My Mobile Family
You know how we’ve been getting mobile industry execs to write about how they use their mobile in a day, well SMS Text News Reader Jonathan Jensen has a family, and they all use mobiles. So for a bit of a different take on the mobile day, read on to find out what they’ve got, how they use them, and that age old thing called the generation gap.
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Chatting to Ewan the other day we got onto the subject of how people use their mobile phones in the real world. What they use, why they use it and how they use it. It started me thinking about my family and the different ways we all use mobile comms.
My first mobile phone was a NEC P3 (anyone else remember them?) and since then I’ve had at least 21 handsets (those are the ones I can remember)! I’m currently using a Nokia 6120 Classic on 3 and a Nokia E65 for Truphone – a must have service in any mobile armoury. 3 insisted I had a new (free) handset from them when I renewed my contract last month, as well as generously discounting my monthly service charge by £8 (32%) – nice loyalty touch. I asked for a bigger discount and no free handset but it doesn’t work like that! The 6120, despite being an inexpensive Nokia S60 smartphone is a great handset; HSDPA 3G data, improved web browser and faster processor make it a real improvement over the E65, plus it’s very compact. I use the 6120 for a mixture of calls, SMS and web browsing plus lots of useful mobile apps (more on those at a later date). A decent browser is vital for quickly entering Twitter and Jaiku updates when I haven’t got my PC with me. In addition I have a business use BlackBerry and Nokia 6230i for the usual business stuff.
Moving on to the rest of the family; my wife also uses a Nokia 6120 on 3, although her focus is on calls and SMS. She’s a prolific texter, sending 500 to 600 SMS a month! SMS is now her primary communication medium, supplemented by a bit of Skype chat, Facebook and now Twitter. My 15 year old daughter uses a pink Nokia 7373 (she likes ‘fashion’ phones) on the Tesco Value prepay tariff. This is a great tariff for light users who just want to text and call. There’s no data or roaming but why pay for it if you don’t need it. My 13 year old son also has a Nokia 6120 Classic on 3 (3 – your marketing people should hire us!). He’s a prolific talker and texter and loves the ability to customise the S60 software. He likes installing stuff – themes, applications, bizarre ringtones he’s created with his friends! My youngest daughter, who is nine, has an old Siemens handset, that’s all pink (very important, as it’s her favourite colour!). I put a spare Vodafone prepay SIM in it which she uses to text Granny occasionally. She has great fun with it and it costs me virtually nothing.
Being something of a mobile geek I’m fascinated to see how each of them uses mobile technology. For the kids, mobiles are second nature and the idea of one, maybe two, hardwired phones in the house (that you needed a second mortgage on to pay the bill) is another world.
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Jonathan Jensen writes Sevendotzero – Technology stuff you can use
