Putting an end to mob rule
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Mobile Phones on
If you walk down any high street, sit on any train or watch the kids in the school playground there will be one uniting factor: the mobile phone. It seems that pretty much everywhere you go someone is using their mobile. My particular bug bear has to be the cinema, where some chav will think that turning the handset into silent mode is sufficient and then continue to annoy by producing a constant clicking throughout the movie as they tap text messages to their Burberry wearing mates.
New research suggests that it does not just feel like the UK is drowning in mobile phone technology, we actually are. First Direct has published a report looking at cellular consumption and which reveals that there are now more mobile phone handsets in use in the UK than there are adults in the population. Yes, you read that right.
According to First Direct there are some 71 million handsets in the UK, and just 45 million adults. Interestingly there are only 70 million SIM cards so a million of us either swap out between different handsets, one has to assume in the name of fashion, or there is a new chav craze brewing for mobiles as jewellery just like that old Beastie Boys VW badge thing of old. Actually, it is even more bizarre than that, because the report also suggests that 9 percent of us have more than four different active mobile phone numbers.
The suggestion is that people are increasingly opting for a phone for work, a phone for home, a phone for friends and a phone for email. How absurd is that? Wasn’t the dawn of the smartphone meant to reduce handset clutter, not increase it? So what went wrong?
Guilty admission time here. I have two mobiles, with different numbers. One is a hefty smartphone (T-Mobile MDA Vario II) which is primarily my business handset - used to keep track of my email on the move, and via the web browser and excellent keyboard blogging as well. This number is on my business cards, this handset does not get answered when I decide my work is done for the day. My other is a rather old Motorola V3 Razr, one of the original black ones, which is ‘just a phone’ for friends and family. It remains on all the time, always gets picked up and does not leave a vaguely sexual bulge in my trousers when I pocket it.
There was a time when this would not have been necessary, and that time was only a matter of a year or two back. But something has happened since then, somehow people seem to think it is OK to ring my mobile at any time of the day or not with some work related matter. “Hello Davey, sorry for calling at 9pm on a Sunday but I didn’t have any luck in reaching you on Friday at 2pm” That is just not acceptable, nor is the notion that no matter where I am I will drop everything and deal with whatever the person on the other end of the line, no doubt sitting in an office, wants me to. Mobiles phones have slowly ruined my life, and I am fighting back.
I have always been somewhat phonophobic anyway, which is why I took to email so effectively nearly 20 years ago. My office phone remains on screen, if people leave a message I tend to pick up if necessary or email them back if not. My mobile work phone is the same, I screen actively screen it and rarely pick up if the call comes through as an unknown caller (I do fall victim to my own curiosity sometimes, and on other occasions pick up as I am expecting a call from someone else) and withheld for some reason. In fact my business mobile phone could has become a small computer, I use it primarily as a web enabled device. I access my email, I check my blogs, I do my research. On the phone side of things, I text a lot as well. But I rarely talk on the thing.
When it comes to my personal handset it is the other way around, I talk a lot, text a bit but never use the Internet functionality. So perhaps there is a need for everyone to carry two mobiles after all, either that or one mobile phone and one mobile Internet device instead. Seeing as my business contract is about to expire, that’s exactly what I am going to do. So now to look for a decent mobile device with texting, web and email but no phone - all in a pocket-sized package.
Does such a beast exist?
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