How the iPhone 4 and iZ could cost more money for Deaf users

Let's look a little closer on this iPhone 4 and the recent iZ news on Video Relay Service (VRS) for iPhone 4 along with the reality of real time video bandwidth it can consume each minute. Let's see how this could put Deaf people at a financial disadvantage using the two technological wonders. Instead of getting overly excited, people should be concerned on how this could hurt their wallets if they're not careful.

With the recent AT&T change on how it would charge cell phone users on data download and upload it reverted to a capped usage amount for their tiered pricing plan which began last month.

For $15 a month, the DataPlus plan offers smartphone customers 200 megabytes of data. If customers exceed 200MB in a monthly billing cycle, they receive an additional 200MB of data for $15 until the end of that billing cycle. For $25 a month, consumers sign up for the DataPro plan and get 2 gigabytes of data. If subscribers exceed 2GB during a billing cycle, they will be charged $10 for an additional 1GB of data.

So, 2GB a month sounds alot doesn't it? When it comes to video downloading or uploading like real time video chat, real time video VRS, or uploading video shots to your Facebook page that 2GB limit could go fast before the end of the month is up in a non-WiFi scenario here.

Here are some numbers :

The front-facing camera resolution is 640×480. At 30 frames per second, with H.264 encoding, this would result in 5 MB per minute video.

The back-facing camera resolution is 1280×780. At 30 fps and H.264 encoding, this would be 12.8 MB per minute video (note that H.264 is generally more efficient at higher bitrates).

Netflix streaming onto an iphone would be about 2.8 MB per minute video.

Let's assume a 5 MB per minute through iZ VRS relay using the iPhone 4. Let's use the 30 frames per second (fps) standard since at a minimum for clarity sake in seeing clearly the signing a 15 fps would be required. And let's assume you only make one VRS call a day for 5 minutes which equates to 25 MB used for one day VRS call. All done on non-WiFi calls. Do that each day for 30 days you would then have used up 750 MB already, almost half of the 2 GB capped limit. But add the constant real time video chatting with your friends and any videos uploaded for email, on social networking sites, or even YouTube. Do all this along with checking your emails and surfing the internet would certainly and easily push you over the capped limit of 2 GB per month with AT&T's new tiered pricing plan for smartphones. But I think the additional use of the VRS with your smartphone streaming video could turn out to be the potential hidden killer here. And how it could help take a hit on your wallet and get slapped with overusage charges by going over your capped data limit.

Looking back now and into the future one will need to develop a strategy to prevent any possibility of going over the capped limit if you plan on getting the iPhone 4 and use iZ VRS. The key is to recognize and understand these things that could end up costing you an expensive monthly telephone bill. There are other ways to keep in contact and communicate like texting, email, or IM. After all, not everybody will use the video phone to communicate all the time. Especially not when you have AT&T and other telecommunication companies coming up with their tiered pricing plans. This marks the begining of the end of unlimited download on your smartphone. Watch your wallet.

Why some deaf people don't like using the video phone

There is a certain misconception or misperception when it comes to communication technology like the video phone, email, texting, voice using the phone and so on the preference of a particular piece of communication technology over another. For example, the video phone. Not everybody like to use the video phone. In fact, several deaf people I know avoid using the video phone as much as possible and use email to communicate instead. They would prefer to quickly write out an email letter on what's going on than to sit and chat, mindlessly (according to them), for hours. Some people are not chatters when it comes to using the video phone. Or would try and limit conversations on the video phone. For them, it's probably an issue on the amount of time consumed for social chit chat when time could be better spent elsewhere on getting things done. You'd be surprised.

And then we have the texting example. Not everybody like to text all the time and would either avoid it or keep it to a minimum and perhaps instead prefer voice over the phone. Or in the upcoming case of the new real time texting conversation technology without the need to hit the "send" button to respond everytime would be the new UbiVia communication technology. In this case it would be people who like to text all the time rather than those who use texting sparingly. It would probably come down between the preferred choice of texting using the "stop and go" texting (e.g. SMS, AIM, Instant Messaging, etc) versus UbiVia real time, live texting where people on each end can see each other's texting at the same time. This would be very similar between two people talking (voice) with each over the phone in a fluid fashion. People will undoubtedly choose one communication technology over another for a variety of reasons. The communication technology pie is very big out there and people are willing to pay for certain services or applications if they find them beneficial or useful to have.

No matter what people say there will always be preferences on using certain type of communication technology over others. It doesn't matter if one group of people who will be negative about a communication technology because there will always be another group who would praise it for its beneficial uses.

Let's look at the UbiDuo communication device. It is a communication technology mocked by many Deaf, deaf and hard of hearing people saying it wouldn't work or that it wouldn't be as successful in selling the product for a variety of reasons. Yet they were wrong on all counts and the company, sComm, that makes the UbiDuo communication device, continues to grow and sell successfully this quality product each year.

Another thing to look at is the iPhone video calling. Eventually this will become mainstream in many phones into the near future. Just because you have this communication technology feature built in doesn't mean everybody will prefer this feature over other types such as "stop and go" versus real time, live texting, emailing, video phone through your television screen (bigger screen), voice only and so on. Some will prefer to using the old pen and paper method and avoid technology altogether.

Choices and preferences are two very different things here. Preferences vary over the hundred of millions of people in the United States when it come to choosing a particular piece of communciation technology for everyday use. Just because you don't like a particular use of communication technology doesn't mean others will share your same sentiment and will instead see value and beneficial use.

Closed Captioning support for Blackberry Phones

Just like the iPhone, Blackberry fans can access a new version of a "do-it-yourself caption-authoring" tool for digital media. ow buy phones that have captioning support for uploaded videos that come with captioning.

which can be used to create closed-captioned videos formatted for playback on BlackBerry® smartphones. As before, authors can continue to write captions once and export them to formats compatible with QuickTime, Windows Media, RealPlayer and Flash.
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Support for closed-captioned content playback is available on BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry Device Software version 5.0 and newer, including the BlackBerry Storm2™ smartphone, BlackBerry Bold 9700™ smartphone and BlackBerry Curve™ 8530 smartphone models.

Very cool, and very savvy in the marketing sense that takes aim at a potential market of 30+ million people with hearing loss in the U.S. (and even more outside). And if you have a Blackberry Storm2 9520/9550 smartphones then you're in luck since they already come with captioning support.

I'm sure from now on all newer BB phones will have closed captioning support just like the Blackberry Storm2 phones.