5 Cool Mobile Phone Features

The world is becoming a smaller place…literally! Gadgets of the yore used to have a certain presence in one's home, but today most have shrunk down to fit in the palm of our hand. Technology has come a long way since the days of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison. In today’s fast paced world, ‘multi-tasking’ is the mantra for gadgets and people. For instance, today’s mobile phones are powerful feature packed devices that you can slip into a pocket of your favorite body hugging denims.

In the beginning, cell phones were used to merely make calls. Today, mobile manufacturers compete with each other to launch feature rich cell phones all the time. Here is a list of some of the coolest features available on a mobile phone today:

1. Cameras: The camera phone was invented in 1997 and now it constitutes 85% of all mobile phone sales in the United States. There are two types of cameras available on cell phones, these are VGA and digital. Camera Mobile technology has come so far that people can now even make mobile films using their phones. Mobile phones with cameras offer a great way snap pictures or shoot videos wherever and whenever. You can then transfer these images and videos onto your PC at your own convenience.

2. Music: With the current models of mobile phones, you can listen to you favorite tunes while on the move. Mobile phones these days can store and play most music formats including MP3 and .wav. In fact, you can even tune in to your choice of radio stations on your mobile phone and enjoy uninterrupted hours of musical nirvana.

3. Business: Many cell phone models have been customized to serve the needs of the traveling business man. Features include personal organizer, calendars, memos, reminders, email facility, etc.

4. Connectivity: The latest models of mobile phones offer a host of wireless connectivity features such as Bluetooth, infrared, etc. The Bluetooth is a software that allows you to connect and exchange various files with any mobile phone with a Bluetooth function within a radius of approximately 10 meters. This can also be executed with the infrared function, only in this case, the infrared ports of both the phones need to be aligned with one another in order for the exchange to take place. A mobile phone can even act as a wireless modem to the PC and one can even surf the internet using the GPRS feature on the mobile phone itself.

5. Appearance: Apart from the many high-tech features, mobile phones come in a plethora shapes, sizes and colors. The colors may range from a cute pink to blazing red, from the simple matte black to flashy chrome. Even the way you can operate the keypads of these phones has changed. Besides the various keypad designs with different backlight options, you can buy yourself different styles of cell-phones, ranging from the normal to the flip and slider varieties.

Any way you look at it, mobile phones are becoming smaller, slimmer, faster and smarter. There is one that fits every budget, pocket and personality. So go ahead and pick one up for yourself and discover a whole new world of mobile phone technology.

3 Mobile Launch Skypephone

3 Mobile have teamed up with Skype to offer free calls across the Internet using their new Skypephone. The Skype network has, within a very short space of time, become hugely popular for making free Internet calls through handsets that are attached to your PC and has built up a large customer base that recently prompted a buyout by eBay. If popular, this brave step by 3 could prompt an end of pay as you talk tariffs and push other mobile phone networks into action to try and offer similar competitive deals.

The new Skypephone from 3 has all the functionality you would expect from a modern day mobile phone including 3G, a 2-megapixel camera, mp3 player, mobile TV and internet plus the handset looks stylish and comes in either black or white with pink or blue trims. The Skypephone includes 16MB internal memory and comes with a 256MB micro SD memory card which is also expandable up to 1GB. The large Skype button in the center of the handset allows for quick and easy access to the Skype menu where you can simply make a free call or write a text message to people within your friends list.

The biggest challenge for the 3 Skypephone is encouraging people who are not already signed up with Skype, or whose friends are not members of Skype, to buy the phone. If this hurdle can be cleared then it could create a domino effect which would push all other mobile phone networks to provide a similar service and may make Skype a major player in the world of telecommunications. Once you are signed up to Skype you will not only be able to call people using the 3 Skypephone but also talk to friends connected to Skype through their PC.

3 Mobile offer the Skypephone on either pay as you go or monthly contract deals. The payg deal currently costs £49.99 for the Skypephone handset and requires you to top up your phone with at least £10 credit for standard voice calls and texts. The contract deals start from £12 per month with a minimum tie-in of 18 months.

The Skype deal from 3 is also available with other compatible mobile phones such as the Nokia N95 or the Sony Ericsson W910i which makes the offer a lot more flexible and doesn’t tie customers to a single handset. For none 3 Mobile customers Skype is also compatible with mobile phones that run the Windows Mobile operating system, plus it is possible to connect to Skype using Fring (a third party mobile VoIP application that enables free mobile internet calls and live chat to other fringsters and PC-based services including Skype, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Twitter) through a mobile phone with the Symbian operating system.

This fantastic offer could help encourage a reduction in prices of mobile phone calls and it is likely that other mobile phone networks will be keeping a close eye on how the collaboration develops. Flexibility is the key and by allowing customers to choose whether they make calls through Skype or through normal network services, the Skypephone should be a huge success.