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Confessions of a Mobility Addict

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Till a few days back, I was a zealous member of the growing community of

people who swear by their mobile phones. I believed that those who were debating

whether the PC or the mobile phone would be the primary access device for the

Internet were still living in the stone age. I thought that debate had already

been settled in the mobile phones favor long back.

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I believed that in a country like India, it could act as the biggest change

agent. IT could be an economic leveler helping the rural farmer; it could be the

greatest socializing tool for the teenager; it could be the most important

productivity tool for the executive. It could be many things to many people.

The rapid developments on the ground supported and enhanced my belief. Here

was a company that demonstrated to me how it had implemented a solution where

rural farmers had gained significantly by using mobile phone for auction. There

was another which showed how the entire email could be backed up and accessed as

and when needed through a mobile phone. One of Indias top two political parties

promised that it would take the bank to the unbanked through mobile phones, in

its election manifesto. Like most Indians, I am skeptical of promises made by

political parties in general and their election manifestos in particular. Yet,

this time I believed it and hailed it in the pages of this magazine.

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My belief in mobile phones was not restricted to doing a special issue on

mobile application companies in India in Dataquest or carrying more stories on

them more regularly. In my personal life, I use mobile phones for everything

that is possible. I use it to pay my bills, check my mails, get my way in a new

location, socialize (almost all my updates on Facebook and linkedin are on my

phone), play games (I have never done that in my PC in the last five years), not

to talk of the numerous downloads! I have often been very critical of consumer

companies that do not provide

But I now believe probably, my faith in the power of mobile phones was a

little misplaced.

Yes, numerous small firms around the world may have created really innovative

applications to tap the power of mobile phone. Numerous users around the world

may have given a thumbs up to those efforts by actively using those. But a

handful of companies still make the phone hardware. And they have done very

little to keep pace when it comes to battery life. If that does not happen, all

the great applications are meaningless.

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Today, few mobile phones can run for four hours if you run always connected

GPRS applications. If you are in a remote location, and think you can find your

way by using GPS, you can probably get maps. But your phones battery will let

you down. If you are traveling in a long-distance train that does not provide a

socket to charge the phone, you can hardly use online applications, despite the

fact that these days you get good GPRS connectivity almost everywhere on the

way. If only the battery could last beyond three hours!

It is a terrible feeling. On one hand, you are always discovering new ways of

using the mobile phone. On the other, you are always living with the fear that

any moment your battery will go down. Then, all these innovations seem so

meaningless.

By the time I have realized this, as a user, I think I have gone a little too

ahead along the mobility path to retract back. And that thought makes me

desperate.

But I still have a lot of faith in the technology communitys ability to

solve this problem. Do you?

Shyamanuja Das



The author is Editor of Dataquest.



shyamanujad@cybermedia.co.in

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