"Look what I have!" A student at an elementary school in the United States excitedly showed off something in his hand. Those around him immediately gathered, and upon closer inspection, their faces showed envy.
It was a Google PT.
"Jack, how did you get that?" Although the economic conditions in the United States were much better than in China, students bringing phones to school wasn't exactly new. However, for an elementary school student to have a Google PT was considered quite extravagant in a community school.
"My brother gave it to me. My brother works at Oriental Amazon, earning $100 a day. Five days of work can buy a Google PT!" the student proudly said. Hearing that his brother earned $3,000 a month, many children showed envious expressions.
After all, this was a community school, and the children were almost all Black or Latino, belonging to the poorest families, families that could barely scrape together a complete $100.
A monthly income of $3,000 was indeed out of reach for them.
"Your brother is really amazing. It's said that over a hundred people competed for one job opportunity at Oriental Amazon a few days ago!" a student said enviously.
However, everyone's attention quickly shifted to the Google PT. When the PT booted up and the high-definition color screen lit up, revealing a volcanic lava wallpaper, everyone was stunned by the ultra-clear picture quality.
Although this picture quality didn't seem as good as a computer's LCD screen, displaying such a shocking image on a small phone had already amazed the young audience.
This alone made them understand the difference between this PT and traditional phones.
"What else can this PT do?" someone asked impatiently.
"Of course, it can view photos and watch TV. I'll take a picture for you now and show you how good the camera is!" the elementary student said excitedly, then he pressed the shortcut key for pictures on the keyboard.
One second later…
Three seconds later…
Ten seconds later…
"Locke, why isn't anything happening? Where's your photo?" someone asked impatiently.
"Maybe I didn't click it correctly. Let me try again!" the student quickly said, then he pressed the photo shortcut key several more times, but there was still no response.
Just as everyone was suspecting the Google PT was broken, the screen suddenly popped up and entered the photo function page.
"Oh, it's fine. Maybe it's just a little slow!" the student said, relieved. But it soon proved to be genuinely slow, as the entire screen began to flicker, repeatedly entering and exiting the photo album animation.
After popping up about as many times as the student had clicked the icon, the PT screen finally stabilized.
"Ahem, this PT is like this. Just like computers get slow, PTs also get slow. I encountered this several times yesterday when I was playing, but it gets better!" the student quickly explained and then started showing the pictures on the phone.
This process did indeed return to smoothness, but after all the phone pictures were displayed, and the surrounding friends asked to watch a TV show, the screen froze again.
This time, after waiting for about a minute, the student finally successfully entered the TV video and proudly introduced, "I had my brother download the ultra-clear version of 'Misty Journey' online. Do you know what 1080p is? It's clearer than movies in cinemas, the clearest movie in the world!"
"Oh!" the crowd nodded excitedly. Under the expectant gazes, Locke clicked the play button. It started smoothly again, playing about 30 seconds of the plot.
However, when the video reached about 35 seconds, the picture instantly froze, but the sound continued to play normally, resulting in a very bad audio-video desynchronization.
And as time went on, the audio-video desynchronization became more and more outrageous. The picture played at almost one frame per second, but the sound had already progressed several minutes ahead. Locke was so frustrated that he wanted to directly press the back button to return to the desktop, but there was still no response… the phone remained frozen.
"Ugh, this is no fun!"
"Exactly, it's so laggy, like a stutterer!" The surrounding elementary students became very disappointed, all speaking sarcastically and walking away. Although Locke anxiously explained that he still had the game function to show and that the game graphics on this phone were amazing, no one cared anymore. After all, if even playing a video was this laggy, let alone playing games.
Just as Locke became extremely dejected, the teacher finally walked in. Seeing the somewhat strange situation in the classroom, she crouched down and patiently asked. After learning the whole story, she walked over to Locke, smiled, and comforted him, "Locke, your teacher also really likes your Google PT. I've heard it's the best phone in the world. Your brother truly loves you very much!"
"Thank you, teacher!" Locke said emotionally. "But they are right. This phone is really too laggy to use, and the user experience is very bad. I don't think it's the best phone in the world."
"You can't say that. By the way, the teacher needs to call her mother, and the teacher has something to say to her. But the teacher doesn't have a phone. Can you lend me your phone to make a call?"
"You see, other phones only have phone functions, but this phone can take pictures, watch movies, and play games. These are all extra functions. If you ignore these functions, then everyone is the same, with just a phone that can make calls. That's enough. Hurry up and lend your phone to the teacher to make a call!"
"Okay!" Locke was very happy to receive the teacher's praise and handed her his phone. The teacher quickly dialed her mother's number.
In fact, everything was fine at the teacher's home, and she didn't really need to call her mother. She did this just to show Locke that his phone was indeed a great phone, at least it could perform its basic function of making calls.
Soon, the call was successfully connected. The teacher answered with a bright smile and greeted her mother. However, awkwardly, after the teacher finished speaking, a choppy, hoarse, and slightly distorted voice came from the other end of the phone, "Who is this? What did you say? I can't hear you clearly. Did you dial the wrong number?"
Of course, her mother wouldn't fail to recognize her daughter's voice. So the only conclusion was that the voice on the other end of the phone was choppy and the sound quality was extremely poor, which prevented the mother from recognizing her own daughter's voice.
"What's going on? Is the signal bad here?" the teacher was a bit confused. She usually had no problems making calls at school. So she took out her own phone and dialed her mother's number. Then her mother directly said, "Alice, you don't know, but I suspected a scammer called me just now. The voice was choppy and unclear, I couldn't hear anything. When you get home, please blacklist this number for me!"
"Waaah!" Locke instantly burst into tears, even abandoning his phone. The teacher herself was also very embarrassed, muttering into the phone, "Didn't the internet rave about this phone? Why is it so terrible to use!"
This was just a microcosm of what was happening in the United States. With the simultaneous launch of smart devices from both Google and Apple, such situations were constantly occurring.
On the first day, there were still scattered complaints online that the user experience of these two devices was very poor, with 5 minutes out of 10 minutes of usage spent waiting for the phone to catch up.
Once the phone finally recovered, they were afraid to open any new features, fearing that it would cause the phone to enter a state of stagnation and lag again.
Initially, many people refuted in forums, saying it was their own fault for not knowing how to use the PT and not setting it up properly. Didn't they see how well all the major video bloggers used them?
But as more and more devices reached users, these negative comments began to explode. Almost everyone complained that these devices were flashy and impractical. Although they looked like they had many innovative features, the user experience was extremely poor. Even the basic calling function, which a phone should have, was inferior to feature phones costing only a dozen dollars.
And these comments were not just directed at the Google PT. Soon, similar complaints appeared on Apple phone forums as well.
Moreover, Apple phones had more problems. Because Apple phones used touch screens, they required fingers to tap the screen. As a result, touch control had severe latency. Often, the finger had already slid past, but the cursor on the screen remained in its original position, only to be stretched to the next position slowly and jerkily after a few seconds.
Forget about operating the entire phone through touch control. Every tap on the screen required a response time of more than 5 seconds, let alone touch latency issues.
Although some tech-savvy users quickly responded in forums, saying that this was due to the phone overheating after prolonged use, which reduced the sensitivity of the touch screen.
Therefore, as long as the phone was put down and allowed to cool back to normal temperature, the touch screen would return to normal.
But such an answer made people want to kick the person in the face. Do I have to put the phone in the refrigerator to make it normal?