*Funny, funny article in USA Today. Motorola's Iridium calls for manly men
usatoday.com
03/16/99- Updated 10:06 PM ET
This is Kevin Maney's latest column, originally appearing March 17,
1999.
I have been using Motorola's new Iridium satellite phone for the past couple
of weeks, and I here offer my studied, analytical conclusion about it:
It is a manly man phone.
Oh, you bet it is. There are tech toys any marshmallow-bellied geek will use.
There are tech toys women will carry in their purses. The Iridium phone is
neither. It is a phone Arnold Schwarzenegger would use to call his butcher
from his Hummer and order half a steer for lunch. It's a manly man phone
because its 8-inch-long, 3/4-inch-diameter extendable antenna is
unmistakably suggestive.
It's a manly man phone because when I carried it around the house with the
antenna cocked to the side, my 5-year-old son and his friend came running
up to me, breathlessly asking: "Whoa! Is that a gun?"
It's a manly man phone because there are about 8,000 accessories you can
get for it, many of which can be assembled in all kinds of cool combinations.
The effect is somewhere between Transformer action toys and a complete
set of Snap-On Tools.
It's a manly man phone because it costs $3,000 stinkin' dollars, and the size
and distinctiveness of the phone ensures that everyone who sees you use it
will know it costs $3,000 stinkin' dollars.
By the way, the phone actually works, which is kind of a bonus. Iridium is
the grandest satellite communication system yet completed. It cost $5 billion
to put up the system's 66 satellites and 12 relay stations on the ground and
tie them together with 17.5 million lines of computer code and one of the
most complex billing systems ever. Motorola was the key driver, but it has
partners from all over the world. The service was officially launched late last
year and is only beginning to be widely offered.
The most compelling concept for Iridium is that it allows you to make a
phone call from absolutely any spot on Earth. And that adds another manly
man aspect to the phone. I tried it out on the sidelines of a soccer field.
Other players got out their baby little MicroTacs and Nokias - you know,
the kind of cellular phones that are so small you have to hold them between
thumb and forefinger - and they couldn't get a signal. I pulled out my Iridium
phone, which was like pulling out a bazooka after the boys had finished
playing with their BB guns.
I lengthened the antenna. I dialed making sure I reminded everyone that, as
far as international communications are concerned, the Iridium system is its
own country. So even if I were to call the 7-Eleven around the corner, I'd be
placing an international call. It's more exotic.
My call bounced off one of the satellites zooming overhead and connected
with its destination back on Earth. I can't say the call quality was great, but it
was as good as many analog cellular calls. "Your call is traveling 100 times
farther than when you're talking on a cellular system, using the same amount
of power (in the phone)," says Bill Zancho, director of marketing for the
Motorola Iridium phones. "People need to have their expectations adjusted."
See? Even the people selling the phones have the right manly man attitude.
Apologize for a little static and a few dropped phrases? Shyeah, right. It's a
satellite phone, buddy - get over it!
When I went to pick up the phone, I learned a few other fun things. For
instance, you could spend hours just playing with the buttons, changing the
words on the screen to any of 21 languages or trying out the 10 ringer tones.
One accessory you can get is a solar charger, presumably for when you take
your phone to Antarctica, the Sahara or the beach at Martha's Vineyard.
Perhaps my favorite accessory is a flat, saucer-size magnetic antenna. To use
your phone, you have to have line-of-sight to the satellites overhead. So
naturally, it won't work when you're inside a car, unless you ride with your
head sticking out the window like a Labrador. The Motorola folks suggest
that if, say, you're in a taxi bouncing between cities in Iran, you plug the cord
of the magnetic antenna into your phone, then reach out and slap the flat
antenna on the taxi's roof.
Wondering how much an Iranian taxi driver might appreciate that, I ask one
of the Motorola marketers, Eva Valentine, if such a maneuver has been
field-tested. "No, we haven't tried that yet," she says.
Though anyone who does will surely be a manly man.
MP3 vs. CD: Following a recent column on MP3 compression technology,
a few readers wrote that it was incorrect of me to say that music
downloaded over the Net using MP3 offered CD-quality sound. MP3 music
might sound good enough to a lot of ears, but it's like comparing a TV
picture to a film in a theater. "I use MP3 and the other compression schemes
in my work," writes Michael Bishop, a recording engineer at Telarc
International. "But I would never pass them off as a CD-quality playback
medium."
E-mail Kevin Maney at kmaney@usatoday.com and include name,
address and day phone.
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