file this under ‘best thing since sliced bread’, motorola and discover card have been piloting a new idea in north suburbs of Chicago that enables you to pay for everything via your cell phone. well, you may be thinking this isn’t ‘technically’ a new revelation, but the cool part about this gadgetry is not only the contactless ‘wipe and scan’ feature the system implements, but also that you can store credit cards into it and pick.
now i know what you’re thinking. what if it gets stolen? what if i accidentally waive it pass a reader for something i didn’t want? what if i lose the phone?
well, if you think about it, if you lose your wallet, its gone forever. at least with a phone, it can be located via gps once its turned on. just like with any credit card, any fradulent charges, you’re not liable for. even better, in order for a charge to process, you have to type in your pin number, just like at an atm.
the technology is currently being used in japan with much fanfare. i, personally, hope the old people get out of the way and let it officially come out of testing by motorola and discover card.
you’ll notice that the poll in the article has a majority of readers saying they wouldn’t want such a feature in their phone. while its not a heavy majority, research has shown that the 18 to 24 demographic are more likely to adapt this technology than anyone. seeing as how ybp is almost synonomous with ‘newest tech gadget’ 
, i wanted to gaze our reader’s opinion.
would you want a wallet phone?
JC
Yezzur! It’s all about reducing the number of items in one’s pockets. However, “feature fatigue” is real for consumers who just want their phones to be phones. Nothing more, nothing less…
March 6, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Fredric
i feel you on the feature fatigue, but i’m never against having the gadget that i always carry around do EVERYTHING.
waiting for the dap / gps / pmp / quad-band phone / pay all my bills / cure cancer device.
March 6, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Kimberly Michelle
not a fan of one thing doing everything…
March 6, 2007 at 5:42 pm
rors
its called putting all your eggs in one basket, if you put everything in one and lose that one thing youve lost everything, if ya get me
April 6, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Fredric
maybe, but the cool thing about it being an electronic medium is that you can turn it off instantly.
think about it this way. would you rather lose your wallet with 5 credit cards that can put $10,000 on them or a wallet with $10,000 in cash?
April 7, 2007 at 5:45 am
Richers Blog
well done men, this is very interesting topic
im sure everybody's gonna check that
December 2, 2008 at 5:07 am