We all know that mobile phones have become affected by the fashion craze now, so we are seeing people with must have phones. Step up the IPhone, but what we also see every now and then is fashion only handsets, phones such as the Samsung Armani. These phones, aren’t too bad for a simple phone, they often comes with some random gimmick thrown in as well, like the fore mentioned Armani phone from Samsung, which comes with a SOS service, but is it really worth shelling out the extra pennies for a brand name on your handset? There use to be a ‘Bang and Ousten’ range of handsets that were great to use, perfect for music, but there were that expensive that it was cheaper to buy a Nokia 8000 series handset. so you have to wonder how many people are out there buying phones just for the name? True, dropping an expensive name in, while showing off your new phone, can make you woo your friends, but i feel there are phones out there which are like designer radiators, they will impress your friends, but means that you have to go out of your way to make your friends notice, rather than spend forever waiting for someone to notice.
I have to admit i am someone who who doesn’t like clutter, things need to be as simple as they should be for the job at hand. When i look round at all the accessories available for mobile phones today, it really does make me wonder, do people spend more on the phone or the extras that they have attached to it. Okay so i admit some things are useful like a strap to go around you hand, I see the logic in this – reduce the chance of it being dropped. I don’t however see the point of having a neck lanyard attached to your phone. Do people not know how heavy their phone is? having it on show! being attached to you by a piece of cotton that is designed to break, when pulled! isn’t doing much for reducing the chances of it being stolen. Other ‘brilliant’ ideas that people have for their handset are the ‘little gems’ to glue onto your phone to make it all shiny, this is as bad as having your phone plated in a fake gold/silver/metal of your choice. Yes it makes your phone sparkle and look special, but it also reduces the effectiveness of the built in antenna. With the amount of different things that people can buy for their handset I am still in wonder as to why there isn’t a person out there selling an attachment where you can turn your phone into electronic cigarettes, although i have seen a picture of a phone from china that is designed to look like a pack of Marlborough lights, so who knows, maybe i just need to look deeper.
With Networks pushing for phones to be more related to Internet. Email is starting to take over from SMS. i know that being able to send out a load of information out to people is more annoying on a small text that can only handle around 160 characters, don’t get me wrong, that is great for a quick note saying ‘I’m on my way home, put the kettle on’ but when it comes to work related tasks, having to reduce your message by using words as ‘ur’ instead or ‘your’ isn’t going to make anyone look professional. However with some of the new upcoming phones, like the world famous IPhone and the new android series of handsets they both are trying to aim for all markets and are hoping to reach out to business customers. They will fail in this task until they can sort out the business mailing lists. I know for a fact that android hasn’t got any built-in function to allow it to send or receive contacts via bluetooth, this is one easy way of quickly transferring contacts off your old handset onto your new hardware. Phones companies need to talk more with users about how they use their phones and adapt them to suit the needs of the business rather than to just offer blank canvases, expecting a third party vendor to do all the hard work.