On weblogs.oreilly.com, Brian McConnell proposes that cell phone manufacturers include Morse Code capability into the next generation of cell phones. McConnell notes a lot of advantages to using Morse Code instead of the small keyboards that most cell phones now have:
- The telephone would have a fairly large pressure sensitive panel on its back side, big enough that you would not have to look at the phone to locate it.
- When carrying the phone at your side, you could send messages with one hand by tapping on the back of the phone.
- You can program the phone to perform different functions, depending on what character you tap in.
Unfortunately, I think he’s being a bit too optimistic about how easy it will be for cell phones to receive the messages sent. He says,
Receiving messages is less of an issue, since they’ll arrive as text messages. The sending telephone will convert the tapped dots and dashes into alphanumeric messages to be sent via SMS or IP.
I have doubts, however, that the manufacturers will be able to build in a decoder able to accurately read the poor CW that most users will send. As anyone who has played with the MFJ code readers or other similar devices will tell you, the code being sent has to be pretty good for the reader to have any chance of deciphering it. I doubt that the majority of users will develop the fists required to really make good use of this feature.
Oh well, it was an interesting idea before reality set in.