A Phone without SMS

By Francesco D'Alessio - January, 22nd 2014

Imagine for one minute that your phone didn’t have the ability to send SMS messages or make calls.

Would your world really end? Or simply rearranged.

Over the last year, 2013 we have seen a total of 145Bn SMS messages sent worldwide according to research by Deliotte. Now this may seem very large however this has dropped from 152Bn in 2012 and is on a dramatic fall. People have began to overthrow their smartphones with instant messaging services like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and more in the search to create a more efficient way to message people. In 2013, these instant messaging apps replaced SMS as the dominant method of messaging sending over 160Bn messages over the year with a 57Bn increase from 2012. It is very clear to say that Instant messaging expects to be the predominant tool for messaging in the next 5 years.

Does this push for the a new form of messaging, force the need to eradicate SMS?

Will we ever see the SIM card and SMS/Call app removed from our phones, I have been pondering this theory over the last few weeks, This was brought up when I realised that the majority (around 80%) of my messaging activities and calls were done through 3rd party instant messaging and video calling services like Hangouts, Facebook Messenger and weirdly LinkedIn Chat. I found that this could be my messaging tools in the future, despite making the odd call I could avoid using SMS until the last minute when I am out of signal.

We are engulfed by WiFi or 3G/4G in these modern times and the lack of connection is very rare, I thought to myself why couldn’t we have a new interesting concept like the Chromebook that eliminates a step in the process. I then had a thought, Chrome Phone… But that quickly disappeared because we are looking at a smartphone that doesn’t need to run through a browser. I did some researching after this, turns out that Firefox has been trying to replicate this very same idea with their new OS phones, using the internet as the primary connection tool and trying to eliminate the baggage of these components. I would definitely like to see something similar to this phone available on the consumer market because there needs to be something new that is designed from the ground up with no SIM card.

I would like to overview the benefits and drawbacks of having a smartphone that could do such a thing:

Benefits:

• Slimmer design
• Focus more on other components like battery, camera etc
• Push for stronger internet receivers
• Less issue with contracts and fees for SMS and calls
• Cheaper costing

Drawbacks:

• Internet access - limited
• Not everyone is online
• There is no voice calling online based app that is used by millions
• It maybe too early

I would certainly like to see whether any of the phone companies took this initiative and eliminated the key elements of a phone. It would be interesting to see whether it could sell to the consumer market and whether a service provider would bet on their internet service to be consistent and fast that .If this device was available in the consumer market I would consider purchasing this.

What do you think?

Would you buy a smartphone which focused on instant messaging and other apps?