New Tech Gadgets For 2017 Coming Our Way

So, my mom finally caved and said she had enough of the Symbian OS 9.3 in her Nokia E72 from the Genghis Khan era. She said she wanted a “Smart”-phone to primarily check her e-mail and connect socially via Facebook and LinkedIn. So, we got her one. After using it for a day, she smit me down like lightning, asking why her “tech genius” son couldn’t recommend her a phone that could do the following, and it really made me sit back and wonder, are we really taking every step forward, or a few steps back too?

Transfer content via Bluetooth [Editor: Apple has finally caught up]

Come to think of it, before the iPhone, I’d not heard of a phone that did NOT allow transferring files over Bluetooth. It’s funny how Apple can some times change trends for the worse. Sure, the stigma of viruses spreading over Bluetooth back in the Symbian days may still be stuck to many, but clearly that did not seem the only motivation. It was also because Apple (and now Microsoft, and Google) have integrated media stores that sell content like music, ringtones or even video that people could previously just share between each other via the aforementioned wireless transmission technology.

But it seems so silly when it even comes to non-copyrighted content like the photos you’ve clicked or a video you’ve shot from your phone cannot be transferred using Bluetooth. The solution? Asked my mom to either send the media across via WhatsApp or to e-mail the files as attachments.

Send/receive Business Cards [Umm.. not really needed anymore]

I mean, this is absolutely insane. Business cards are nothing but text messages, encoded with special tags that tell the recipient phone to save incoming details as a contact entry. Phones that are under a thousand rupees can do this. Then it still puzzles me why many of the popular smart-phone Operating Systems don’t allow to send a business card directly from the interface. Although some do, they send it across as an MMS, so if the person on the other end doesn’t have an Internet-connected phone, the job’s not done. And some phones (like the iPhone), which support MMS, refuse to receive a business card sent from another phone and pretend as if nothing really happened.

The solution? Go to your contacts, press-and-hold the number to copy it. Go to text message and create a new message, press-and-hold in the text box to paste the number and send it to the recipient.

Having to use “special” software to transfer content onto phones [Partly still true]

This is true in the case of Windows Phone and iOS, where you are bound to use Zune or iTunes respectively, to transfer any kind of content from the computer to your phone. My mom found it simpler when her Phone showed up as a Removable Mass Storage Device in the File Browser and she could just drag-and-drop files to-and-fro.

To sprinkle salt on the injury, on some OSes you cannot copy content from multiple computers. This, I can imagine, would be in place to prevent people stealing music and other copyrighted material off of other people’s computers. That, and computer viruses potentially attacking and corrupting the memories off your phone (pun intended).

But to my mom, it still sucks not be able to manage files, the ol’ folder arrangement style.

The Pathetic Battery Life [Aarrghh. Will remain for 10 years?]

In the past few years, we’ve gained one technological marvel after another in our phones — we’ve seen a lot of new tech gadgets, screen resolutions are so high that you can’t make out one pixel from another, internet speeds that theoretically can go as high as a 100 Mbps, Navigation where your location fix can be acquired in a few seconds, console-grade graphics for gaming and High-Definition Video playback. What have we lost in its place? Battery life, battery life, battery life and still more battery life.

Mum’s earlier phone lasted her three full days with active usage. Now, I see her rushing towards the charger every time she comes back home. I know, something’s got to give. But when some phones don’t even last a single day with sparing use, it is unacceptable.

Smart-dialling [Yayy, we have this now!]

I’ve seen umpteen non-smart-phones having this feature and it’s a shame many so-called “smart” ones today have just forgotten about smart-dialling. It’s a simple concept where you start typing the name of the person directly from the home-screen itself, either normally if you’re having a QWERTY phone, or like you would while typing an SMS in T9 mode on a number-pad.

Right now, the fastest way to call some-body not in your recent (or favorite contacts) list is a three to four click process for many smart-phones.

So, does my mom have a choice? Probably not, many phones available in the market today will come with some or all of these limitations. She’ll just have to get used to it. It’s either that or live without the wonderful galore of apps, the buttery-smooth and well laid-out interfaces, and the truck-load of features that you really want to enrich your life with. 🙂  😆