What amazes me more than the foolish cell phone companies trying to extract whatever money they can from their customers for lame services is that the user interfaces on the phones themselves still suck terribly.

The very first cell phone I got — in 2000 — was some sort of Sanyo from Sprint. It was black plastic and about the dimensions of a Snickers bar. Black and white and text only, it probably had the best and most straightforward UI I’ve used. Of course, you couldn’t take photos with it, listen to MP3s, send text messages, or browse the web. But your address book was easily navigated, your incoming, outgoing and missed calls were separated and organized by time, and you could simply make phone calls.

I have a Sony Ericsson T610 now and while it probably comes in second overall, there are still so many boneheaded UI decisions in there that shouldn’t have made it past one week of user testing. It seems clear to me that people who design cell phones don’t use them, but how is that possible these days when they’re ubiquitous?