Mobile Phones

Nowadays when you walk out to the street you will see almost everyone will have mobile phone, be it red, white, silver, grey, small, big, hugh, bulky etc.

The evolution of the mobile phone technology have been by leaps and bounds over the years from what I still can remember mobile phone the size of a car battery and weighs nearly 5 to 8 kg to now the size of the palm which weighs about 80 to 100 grams and with even more functions and memory capabilities then ever before.

Also thanks to the competition between the teleco providers, the rates of phone calls have been so much cheaper compare to about 10 years ago. I still remember my first pre-paid phone, each calls will cost me 60 cents, now its merely 10 cents.

Now, coming back the main idea. The reason I post this write up is because, nowadays we see mobile phone as an essential part of items we bring along everywhere we go. Before the time of mobile phones, when we leave home, we only have our wallets / handbags and the house keys. However, ever since mobile phones came to the market, we feel really uncomfortable leaving home without it and the moment we realize that it was left at home, no matter how many miles we have travelled, for sure we will turn around to pick it up.

For example this morning, one of my colleague accidentally left his mobile phone at home which he did not realize until he loggin to the system to start his day. Without even any hesitations, he quickly went down to his car and drove back home to take the phone and only coming back about an hour later to start his day in the office.

That leaves me thinking, is mobile phone nowadays so vital? Since he is already in the office, he can be reached via his office number right? Even if he needed to make calls, he can use the office phone which is readily available. Why can't we live without a phone by our side of a few hours?

Then only I came to realize, nowadays, with mobile phone's great phone number memories, with some up to 1,000 names and numbers holding capacity, we have lost our ability to remember phone numbers. We rely so much on the phone's memory to contact our family, friends and business associates. We will hardly write the number down anywhere, but just rely on the phone remember our number for us.

Even at times, even we know the person we wanted to contact is at the comfort of his / her house and in the house there is a fixed line, we still call his / her mobile number. We never bother to try to contact this person thru his / her fixed line anymore. Perhaps we forget the feeling of someone answering the calls and telling us the person is not in.

I have even heard of people addressing his / her friend(s) with their mobile phone number's last 4 digits... e.g. ".... the 4878 fellow always late one lar. BTW, where's 9879 guy? also still not here yet or aeroplane already?" Have this phone number evolve so erratically that we don't even remember our friends by the names anymore?

Most of the phones nowadays will even have calendar dates that you can set in important dates e.g. your gf's birthday, anniversaries, valentine's day etc so that we do not get into trouble when the dates arrives. There is even this feature that the phone can send you a reminder alarm a few days before the actual date so that you can have time to get your gifts ready.

Mobile phone have successfully evolve from once use to be a means of communications to some essentials that we can't fell comfortable to leave home without it.