The Retards

Okay, I don't kow what's wrong with me (or rather wrong everyone else - what makes me different), but consumer electronics have terrible user interfaces. Let me design my own phone's interface. Please. Some of their ideas are good, some are just terrible. Then again, maybe it's only the popular things, like the iPod and the Razr. Blah. I need to stop buying these things. My new phone plan came with the Razr. I'm skeptical, because I did really like my old phone (despite the small screen). My old phone was narrow, but a little thick. The Razr is really wide, but thin. This means my phone is no longer beside my wallet in my pocket, but behind it. This I thought I could live with, but the Razr has many other issues.

1. The phone doesn't vibrate very well. My old phone vibrates a lot - it even wanders off my desk some time. The thing is, I could hear this from across the room if it was on a hard surface, but when it was in my pocket, I could always feel it, and no one could hear it. Very good design. The Razr, not so much. It vibrates very softly, so I can't hear it, and I can only feel it vibrate if I'm paying attention. This means I'm going to have to have it on ring as well. This sucks, since now I have to actually turn it off in theatres. Now that everyone else will always know when I get a call, I can't discretely silence a call.
   Annoyance: 4 (of 5)
2. The Razr's phone book sucks
   1. The Razr doesn't let you sort through your contact list by name. I don't know how you could come up with this, but it doesn't. Sure, I can press a key, and it goes to that letter, but this does me no good when I have 10 people whos name starts with 'L'. My old phone I could type any characters in the name and it would filter by them. Very convenient, very fast access to any number.
      Annoyance: 5
      Stupidity: 5
   2. I haven't figured out speed dial yet, but I so far I can't just have my nine programmed numbers to just hold to dial.
      Annoyance: 3
   3. The phone doesn't like the SIM card. It was designed for the SIM card, I don't know why it can't play nicely with it. Sure, I can store a name with a number on the SIM card, but that's it. If I want any of the other features, like speed dial, voice dial, photo, what number for the person it is, anything, I need to store it on the phone, which as far as I can tell, means it's not on the SIM card. I assume that the SIM standard doesn't have this metadata. Fine, but how hard would it be to keep the name and number on the card as well? Then I could have metadata, and persist the crucial data?
      Annoyance: 3 (I may give up and store everything on the phone)
      Stupidity: 4
   4. For people who have multiple phone numbers stored with their name, the phone book lists their name multiple times, with no indication of which number it is. Since my dad has a home, cell, and work phone, this means he shows up three times in my phone book as "Dad". Last time I checked, I didn't have three Dads. Since his numbers are stored on the SIM card, it didn't know which number was what, but it should have showed one entry in the list and gone to a menu when I selected it (like my old phone did). At they very least I should have had something like Dad (1), Dad (2), Dad (3).
      Annoyance: 2
      Stupidity: 3
3. The "Smart Key". It "anticipates what you're going to do next, and does it when you press it". Yeah, thanks. I really needed a key that did a different and undocumented thing on each menu without telling me what beforehand.
   Annoyance: 1
   Stupidity: 3
4. The phone's display turns off after a short while. It doesn't dim the backlight (like my old phone and every other consumer electronics device with a screen does). No. It turns off. I can either get full brightness or no brightness. How battery efficient. Then, if I close it while it is off, it turns back on as it's closing. Whenever the phone is closed, the backlight stays on. Lighting up the keys with its full glory, wasting battery, and getting nothing done. Beautiful.
   Annoyance: 2
   Stupidity: 4

I'm sure I have more complaints, and I'll post them when I think of them. But seriously, doesn't this bug anyone else? Sure, the form factor's nice, but does it really make that big a difference - everyone's used to the older, bigger phones. And they're not unwieldy. It doesn't have a ton of features. It's just "in". Stupid fucking fashion.