ON MOTOROLA"ELDERLY SENSING" CELL PHONES

"RING, RING, WHO'S THERE?"

On the one hand, you can't but help applaud this kind of creativity.  Mobiledia reports today that a new patent filed by Motorola could allow it's future cell phones to "automatically adjust to the elderly":

"By automatically detecting speech patterns of the elderly, the technology automatically boosts incoming and outgoing audio while simplifying menu structure and increasing font size."

You've got to like that kind of cool use of technology.

One can only imagine other types of "demographic slicing" one could do with this kind of technology. 

Cell phones that automatically sense when a child is using the phone, and give them the option to auto-dial home, for example.

This could help millions of seniors while allowing "dual use" of new models of cell phones, making the business models of the vendors a little more efficient.

I can certainly see my Dad appreciating this kind of a phone.  It took him the longest time to understand that unlike a regular phone, one actually had to press a button each time either to pick up an incoming call and/or to hang it up.

On the other hand, one can see how many seniors might take offense at this kind of "discriminating" technology.  As in "how dare they PRESUME how much complexity I can or cannot handle in my cell phone?

Not to mention the hassle of remembering to turn off a software or a hardware switch when the senior in question actually wants or needs to access a more complex feature.

I could see my Mom for instance taking this stance, given that she loves to tinker with gadgets, both electronic and mechanic just for the sake of it.

But that can all presumably be finessed in the marketing, hopefully with a little bit more clever engineering and design.

Net, net, we need more technology vendors to be thinking out of the box like this, don't you agree?

Comments

[Dominic Jones]

I agree, but you can stop putting tickers in your heads or your posts because it makes no difference.

The only thing that matters is that you spell the company name properly and use the same name Google Finance has for it.

In this case, you should use "Motorola, Inc."

Give it a try because I noticed that Google Finance hasn't listed this post.

You're welcome.