Mobile Phone Etiquette

Most people don’t seem to know what to do with a mobile phone. All the nouveau riche apparently buy them just to flash around and show off their wealth. A course in mobile phone etiquette should be made compulsory for everyone who buys a cell phone.

Most people seem to think that since the phone is wireless, it requires them to power the device by means of lung power. They shout into the handset as if that’ll help transmit their voice further and clearer!

And there are those who want to let everyone know that they’ve got the latest ring tone or mp3 enabled phone (with speaker) by letting their phones ring on at full volume without displaying any intentions of answering the call. I sometimes suspect that they have another phone secreted away somewhere on their person and are using that to call themselves. It’s possible.

Then, as with all these new devices, there are those who are completely lost with the new fangled handsets. They have no idea which button does what and every time they get a call, they fumble around trying to recall if it’s the green button you press to pick up or the red button. They also seem to be unaware that there is a discreet and silent mode that they could avail of. Especially in theaters and in trains. Why they get calls in the middle of the night on a journey through the remotest area’s of Madhya Pradesh, I can’t fathom. Most people (including yours truly, until my very intelligent girlfriend informed me about it) also aren’t aware of there being an option to silence the phone, without rejecting of answering the call, thereby providing yourself an opportunity to hear yourself think and conclude whether to answer or not without being egged on infuriatingly by the phone’s incessant ringing. At least, Nokia phones have offer this option.

Which brings me to the fact that I find Nokia phones very appealing. They have the right blend of functionality, appearance and extras that is required. I’ve seen phones that have very attractive displays and menus but they run so slow, you are almost overcome by the urge to toss them into the nearest dustbin. A lot of them skip on features like an alarm clock, let me rephrase that, a decent alarm clock, a calculator etc. I also especially like the fact that you can use all the chargers interchangeably as well as the pretty much standard menu system. It makes for a very gradual learning curve. I also am a regular user of the Nokia PC Suite for copying my messages and downloaded images and ring tones, though I have been plagued with lots of bugs in the software which at various times have deleted all the recent messages from my inbox, failed to delete messages from my inbox, duplicated recent messages in my inbox, and the like.

In fact, I’ve made a couple of little programs that I use for helping me with my saved messages. Why don’t you check them out at http://nogoodatcoding.googlepages/smspage?

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