For being dubbed "smartphones" most of the devices that fall into that category seem to have very dumb phone capabilities. You would think that as companies develop these devices that they wouldn't just take the phone part for granted, relegated to the back burner while they work on the other stuff. Sure, I enjoy apps and other features too, but if the device fails at its originally intended purpose - that is, sending and receiving phone calls and text messages - then I believe we have failed somewhere along the way. There are some, I think, basic functionalities that so-called smartphones seem to be lacking. Functionalities that their dumber little siblings seem to have figured out.
For example, I would like to be able to silence all calls except from a handful of numbers. I would like to be able to have different lists of numbers based on my needs so that I can just select a group, choose "Silence" or "Silence all others" and it should work. That way I can be sure not to miss calls from, say, work when I'm on call, or my wife when she is traveling at night without having to worry about drunken wrong numbers or people I don't care to hear from when I'm trying to sleep.
Or how about assigning one ringtone to all non-contact phone numbers and another to generic contacts and also have the ability to give individuals the distinct ringtones? This way if my phone is across the house, I can determine whether or not I want to pause my movie or game to run and answer it just based on the ringtone. This may seem complicated but my dumbphone from Kyocera can do it, why can't my Droid or iPhone?
Now I haven't really looked into add-on apps for these things, and I'm sure they're out there, but there is a problem with just using a third-party app: it's not built in to the design of the phone. This means that it is likely not going to be nearly as reliable. I have heard horror stories from people who have used different apps for text messaging and ringtones and they don't work quite right. They miss text messages, or have different sounds setup for ringtones and they malfunction causing someone to answer the phone in a rather embarassing way because they think the caller is someone else (yes, I've done this, hush). While this is fine once in a while, it's not something I would like to rely on for important functions. I'd rather not have an app that silences certain calls malfunction and I stop receiving the important ones. I really don't want to have to explain to my boss why I didn't get the email server back up and running because some app silenced the ops number when they called. This is why I got rid of my Windows phone and why I'll never go back to one. I wouldn't get alerts for hours on end and then wake up my phone and see 6 voicemails and 10 text messages. That was infuriating.
Phone developers need to continue to improve the basic functions of the phone in addition to the bells and whistles that make these devices phenomenal. I don't want to carry two devices, I want the device I spent exorbitant amounts of money on to have the features I can get from a cheap throw-away phone.
