What if you could tap a special code into your cellphone to unlock a reserve of battery power for those desperate moments when you need to make just one more call before your phone dies?
“Total nonsense,” said Richard Windsor, an analyst with Nomura in London, who specializes in cellphones and cellphone equipment.
There is the one that says that if you lock your keys in the car and you have a remote keyless entry system, you can unlock the car by having somebody beep your spare remote over a cellphone if you hold the phone near the car door.
There are a host of functions that are explained in user manuals, which could be useful but are either too confusing or too time-consuming to learn for most people.
“The manuals for mobile phones tend to be very comprehensive, even though they are fairly incomprehensible,” said Windsor, the Nomura analyst. “Many phones can do e-mail, for example, but most people don’t bother because it’s too complicated to set up.
What features are worth having on a cell phone? Which ones aren’t?
11 – I have a Nokia phone with Cingular account. It got stolen, and all I had to do was call Cingular. They disabled the phone immediately, probably by disabling some kind of ROM. Bought a new Nokia and hooked it up to the same number, no problem. What the old Nokia can now do for the thief I have no idea, but he won’t be able to use it to order porn direct from Russia or whatever, not on my account anyway. Some things, Cingular does right.
I’m with ECA on the biometrics – they can introduce new risks to the user. Chop off a finger to activate a cell phone? That’d be overkill even for the stupidest thief. But to get access to someone’s ATM? As ECA says, biometrics are not always a good solution for security.
I want a cell phone that can make calls, tell me the time, maintain an alarm or two, and do text-messaging. That’s about it, though a small camera is sometimes nice to have too.