…
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February 9th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I’ve chucked my CrackBerry in favour of the 1100 about a month ago, and can honestly say it’s done me a great favour, releasing me from the constant barrage of emails.
The very fact that the 1100 doesn’t do anything but calls and SMS, means it gets left alone and not constantly “fiddled with” - I get a lot more reading done since the momentous decision.
I’d quite forgotten what a well designed little phone it was, and love the display clarity - b/w wins over colour screens every time when the backlight isn’t on….
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