I remember the first mobile phone in my house. It was a Trium, and we fondly called it ‘Triumphant entry’. A basic device that did voice calls and text messaging it was, and I am sure that such was the experience with a lot of our phones back then.

Then our phones started having fun edges to them. Rather than the basic functions of communicating with friends and loved ones via call and text, you could also relax and enjoy a game.

Back then, we thought that was grand.

But further down the road, our phones became more of several things – FM radio, cameras, mp3 players, and in this part of the world, a source of light with the introduction of torchlight phones.

Phones have become mini-computers: for E-mail, organising, documentation, instant messaging and the like.

Phones have become mini theatres: you can just relax in your own comfort zone and have Silverbird cinemas in the palm of your hands. Sort of.

Today, our phones are constantly in our hands. It is almost embarassing. Even more embarassing it would be if our phones could speak and were to ask us something like this: ‘Why are you always running your hands over my body and fingering me?‘ What would be your response?

In the meantime, I patiently await a phone with air conditioning facilities to save me from today’s terrible heat.

Please refer back to the question and share your experiences of what your phone is today.

Nigerian mobile brand, Anabel, has unveiled an addition to their line-up of Windows Mobile powered smartphones, the PS212Y.

Classified as an Executive Digital Assistant, the PS212Y runs Windows Mobile 6.1 on Samsung’s ARM9 400MHz processor. Other specifications include:

• GPRS/EDGE network data
• 2.8 inch TFT QVGA
• 64mb built-in
• 2.0 Megapixel Camera
• Wi-fi, Bluetooth, USB port
• 1,100 mAh battery
• GPS

Other smartphones in the Anabel stable include: PS100 and PS185Y, which were premiered in February 2009.

Smartphones are the buzz these days – those super-phones that allow you install a gazillion native applications and let you run scores of them simultaneously. Devices running one of Blackberry, Symbian, Android, OS X, and Windows Mobile are being pushed at consumers from all sides. The pitch, more or less, is that you can do more on your phone.

The question is, Do you really need to do more on your mobile phone?

While I appreciate the value of capable smartphones, it is still my position that unless you need the capabilities they offer, you do not need one.

I once read the interview of the CEO of a large ICT form in Nigeria on the pages of a technology magazine. He was the proud owner of a Nokia 9500 Symbian smartphone at the time. When asked what activities he carried out on the mobile beast, he listed – wait for it – phone calls and text messaging. When prodded further if he did anything else beyond those, he added that he takes pictures of his kids once in a while.

For the benefits of those who do not know what the 9500 is capable of (I still have my old unit), I ran both my personal and office mail on mine, accessed web server accounts on the built-in web browser when out of reach of my PC, used Yahoo Messenger, edited Word and PowerPoint documents with it, read PDF files, took pictures, sent and recived faxes, downloaded files from the internet, beamed files via infrared and bluetooth, and studied the Bible, as well as preached from it.

Oh, yes; I must add that I made a few phone calls and managed SMS on the venerable 9500.

While I do not expect that everyone – even most people – would use a capable device like the 9500 as intensive as I did, if all someone does is voice calls, SMS and picture taking, he does not need a smartphone.

As a matter of fact, even if someone adds basic email management to that list, he does not need a smartphone. I have a low-end Nokia 1680 (costs about N10, 000) which handles basic POP/IMAP email and attachments over a GPRS/EDGE connection. And it handles it well. If he needs a touch of class to go with that, how about a Nokia 8800 Gold Arte instead?

Do you really need a smartphone? Perhaps what you need is a cameraphone, or a music phone? If you think you need a smartphone, what are the activities that you need one for?

As a software platform and data application consumer device, the typical modern smartphone can do all that a consumer laptop can do. Every bit of it. This is well known even in Microsoft’s HQ and even Steve Ballmer seems to recognize this. But for the consumer of digital services, a mid-range standard mobile phone, a non-smartphone cellphone, can actually deliver seven unique abilities that no personal computer can match today…..

Yes, the phone can do everything a PC can do, but also there are seven things a modern phone can do, that the PC cannot. The modern mobile phone is inherently superior in capability than a laptop or desktop PC. Inherently superior yes. There is sound reasoning why so many are abandoning the laptop and selecting the iPhone or the Blackberry etc.

These are not some company secrets tightly guarded in the headquarters of Nokia, Samsung and Motorola. The seven unique abilities of mobile beyond those on PCs are openly listed at Wikipedia and explained in full in books such as my latest hardcover book, Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media. The mobile phone is not an inferior tiny PC, it is a superior communication, consumption and creation device, far more powerful than the personal computer – of any size, and with any size screen.

- Tomi Ahonen

Here is the Wikipedia entry refered to by Mr. Ahonen:

Mobile offers seven benefits that cannot be replicated by the six legacy mass media. They are:
1 Mobile is the first personal mass media
2 Mobile is permanently carried
3 Mobile is always-on
4 Mobile has a built-in payment mechanism
5 Mobile is available at the point of creative inspiration
6 Mobile has the most accurate audience measurement
7 Mobile captures the social context of media consumption

Many may claim that the internet offers some of the benefits (personal, payment, audience accuracy and social context). The internet is only semi-personal such as shared computers at home and the office, and the ability for example of employers to read content consumed by employees. The internet in its native form cannot handle money or payments, and requires cumbersome work-arounds such as Paypal accounts and using credit cards. On mobile payments can be enabled on the click, such as with downloading ringing tones.

The internet promised full accuracy of users, but with firewalls, deleting cookies and false web identities, there is no accuracy of audience on the internet. On modern mobile networks every user is uniquely known and even if they attempt to hide behind “pre-paid” (pay-as-you-go) accounts under a “Mickey Mouse” type of name, the true identity of that given phone and its phone number, and any media consumed on it, is fully known and accurately tracked on the network. The same allows the capture of social context, not possible across internet services, only possible within a given internet service like Amazon etc. On mobile networks, if the operator/carrier decides to track it, all social context information can be captured.

And people keep wondering why I say that mobile is the future…

Many years back, it was enough for consumers that a phone could do everything including clean the kitchen sink. But somewhere along the line, something changed.

What changed was that the consumers began to appreciate the value of a polished and user-friendly interface above raw power and features. And they’ve been voting with their money ever since.

Gone were the days when phones simply sold based on what they could do. Now, it seems the paradigm shift has occurred, and consumers are saying, “It is not so much about what the phone can do, but how enjoyable it is to use the phone”.

In case you still doubt this, the iPhone could do much less than most phones in its bracket could do. For crying out loud, it was missing several features that millions of phone users had taken for granted year in, year out. Why would anyone want to purchase such a phone?

Surprise! The iPhone has sold at an incredible rate! Why? While it lacked several standard features, the user experience on the iPhone is currently second to none, and consumers are voting – with their money.

Never mind that this “crippled” device costs twice as much as many other phones that out-gun it in terms of raw features and capabilities.

The same story is repeating itself to different degrees with Android, TouchWiz (Samsung), and TouchFLO 3D (HTC), and lately S-Class (LG) user interfaces.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is a user interface and user experience revolution going on. Geeks can argue specifications from daybreak till sundown, but the mass market is clamouring for great user experiences for their money.

In the first part of my review of the LG KS360, I examined the form factor and multimedia. In this second part, I am examining the internet capabilities, email, and other features.

Internet

The KS360′s built-in browser is by a company named – guess – Teleca. Ever heard of them? Didn’t think so. But they’ve been at the mobile browser thing since 1999, with the world’s first WAP 1.1 browser, though its development process started in 1997. Surprised? There’s more.

Teleca’s global market share was 14% as of 2007, and held 3rd place in mobile browser field. More than 600 million of mobile phones are equipped with Teleca products, and many of the excellent browsers built-into Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson phones are the handwork of Teleca.

Teleca has also produced a browser that’s a worthy competitor to all of Opera Mini and Mobile, Nokia Webkit and the iPhone’s Safari. Don’t take my word for it; see Dennis Bournique’s review of Teleca’s New Browser – Wow!

I know what you are thinking. No; I have not been paid to market Teleca. Or LG

Anyway, Teleca recently rebranded to Obigo.

Okay, I’m done with history class. Does the the Teleca/Obigo browser on the KS360 pass the test? It does a good job but it is just not the most capable of browsers.

Browsing dedicated mobile sites on the KS360 poses no problem, and browsing not-so-heavy HTML pages is not either. However, the browser runs into a wall when you attempt to load a very large page and displays an “out of memory” error.

I mean, this means I cannot do any serious work on that browser. I cannot log into Alireta‘s web-based client admin area. I cannot do any cpanel operations, et al. Add this to the fact that the browser is also a wee bit slow in loading pages.

The KS360 impresses me in many areas, but this limitations of the browser is a deal-breaker for me. It would serve a casual user of the mobile web quite aptly though, so its up to you to decide whether it will do.

However, if a website has been deliberately designed to be mobile-friendly, the Teleca/Obigo browser in the KS360 handles it beautifully well.

Email client

POP3 and IMAP4 email clients are supported. Attachments to email can be fully downloaded. The KS360 also has an auto message retriever that searches for new mails at set intervals and announces new mails with a tone/note.

There is an issue I have with the mail client. For some reason I am still not able to deduce, the mail client does not show me an up-to-date list of the most recent mails on my server. The list it presents always has the most recent week’s mails missing.

This is a deal-breaker for me. My most recent mails are important to me. Whether this is a server issue or a device isssue is not clear, though I doubt the former. All other email clients I have used work flawlessly on this score.

Photo Gallery

LG has provided a very sleek image gallery. The user can choose between 4 viewing styles, including thumbnail view, two 3D view options, and a list view. The 3D view options are stunning, though things can get sluggish a bit when viewing images stored on a a heavilly loaded microSD card. I had a 2G card in the phone.

There’s also a slideshow view option.

Organizer and Office features

Surprise; surprise! The KS360 comes with office document viewer, giving the user the ability to view MS Office documents. For a phone in this price range, that’s a deal.

Battery Life

The battery just lasts and lasts. Quite impressive.

Java

Other features:

- Voice Recorder
- FM radio
- Calendar
- memo
- Games
- Calculator

Conclusion

The KS360 is a noble effort from LG. The feature set is extensive, and the user interface nice and simple. But if you make extensive use of the internet and email, this may not be what the doctor ordered.

But its specifications, general performance and price makes this phone a recommended one for anyone on a budget and looking for an all-round device.

I was discussing with Dayo yesterday, and he mentioned that he had come to realise that a phone without a QWERTY keyboard is not one he would consider as a primary device. He had used the Nokia 5800 for some time now (after a long romance with the E71), and despite finding excellent points about the phone, he just still could not get comfortable with the lack of a hardware QWERTY keyboard.

In other words, the lack of a hardware QWERTY keyboard is a deal breaker for him. He has since replaced the 5800 with the more humble Nokia E63, which meets his requirements more.

Deal breaker: any issue or factor that is significant enough to terminate a negotiation, esp. in business or politics

Dayo and I are clearly in the same class: text input on a mobile device is important to us. Late last year, I purchased a Samsung i900 Omnia in a moment of a streak of daring. Within 5 minutes of unboxing the device, I knew I had made a mistake. I needed QWERTY! I replaced the Omnia with the E90 and lived happily ever after.

What’s your deal breaker? Poor video playback? Lack of a good camera? Lack of a touchscreen?

You tell me.

Okay, we all know (I think) that things are not quite looking good globally, and any good bargain is worth checking out. Dayo and I have come up with a concise list of smartphones you can purchase at bargain prices in these penny-pinching times.

The phones we have shortlisted are available in the market for between N28,000 and N45,000 only. Here you go:

Nokia 5320

Sony Ericsson G700

Nokia E51

Nokia E63

Sony Ericsson G900

Note that the prices of phones on the market keep climbing because of the consistently falling value of the Naira. This means that if you want to pick up any phone, the earlier the better (at least until the Naira’s free-fall is halted).

PS: And honestly, if you are picking a phone, why not get one through the MobilityNigeria Phone Shop and enjoy the unique phone upgrade service that’s part of the various benefits of our service?