Cell phones, if you never heard of them or seen them then I truly believe that you are living in a place that needs to be updated. I am not saying that you must necessarily have them, but simply stating that they are around us whether we like it or not. I remembered when I first held one for the very first time about 12 years ago. It was my dad's Motorola flip phone, those beast were huge and heavy. It was one of the very first digital models since in those days most phone are analogues. They were huge and battery hungry, the worst is that I was afraid to use it. Not because it is fragile, but because it cost a lot just to say hi to the other person on the other end. A few years later I got myself one and I think I was one of the very first in my high school to bring along a phone with me. It was a Nokia 2190, much smaller than my dad's and best of all the battery last more than one day even if I talk with it. That phone lasted me about a year or two before I update myself to a Nokia 6190, which is smaller and most importantly much lighter. The problems with cell phones is that their batteries are often so expensive it would be a much better choice to change phone then to spend more than $50 for one. This is the reason why I updated myself to the 6190. I loved that phone, but because I am such a gadget freak I wanted to update myself again after owning my 6190 for less then 1 year. The reason was because my provider is now offering Wap, which is a wireless internet access on the phone itself. I got myself a Nokia 7190 for that(It was bigger an heavier than the 6190), however the hype with Wap was misleading. Not only was it very slow (the connection is comparable to a 9600bps), but not all sites can be viewed on the phone for various reasons.

One of the reasons is because Wap is not only a catchy phrase meaning internet on our cell phone, but rather a protocol or application such as http. What this means is that sites must be specially designed in Wap and located on a server that is compatible as well. The other problem is the phone itself. Many sites are much too large to fit on the small amount of memory available on the phone therefore we often get the error message of the site being too large. I was disappointed and didn't use it as much as I would. I think that many more people felt the same way which explains why this phenomenon didn't get more popular. The worst is that the provider was no longer providing this service via the conventional GSM lines(using our airtime to access the internet), but rather using a new application called GPRS after 4 months. In simpler terms GPRS is like DSL which is always on the internet and much faster often up to 56k, but since it is no longer using our airtime GPRS is calculated by the amount of data we access(It also needed a GPRS phone). This is often much more expensive then the old method. The limitations of Wap sites format and it sizes are still present therefore the only improvement is really the speed, but honestly do we really surf the internet that much on our cell phones? I often only use it for emergencies such as emails and such and not much more than that. As we speak there are Wap versions 2 and other applications being develop to access the internet such as Java... They offer improvements because more sites can be access even non-Wap ones, but still do we really surf on it that much?

The point of this article is to state that I am a gadget freak and I love anything that has to do with them. If you were to ask me if I can live without them then I will have to say no. First of all not all of us really needs them because most of the time the conversations we have with the other person on the other side of the line are really not important. I mean, most of the time people can wait until they get home and start their chit chat instead of disturbing others around them in public areas. I just hate people chit chatting in restaurants or worse while driving because they are a nuisance and often dangerous. Now cell phones owning had become even worse because not only you can chit chat with people or text message each other, we can now take pictures and listen to radio and MP3. I didn't jump into the trend and had a Nokia 8390 instead at that time. The phone was a simple normal cell phone with GPRS capabilities(I updated to this because I needed this for WAP since the 7190 is not GPRS compatible). It was the smallest phone I ever owned. I used it for almost 2 years, until last month when I got myself a Sony Ericson P800. It was the most expensive phone I ever had and not only was it not an improvement in size and weight it was bigger and heavier than my first phone. The reason I opted for this one was because it had everything including a camera and a PDA and due to my disease called gadget freak disease and was time to upgrade due to the battery on my Nokia 8390.

So do we really need all this? I would say no for most people(%80 of the time), since they talk enough already on their land lines. Yes for some such as people that need it for their jobs. Me I need it because I use it as my main phone since I do not have a land line nor do I want one. I think that we had become dependant to them and no one would want to go back in time and live in a world where cell phones does not exist. We feel secure because we don't need to find a phone in case of emergencies or can be contacted when we are needed. However I see a bad trend going on right now. What I see are parents giving little childrens a cell phone so they can call home. I find this ridiculous especially for elementary and high school children's. Young kids don't need that and shouldn't be carrying things like that. I admit some adults don't need it either, but for kids its really a no no. I think gadgets should be left out of children until they get older like 14-15 since it does not benefit them. They are still developing and therefore have to be less gadget dependent. These days I see kids playing video games instead of playing outside. I see kids using calculators instead of learning how to count..

In conclusion, I would hope that people use cell phones more moderately and only if necessary. I also hope that these cell phones would become less crazy and remain a cell phone and not a radio/TV/game/Remote/Phone... At that rate I can only see them get bigger and people spending more time on them. Yes I am a gadget freak, but that does not make me go ape and want to buy them all.