My Mobile Saga

I’ve been using my present mobile for more than four years, what would amount to sacrilege among the present Gen-X who trade their handsets for a latest one almost every six months or so. I’ve decided finally that it is time I traded in my mobile handset for a new one with all those amazing features I don’t really need at present, but, may be needed in the future, most of them being weird acronyms like EDGE, HSCSD, GPRS, and WLAN etc.

I bought (actually my old man gifted the handset to me) my first mobile phone many years ago when the telecom revolution in India was still in its infancy. I was working in Mumbai and my parents in Bangalore insisted that I be in regular contact with them. The mobile handset was a Siemens C-25, purchased in Bangalore and the connection in Mumbai was Orange, which charged about Rs. 4 per minute for an outgoing call and more than Rs.2 per minute for an incoming call, contrasting with the Rs. 0.99 per minute outgoing and free incoming that I’m charged today. It was kind of cool to have a mobile phone during those days when they were still a luxury and I plead guilty to the charges of ostentatiously flaunting it around. Soon, I discovered two major shortcomings in the phone. It didn’t have an internal clock and I couldn’t tell if the missed call I had on my phone was a few minutes or a few days old. I had to erase the call lists regularly to avoid this ambiguity. Since it lacked a clock, it didn’t have an alarm function and I had to rely on an alarm clock to wake for those early morning shifts. Also, I never got the name of the person sending me an SMS – the phone only displayed the person’s number. After using this phone for well over a year, I decided to trade it for what was my dream mobile of that time, the Nokia 3310.

I never did buy the Nokia 3310, even though I did use my friend’s 3310 handset for some time. I rather hesitatingly went for an almost unheard of mobile phone at that time, Mitsubishi’s Trium Mars, much cheaper than the Nokia 3310, a decision which I have never regretted. All I wanted in my mobile was an alarm and good SMS capabilities but, Trium gave me much more. I now had a phone memory to store contacts in addition to my SIM memory; it had games (especially PUSH), a T9 dictionary to help compose messages, multiple language options and the best feature – a speaker phone. Even though the battery life was rather poor, I found its software much advanced than that of Nokia (For example, Trium had the call details for own network as well as the roaming networks separately). It didn’t have downloadable ringtones, picture message features and had a rather awkwardly protruding antenna, but I absolutely adored this phone. After almost 2 years of satisfactory use, it was peer pressure more than anything else that made me go for Nokia though I did have problems with the phone continuing to ring even after the answer button had been pressed. However, considering that this problem started after I dropped this phone from a height of about 30 feet from a cherry-picker, I shouldn’t be complaining.

The mobile phone market had exploded by then and almost everybody had a mobile phone. The markets were flooded with cheap handsets and using a phone with an external protruding antenna was totally uncool. Orange had still not become Hutch and therefore still retained its reputation. It was the golden period of free SMS in Mumbai and Trium had a grave problem of being able to store only 20 messages. This forced me to choose between messages from special persons and messages that were otherwise important. I also couldn’t play all those catchy ringtones others were playing. Though camera phones were the in-thing, most of the Nokia ones were obscenely expensive. So, I settled on Nokia 6610, the main attractions being a colour display, a very large text message memory and FM radio. This is the phone I’ve had ever since. There are minor niggles like the infra-red being practically useless and an almost non-existent internal memory for ringtones and pictures but, there are other priceless attributes like the Profiles which has enabled me to sit through meetings without embarrassing moments, it is much lighter and handy than my previous phone, has a decent battery life (though I’ve changed the battery once last year after 3 years of usage) and it has a four-way scroll button which I was used to in the Trium. GPRS enabled me to check my mails but Orange’s steep pricing made me cancel the subscription and stick to Internet Cafés.

Now, I need a phone to access my mails and I’d also like to store music and have a decent camera. Bluetooth would also be preferable so that I can exchange music and videos with my friends. I have shortlisted the Sony-Ericsson P1i, the Nokia N-95 and the O2 Life for my next phone unless the Apple i-phone or the HTC TytnII comes to India. After a cursory comparison, the Sony-Ericsson P1i looks to be the best bet. Nokia N-95 is probably the most fully loaded phone in the Indian market as of now but I’m not comfortable with the slider design and I don’t mind not having a GPS or EDGE. As for the OS, I’m slightly inclined towards Symbian compared to the new Windows Mobile 6 (as in O2 and HTC). Though I would have preferred a full-fledged QWERTY keyboard instead of tilt buttons, I’m not that much into messaging and will use my computer to reply to mails. I’ve had just three phones in 7 years, and I’ve been lucky enough not to experience any serious problems like phones hanging or software getting corrupt. I’m now ready for a new phone and I’ll wait until the Diwali offers cause a drop in the present prices, by which time, I should have decided on the make.