What's the point of a mobile phone offering GPS facilities if it can't help an old-timer find his way through a maze of choices?
AD: Hey what’s up, you don’t seem
to be answering your calls?
BC: My mobile phone isn’t working. I
might have to buy a new one.
AD: Don’t look so sad - there are
some great mobile phones in the market.
BC: It's not that. When I was your age,
anything we bought lasted for decades...
AD: How old is your phone?
BC: I bought it in 2003…
AD: Eight years? Are you kidding? You
have a relic in your hands. Why don't you sell it to a technology
museum for a few lakhs, get yourself a swanky iphone and...
BC: Very funny. I wasn’t worried
about the cost. Buying a mobile has become so complicated these days…
AD: What do you mean?
BC: Remember the mid-90s? There were
just 3-4 brands to choose from...
AD: Just four brands? Imagine, the IPL
wouldn't have had enough sponsors on TV...
BC: IPL reminds me of other
abbreviations we had to choose from - CDMA and GSM...
AD: I remember that – CDMA
connections had eight digit numbers right?
BC: Yes, and there were only three
models – the straight candy bar type, the flip phone and the
sliding type.
AD: Each weighing a few kilos...
BC: Whatever! The point is, choosing a
mobile phone model was simple. And cellular service providers
conducted ‘handset melas’. I remember one where you could buy
four phones and get one free.
AD: You’re kidding me!
BC: Of course not. In fact, people
waited outside the venue to form groups of five with strangers - they
would then share the discount amongst themselves. Back then, it
wasn’t about handsets, it was about going cellular...
AD: How things have changed!
BC: You’re telling me! I recall an ad
congratulating a service provider in Chennai for reaching the '5000
subscribers' landmark… that was around 15 years ago…
AD: Now you're being funny...
BC: No, seriously…
AD: Do you know that we are currently
the world’s second-largest mobile phone market, after China? I
doubt if any other country uses mobile phones as extensively as we
do…
BC: Speaking of usage, things were
pretty simple back then. There was no life beyond calls and messages.
Then came the fancy gadgets – alarm clock, radio, mp3, flashlight,
camera...
AD: You call them fancy?
BC: Go ahead, laugh! Then came
bluetooth, internet-enabled phones, Wi-Fi connectivity, add-on memory
chips...
AD: That’s right, establishing
connectivity with other devices was so convenient, wasn’t it?
BC: To me, it just complicated things.
And it got worse with dual SIMs, QWERTY keypads, touchscreen,
multimedia, GPS...
AD: What you need is a landline with a
long cord so it can be mobile...
BC: I'm ignoring that. But the latest
seems to be 3G…
AD: 4G could be on its way in, and
there is a possibility of a futuristic 5G in the next decade…
BC: To me, G still stands for the
earth’s gravity, which is pulling me down so much that I'm not able
to keep pace with your generation...
AD: You better start moving fast…
India’s racing towards a 3G era…
BC: You’re talking of 3G - can you
imagine a place that still thrives on .16G?
AD: Which place is this?
BC: The moon – the gravity there is
just around 16% of what it is on earth.
