I just finally figured out how to work my wife's cell-phone. It's an MDA that allows us to get our emails and view websites while we travel. It has a small screen and slide-out keyboard with tiny letters. So I need to use the stylus to do the actual inputting. Once we set up our various accounts, we can now see our messages and sort of see the website. That's because you need to scroll around the page to view it, rather than all at once. It also has a 1.3 megapixel camera, is blue-tooth enabled, and has a word document feature for composing letters and so forth. It's fairly compact for all those features and probably also bakes bread, takes out the trash and washes the windows, once I get up to speed. In the meantime, I have a 5 year old Motorola cell-phone.

And what does it do? Nothing but answer and send calls. Period. Now my wife loves her phone and all the bells and whistles. I admit it's nice to be able to check emails, but it took hours to learn some basic functions. My phone doesn't even come with a Sim card to store addresses and phone contacts. It does have a speaker and can vibrate and I consider that really advanced. Of course, to most of you, that is SO nineties. But I suppose, when I am forced to get a new one, there will be even more features available.

The new iPhone from Apple promises to push the envelope even further. It will be more a computer than phone. Future phones will most likely fax and print as well. So, at what point, do we drop the "phone" name and call it what it is? A communication-data-transmission-storage-entertainment device. After all, it can also play MP3 tunes, will eventually play back movies and have TV access. So "phone" is rather so yesterday, agreed? They are also considering adding GPS capabilities for traveling and tracking and using virtual keyboards that work off lightbeams that you see and touch, without being real. It doesn't get much more techy than that. Except when they get the whole thing down to the size of a watch.

So, what is the world's greatest cell-phone? I can described it in one word: simple. How simple? Well, it does only one thing; make calls. It has a push-button keypad, a speaker and receiver. Ideally, it would have a dial tone but I know that's not possible in a cell-phone. Yet this phone would be virtually unbreakable when dropped and small enough to fit in purses and pockets. And it would be a true phone, not a camera, computer, music player, or PDA. The perfect phone would plug into any outlet to charge without a special cord or adapter. It would come in one color, black, and have just one standard ring tone or a vibrate option.

Sure, people love choices, but not on this one. That's because it's also free. What did I just say? Well, remember the old days when people got free phones with their AT&T Bell service? They make enough on the cell service charges so they should toss this basic phone over to us for free. This phone is the exact opposite of where we are heading and it perhaps deserves consideration for that reason. At the very least, give us this option. Make a phone that is only a phone, please. So, T -Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and Alltel: are you listening? Can you hear me now?