I just want to make a phone call

Back in the 1970's, I started to watch the original STAR TREK tv show, which by then was in permanent reruns.The reason for mentioning this is that there was a particular device used by the crew members which was called the "communicator". It was essentially a miniature walkie-talkie that had a tremendous talk range. It was mostly used to communicate with the orbiting starship or another member of the landing party. It was a very simple design. You would flip open the cover and talk. No need to hold a button down like with a walkie-talkie. There were 3 lights and only two buttons inside. I'm not sure what those buttons were for, but I thought this "portable phone" was so cool and wondered how long into the future it would take us to design and build these small but poweful communicators. I'm pretty sure these units did not have cameras, keypads, clocks, GPS or LCD screens. So you couldn't take pictures, you couldn't text message, you couldn't surf the interent and read emails, you couldn't watch movies or play video games, you couldn't use them as watches or alarm clocks and you couldn't find your way to somewhere with them. You could however, do the most important thing with it. You could talk to someone, even over a great distance. That was the idea behind the original portable phone that came out around 1984. It was about the size of a brick, weighed about two pounds and cost about $4000.00. I knew then that it was only a matter of years before the STAR TREK communicator would be a reality for us all, although the design would have to be modified with a keypad for dialing phone numbers. Instead of creating long range communicators they invented the "cell" phone. They are called cell phones because the limited transmitter range must be received by a nearby "cell" tower in order to make a call. The drawback to this system is that your phone must be in range of a tower to actually use it. That was a big problem early on but it's getting better as more and more towers are put up. However, reception has never been as good as a traditional "land line" phone. How many times have you tried to have a conversation with someone calling from a cell phone only to hear just bits and pieces? Maybe you're the one on the cell phone spinning around continuously asking "can you hear me now?" All I ever wanted from a portable phone was to make and receive calls at places where there was no access to a regular phone. That's all. These days, it doesn't really matter if you can actually talk to someone because the phones have so many other features to keep you busy. As more gadgets are crammed into them, it almost seems like the phone designers are trying to make these little devices the only thing you'll ever need or want in life. That's just my middle aged opinion. Listen to my version of Steve Martin from the movie "The Jerk" as he is saying "All I need is this".