I Love You....Mobiles

"Dude...did u watch the video of iPhone 4S...they have come out with something called Siri......it reads ur messages, u can speak back to it and it answers ur query....I can't explain watch it in YouTube"....Gokul then played the video and we just sat there amazed at the new phone.

My tryst with phones went as back as 2002,when mobiles were just coming into the country and only few could afford it. Few people bought for real reasons and few just bought it....and my dad was among the latter. He purchased a Motorola which had a blue backlight and it was one of the best phones i had seen at that time. The blue backlight mobile stood out amongst the black & whites. The incoming call rates per minute could easily buy a common man his breakfast. Still my dad said "It's convenient & i don't know I just like it".....and that was the i fell in love with them. Me and my brother would take turns to see it, the Blue Led would flicker once few seconds and I could just keep looking at it for hours. One day my dad showed that the colors can be changed and that was the I wanted a mobile.

Nokia 3210

Later in 2003, one of my dad's friend's had a Nokia 3210 that played Vikram's new song every time he got a call. He would show it to everyone and the people around him would watch the small gadget with excitement. The Phone was what we call now a "Very basic phone"...no edge, no mp3 ringtone, no wallpaper. You could either make calls or text SMS. The only way to pass time, play snake. I now wanted one very badly but I wasn't old enough to maintain a Mobile and we were not that rich, that a 16 year old could have one, both me & my dad would constantly get into an argument about me getting a mobile. No matter how many discussions we had we would sit and discuss about new phones, call rates, anything that was happening in the cellular world in this country. Back then that was one topic we both loved to discuss. Later I lost count of the phones that were coming in and my dad couldn't keep up with the Technology.

Nokia 3120

The day finally came when I got my first Mobile, Nokia 3120. It was the beginning of my Engineering in the month of March of 2005 and wanted to show off. It was with this phone that I had discovered the world of Downloadable data, ringtones, wallpapers, screensavers. I was initially supposed to get a Nokia 2600 which was a low priced color phone but at the last minute in the showroom, I could not resist and my dad could not refuse. Inspite of my Uncle advising me to go for a low end black & white one, but who would listen to an "Uncle". After buying me the phone my dad advised me on how to use it and how to keep it safely, he bought me a tag with a pouch but I never used it after the first week. We then went hunting for the "Number" and my dad was known to get "Fancy Numbers". The 3 hours in the Lab during my first year I would be experimenting with my new love or stare at my crush.

Nokia 6600

As time passed, Nokia was becoming more famous and Motorola was just trying to fit in. New companies like Samsung & LG were entering India to crush Nokia but Nokia just grew stronger by the day. The day finally came when my hard efforts to lure my dad to buy me a Nokia 6600 paid off. In 2006 September and inspite of my flunking in 2 subjects during my 2nd year Engineering, my dad got me "My first Heavyweight Camera phone". It was by default that the color was black because me and dad loved Black. It was the "bigdaddy" of all the phones at that time, it played mp3 songs as ringtones, it captured pictures & videos, it had 2G and that meant more data, an MP3 player, and the best part was the Bluetooth. My friends and me would try to get the cricket scores over the internet without being charged, try to save "Bikini Girls" without downloading them. Anyone holding it would be treated differently than the rest, or atleast that was the perception. A few had envied it and one bad day it was stolen. I went home knowing how I would be bombed by my parents and it was terrible. My dad would interrogate me about every detail and my Mom would hung up her face as though her third son died.  I was later downsized with an LG mobile which was nothing like what I had.

Sony Ericsson W580i

By the time I was in my Final year Engineering, I was stuck with LG KG 200 or rather "Dynamite". The name was no where close to it. After being pampered with bluetooth, internet, themes, this was just another phone to me. The only good thing about this was that it was sturdy. I got out of my Engineering and got into my first job at Wipro. My hunger for mobiles was just getting bigger and now that I had even managed to get a job, my father gave me a choice to buy to buy any mobile as long as it was viable for all of us. Having been a Nokia Loyalist I searched most of the city for Nokia N91 which was far more superior mobile because of its 8GB internal memory, a stylish keypad slider, a phone even A.R. Rahman advised to buy (the then one of Nokia's celebrity), also it was an N-Series which was elite and the best feature was it had Wifi and even though i knew i couldn't access any Wifi anywhere i wanted it badly. But Nokia had stopped manufacturing it. Disappointed I gave up and thats when the sales person in one the showrooms showed me the "Walkman" phone, Sony Ericsson W580i. To this day it remains my favorite because of the Amazing 2MP Camera, the Sound clarity, the Slider with diamond like stones embedded in it. the best feature was the "Shake to Shuffle" feature which i thoroughly enjoyed. Even though I could not dance like Hrithik, me and my friend's did the best we could.

The Sony finally started giving up, initially with the charger port getting disconnecting and later the screen completely going black. I had to sell it off with some minor repairs to almost one-forth the original buying price. It was 2009 and Android had started making some noise as the next best thing to an iPhone. As the prices of an iPhone were astronomical in India, I could never afford one but i kept myself about about its developments. Steve jobs, the brains behind iPhone was an iCon. During all this time I somehow got drifted away from Cellular World.

Android, became rampant with Giants like LG, Samsung, HTC releasing it as the Operating System in their mobiles. Android allowed users to sync their Google accounts into the phone allowing them the best mobile experience coupled with the android market where there were ten of thousands of applications starting from viewing their Facebook accounts to booking movie tickets, the gaming experience just grew better with the Touchscreen revolution. Android never became boring because it updated the OS from time to time providing more and more interactive apps. Slowly android surpassed iOS as the most used Operating System all over the world. I got the flavor of android on one of the Samsung galaxy phones. I can easily say that it was the OS that was more enticing than the phone. But for a phone at a mediocre price you can't demand, you have just be happy with what you have.

During all this Nokia, was lost in other parts of the world as it could not compete with Android, iOS, & Blackberry  but it is still loved by any average Indian today. Blackberry was targeted as a corporate phone but it got into a number of problems with the Indian Government. HTC slowly rose high mainly because of the Widgets, the HTC Sense & Android. Samsung & LG are looked as similar as they never tried anything new, they built bigger phones with bigger processors and thats pretty much it. Micromax tried to make it big with extensive advertising and achieved some success.

When people ask why I like Mobiles, I cover up with some new technology facts but deep down, Even I don't know why I Like them, maybe its because Mobiles have always revolutionized when ever they made an entry, may be its because it constantly updated but I can never get bored of these marvelous machines. God bless the inventor.