Mobile Phone Ideas

A few decades ago when Sony Walkman hit the streets, many lamented the end of the human society as they knew it at that time. Young ones, with earphones stuck in their ears, listening to the jazz and Beatles of their choice, insulated from the sounds of the world around them, were destined to a life in a narrow self centred world, to the tunes of their own choice. Walkman was prophesied as the doom of human interactions, random and unpredictable contacts with others, in the course of routine lives. Little did the doomsayers know what was in store, the ultimate human isolator, the mobile phone?

The brick sized mobile phones of yester years were good, one could carry it in a suite case or in a back pack, on long journeys, to contact at the times of emergencies. Those good phones were not of the mobile kind, they were only transportable. The new small light weight ones, which fit into the shirt pockets are the bane of modern society.

The new phones give an illusion of human connectivity, in a crowd one can ignore those around, while in touch with the ones of your choice a few continents away, creating islets in which only a few exist, a few chosen ones. It delivers loneliness’ in a crowd. The march of the mobile juggernaut has conquered the Walkman and the television. When one cannot connect to the chosen ones, the mobile phones also offer a choice of music, television or even a video clip of ones liking. The only advantage a camera offers in a mobile phone is to freeze the image surreptitiously on to a hard ware, rather than consigning it to the travails of human memory, reinforced by the real-time interactions of emotional associations. This time the doom sayers are correct, mobile phones are the end of the society as we know it, a society enriched by chance encounters with other humans.

I like the new blue tooth phone; It transmits a profile of your preferred human, and when such a person is in a hundred foot vicinity, the phone beeps, gives you the contact number. That is very good, a blue tooth pheromone to attract mates.

I remember the days of Philip Koetler, the marketing guru who wrote books for Marketing 101. He declared that products that succeed in the market place are the ones that meet human needs, which is definitely not true for mobile phones. It is the technology geeks who decide on the features to be added on to the mobile phones, and then the marketers create the human need for such features through advertisement. No human in their right mind would need a camera or a thousand year calendar on the mobile phones. It is all front to back Mr. Koetler, time to withdraw your books.

Now, having realised that the mobile phones are here to stay, and one is not likely to leave home without it, here are a few features that meet the human needs, and as expected they are very un-geek. The other day I had to sign a contract and post it, the blue teeth of the mobile phone could at best chew the contract, but was of no help in signing. If only the phone had a pen, concealed in the antenna.

The Nokias and Motorola’s are of no help to a chivalrous man to help a lady in distress, trying to open a bottle of wine at a picnic. One may have to wait for a Victorinox mobile phone to have a Swiss army knife on it. At least a bottle opener is an easy feature to add on any mobile phone; all that it need is a hook on the side.

Un-kept hair, even when it is a few strands on a receding hair line, is a turn off when one is negotiating specialist consultancies, post-retirement. I have lost a few juicy contracts, all because I didn’t have a comb at the pre-meeting visit to the gents. Nokia’s market share can easily hit 90 percent if they could have a serrated side to their phones to double as a comb for a desperate man.

Safety of women is constantly under threat, and mobile phone makers have a social responsibility to address this, as few women leave home without a pink phone to match their dress. Mobile phones with built in capsicum spray will definitely meet the needs of security challenged women. This may be a little too much for the phone designing geeks to accept, but a security alarm to burst the eardrums of the attacker can be an easy compromise.

Last year while in India, I was saved from a rabid dog by my mobile phone. The phone hit the dog on its head, to give me enough time to run for my life. A heavier phone made of depleted uranium would have split the dogs head. In rural India, heavy impact resistant phones will be a best seller, to ward off enemies of the animal kind.

I do not understand the need for a screen saver on the phones. If the screen could be turned into a mirror, many a women and men could hide their vanity in pretended SMS-ing. We live in a high stress society, and stress ball is a good invention. These soft balls can be squeezed out of shape at the moments of stress as though the cause of stress has been transformed into something likeable. In these days of new material technology, if one could persuade Nokia, it may not be hard to make a soft shell phone, which can still work even when squeezed out of shape.

Mobile phone theft is a major crime, costing billions across the world. Exploding phone may be illegal in most countries, but a phone that screams “ I am stolen: when it is in the hands of a thief could be a good deterrent. With all the psycho-kinetic advancement, it should be easy to program a phone to detect when it is in the hands of a thief, to unleash the deterrent scream, to shame the thief into the straight and narrow path of honest livelihood. This would, on any day, better than the present adversarial criminal justice system.

There is scope for optimism, the wayward geek led designs of mobile phones will eventually come around to track the human needs and toward simplicity. Mr. Koetler may be proven correct, in the long term, if the mobile phone designers take note of this article.