The
ubiquitous mobile – which one or rather how many do you carry in person ? – if
you are owning more than one, is there a real need ? – and is not a phone,
basically an equipment where you call or receive calls, talking to people !
With every technological advancement, problems also galore. Mankind contrives to have fresher trouble. How soon people forget that in India a couple of decades ago, there was no mobile phone…… only landlines ~ not all had or could afford a telephone at their residence… in Office, people called – the intended recipient may not be at desk – may have gone out, still people communicated, work was still happening at a fast pace. Now, we think that World would come to a standstill if we, were to be without mobile for a few minutes !
Then came a
techno marvel called ‘pager’ ~ can you imagine that the basic model was only
numeric i.e., one can convey only numbers – the advanced version was
alpha-numeric – it was never as luxurious as the modern day SMS – there were
service providers. One had to call the service provider and tell them the
message that is to be paged – they would record and send the message to the
recipient – much like a telegram but delivered electronically – and naturally
one had to be short. The pager was a
dedicated RF or radio frequency device that allowed the pager user to receive
messages broadcast on a specific frequency over a special network of radio base
stations. History has it that the first
pager-like system was used by Detroit Police Department in 1921; officially
patented in 1949 and came to India much later in the 1990s.
Things are changing so
rapidly in few years that many things have been forgotten – the millennium kids and later
would not know that ‘dring ….. dring’ sound was associated with
telephones and that telephones had ‘dial pad’ which one had to ring and not
push buttons…. So for if you were to
dial say 89893 (incidentally the tel no of my erstwhile Organisation – Mount
Road branch) one had to ring – if it were to be a no. 44447777 – no way of pushing 4 four times and
7 four times… but one had to ring 4, 4, 4,4, and …. So on…. the metallic sound of dring, dring, was the
only sound that could be heard till one picked up the phone – no fancy ring
tones, caller tunes and more…
The landline
is place specific ~ while the cell phone is person specific… really wonder, how
we communicated to people. Mobile phone
no doubt is a technological marvel ~ able to be connected all the time ~ [some
misuse being connected while walking on the road; crossing it; driving a
vehicle and more]
Some mobiles cost a lakh of rupees and more, still sell like hotcakes ! .. .. iphone, Android phones and more having 3 or more cameras, lot of inbuilt Apps .. and in between a generation that is trying to get back to brick phones !
May be you have a friend
who still fancies an old handset and does not carry a smartphone ! – sounds
strange and ridiculous – someone wedded to ‘dumbphone’. These are basic
handsets, or feature phones, with very limited functionality compared to say an
iPhone. You can typically only make and receive calls and SMS text messages.
And, if you are lucky - listen to radio and take very basic photos, but
definitely not connect to the internet or apps. These were the fancied first
generation handsets that people first vied in 1990s. some of them still sell in the market.
The decision to ditch
smartphone is not exactly a spur of moment thing. While looking for a replacement handset (which
most do in an year or slightly more) – the decision gets lured by the low price
of a "brick phone" .. . and because of its limited functionality, one
need not worry about data package. Use
that brick phone for a week or so, one would realise that smartphone had been
taking over so much of life as it is replete with social media Apps and user
gets glued to them. A couple of persons
whom I know, vouch that they may not return to another smartphone, as they are
happy with the dumb-model which does not limit, but offers enough of what it is
meant to be.
Dumbphones are continuing
to enjoy a revival. Google searches for them jumped by 89% between 2018 and
2021, according to a report by software firm SEMrush.Meanwhile, a 2021 study by
Deloitte said that one in 10 mobile phone users in the UK had a
dumbphone."It appears fashion, nostalgia, and them appearing in TikTok
videos, have a part to play in the dumbphone revival," says a mobile
expert, who added that "Many of us had a dumbphone as our first mobile
phone, so it's natural that we feel a sense of nostalgia towards these classic
handsets."
May be it was the
master-brain of relaunch of Nokia's 3310 handset - first released in 2000, and
one of the biggest-selling mobiles of all time - that really sparked the
revival. For sure such phones can in no
way compete with the latest premium Apple and Samsung
models when it comes to performance or functionality, yet "they can
outshine them in equally important areas such as battery life and
durability". .. .. .. dumb phone would not be addicted to browsing
Facebook, WA, Instagram or forwarded news / videos – they have more time to
talk to people and spend quality time with family. A huge benefit in so far as, it is away from
addiction to likes, shares, comments and searches of what others describe of
you .. .. instead they have more privacy and peace.
If aliens were to invade
earth, they could be frightened by the super species controlling human being
ie., mobile phones. Smart phone is not mere entertainment centre, it is the
news generator, time occupier, navigation system, diary, dictionary, wallet and
everything – grabbing the attention of others, and potent mines, if one were to
lose the phone and its associated private secured data. For those looking for simpler technologies, dumbphones
might offer a return to simpler times. It might leave more time to fully
concentrate on a single task and engage with it more purposefully. It might
even calm people down.
Now read the first para again ? which phone do you own/use ? – how many mobiles do you carry along ?
28th Mar 2022.
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