I was a late starter when it came to mobile phones. Iresisted the technology for as long as I possibly could, mainly due to the factthat it used to annoy me no end to see not only businessmen prancing aroundwith their phones glued to their faces, but also children too.

I would sit on buses, regularly having to put up withgroups of 12 year old chavs in Simpsons-branded shell suits comparing thelatest 'cool' monophonic ringtones. To me they just sounded like annoying beepswhich vaguely resembled the A-Team theme tune, but to them they were über cool.

I also rememberseeing a tarted up 50-something mincing her way through London one day in 1999 with two phones, onein each hand. I hated it. I despised it.

The first mobile Igot was a veritable brick of a mobile. Whilst the whole world, his dog and hisdogs fleas were all out buying Nokia 3210's, I was skulking around proudlybranding my second hand brick-like Cellnet beast phone. Ugly as sin, terminally uncool, and that suited me down to the ground.

It was massive, it'strump card was that it could (shock, horror!) make telephone calls, and it justabout sent text messages although it only had enough memory to store about 5messages in the inbox. Still though, it was indie enough for me to forgive myselffor owning a hell gadget such as that in the first place.

If you had told meback then that in 2007, telephony features would almost be an afterthought whenit comes to designing new phones, I would have spat out my lungs and howledwith laughter.

But it's true; handsets are now cameras, music players,games consoles, Bluetooth remote controls, TVs, video players, radios, photoeditors, DJ mixing devices, infra-red transmitters, sound recorders, audiostreamers, VoIP communicators, VoD downloaders, GPS navigators, internetsurfboards, video cameras, instant messengers, handheld pizza orderers, tazers,bomb detonators... the list goes on and on.

Last week I wrote a report on the burglar whose phoneconvicted him of robbing a house - he left the phone behind in his victim'shouse (d'oh!). And today I read that apparently pair of Pakistani love heartshave wed each other intercontinentally (is that a word?) over the phone using their mobiles.

This madness occurred after the groom who works in Italy , wasforbidden from bringing his betrothed wife into the country. He couldn't leave Milan for fear of losinghis job, and so he picked up the phone, called his fiancé, married her over thephone and got an official Pakistani marriage certificate to prove it.

Absolutely amazing. Technically this could mean that youcould marry someone over the phone without ever meeting them, or seeing them.Quite a scary concept.

Ithink I'll just wait until I meet a real person. And until that happens, I havemy ridiculously lovely Sony Ericsson K800i to play with...

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Go back to Rungsberry HOME

Or try these other entries...

Rungsberry: The first entry

Aeulogy for a dead MP3 player

Savethe children: kill webspeak for good!

MP3sare great, just give them a chance!

Mybrick phone makes telephone calls

Make Mine a Rungsberry Ripple

Are iPods better than money?