Interesting Interview

Sprint and Verizon Wireless are among the carriers that have taken heat for disabling some Bluetooth features in their phones. What's your take on these limitations?

(Martin Cooper's Full Response)

Number one, Bluetooth would be much more widespread if it worked better. I've bought several Bluetooth devices, and I can't make any of them work in a way that's convenient to me. Until Bluetooth works intuitively and automatically, it's designed for technocrats and not people. Number two, the idea of a carrier withholding features from a customer to maximize their revenue is poor marketing. Bluetooth is one example. Another is that in GSM, the whole concept of a SIM card is that you can put it in any phone. The U.S. carriers lock their phones so they won't work on another network. So you're taking a feature that was designed to help people, and for [an] egregious reason, withholding it.

I sort of disagree with him on his number one statement. It isn't that hard to use, and with the exception of Kensington Bluetooth Adapters (never work for more than a week), Bluetooth does work. Then I think he moves to SIM cards to avoid elaborating on Bluetooth because the majority of the answer is about SIM cards and not Bluetooth.

In this article, Martin Cooper is asked more questions. Also, there is an interview with Motorola's President of Personal Devices division Ron Garriques about phone design. And the CMO of Verizon is also interviewed. The limitation of Bluetooth is also mentioned in this interview.