Every so often a really great new bit of kit comes along. Take the Nokia 6250 as an example. It is shock resistant, dust (and sand) resistant, water resistant, big keys for cold fingers, large Lion battery with 14 day standby, automatic volume control that increases or decreases the loudspeaker volume level to cope with background noise (designed for use on building sites but very effective in a howling wind), outstanding transmission and reception, built in sound meter to set the surround sound on the home cinema and it even lets you make phone calls!
It sounds like the ideal sea kayaker's mobile phone. Yes indeed and where may these paragons of maritime functionality be purchased? Well sadly they were last available in the year 2000 and mine is now 6 years old. A victim of the fickle fads of aficionados seeking the latest fashion flavour in phones, it sold like a brick and was discontinued. It is a brick and I look after it. It has an incredible additional effect on anyone under the age of 50. If I produce it in public, which is rare as I find the necessity to call in such places occurs infrequently, it causes much hilarity and occasionaly, some little sympathy among onlookers.
The shops are full of the latest miniature devices that have a multiplicity of myriad functionalities within their delicate and, dare I say, gaudy and ephemeral cases. None tempt me.
The lack of commercial success of my Nokia 6250 is a metaphor for all that is wrong with our society which is consuming resources and energy and polluting the planet in a spiral of self destruction. Perhaps we should learn to be happy with what we have got and expect products to have a decent working lifetime. My Nokia 6250 has only one failing. It not only looks like a brick, it sinks like a brick.
