Mobile Phone Features and Sensibility

Although I am not a techie, I have had enough experience with mobile phones(as an END USER). The mobile revolution entered our lives sometime back in 1998. I remember the first individual whom I knew used a mobile phone was a 'hep' dude(Son of an industrialist) in my college. He supposedly bought his phone by selling off his bike. ( bike was cheaper and phones were as costly as a bike - What a comparison..!). Although primitive, his phone was talk of the town. Phones kept on becoming cheaper and cheaper and the number of people using mobiles grew exponentially. It took me almost 8 years after this incidence to actually own a cellular phone( I know that’s just too late, but now I know why people close to me call me a tube light).



Phones started percolating the Indian markets like an epidemic virus. features started getting better and better. Later years saw Cameras, Music, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Game Console, Multimedia Capability take over the mobile revolution. In the coming years, we are about to see much more added to these features. However, within my short usage of the 8 different handsets, I can starkly point out a list of sensible features which I found the most useful and always felt proud of the fact that my mobile phone had those.


1) Ability to save Extension numbers:


My first ever phone- a Motorola- CDMA( reliance) phone had a unique functionality to save the extension numbers. It was one of the most basic phones (which just managed to store 10 SMS messages- all dark screen, appeared like a dot matrix print). What it did was, Whenever we tried saving a number as "Office", it asked for an Extension number. WOW ..! I was more than happy because how much ever we advance, our offices still have those internal extension numbers which are a headache to handle if not remembered.


P.S; This functionality was never seen again. Even the latest blackberry models do not have this capability.


2) Auto Suggest Numbers:


While you make an outgoing call, and you type the first three or four numbers(within a 10 digit long mobile number), the phone out of its own intelligence suggests the possible numbers which share the same initial digits. This is similar to the way we type a part of the email address in GMAIL and some email addresses already stored in your contact book are already popped up and you can easily choose the one you want without typing the rest.


3) Search Name by Numbers:


We all know that we can search a persons phone number by typing some alphabets of his name in the address book. But now, I have a number and want to figure out whom it belongs to. There should be a functionality to insert a number and search whom it belongs to.vThe first I saw this was in the Sony Ericsson Music phones.


4) Changing Radio Channels using headphones:


For Nokia users, this is a regular feature, but unfortunately, I presently use a LG phone. This horrendous gadget does not allow me to anything apart from calling the last person and receiving a call.


5) Ability to add infinite applications(Java, Symbian, Android, or anything else):


C'mon, By infinite I don’t mean actually infinite. But at least 20 ?? My dear LG finds this too much and does not let me add anything more than 8 Java applications at one time. Nokia N73 did not have an upper limit on the number of applications till the time there was adequate free memory.


6) Standard Internet profile:


While you connect to the internet, it is important that your phone does not ask you too many questions. All the Nokia phones I used always asked me atleast a bunch of questions before they actually connected to any webpage. This is ridiculous because you desperately want to find out if your boss has sent you any email and all you do is click the wrong key to answer the right question. You may end up choosing a totally incorrect profile and choose paying a huge bill.


My current LG phone, does this (surprise..!) by asking me a one time question for which internet service to select.- Good I am happy.!!


7) Different Sockets for Charger and Headphones:


According to LG, I cannot listen to songs/radio or anything else while I charge my phone. (WTF..!). It happens so many times that I am running low on my battery and need to charge immediately. While this happens, I simply cannot use this phone for a conference call, which I know I must take on a headphone. Nokia was much better in terms of usability.


8) Ability to get RID of all those Trial Softwares:


All the advanced phones which I ever had, contained some crappy softwares which were trial versions and provided only half the functionality. The moment you start using them it says "visit the website to register your product". The website(if visited) charges you in some tens of dollars per year. I mean that’s too much. Firstly you expect us to use a trial version software in the world of open source and torrents. And above that, you want us to pay in terms of some 50 odd dollars ?? do you ever know that our mobiles themselves cost lesser than 20 dollars. Nokia allowed me to delete such useless softwares, but LG doesn’t.


9) Light Weight Browsers:


Whether Nokia, LG or Samsung, All come with a very heavy browser which takes a million seconds to initiate and then another million hours to connect to the internet. Now I am talking on a comparative basis. When the end users know of Extra-Ordinary softwares like Opera Mini, Bolt or even the full version Opera Mobile, why on earth are the Biggies obsessed with their Heavy - White Elephant browsers.

10) Ability to block SMS originating from Spammers:

My Vodafone number generates atleast 25 messages per day which are absolutely crap. The serve no purpose to me. I should be able to filter out such messages, as soon as it gets into my inbox. Most of the bulk SMS is delivered using Nams instead of numbers. Such messages should be deletable.

This is more or less a partial list. If you can think of some more MUST BE features. please comment below with the same ..!