Devil's Advocate: Life without a mobile phone

What do I miss?

My mobile phone is broken. And it has forced me to think about how I use it. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not so much the telephone calls that are bothering me. Mostly, I rather enjoy doing without them. But I find that other features are harder to live without.

The first I knew about it was on a shopping trip with my wife. We were looking for a present for our daugAhter, and uncertain of exactly what to choose, decided to call her. Oddly, my phone was powered off. Switching it on produced only a brief display of the manufacturer's logo, which then faded away into nothing.

It then became apparent that the generally slick mobile phone business is rather weak when it comes to repairs. As we were in the centre of York, it was easy enough to call into the local store of the network operator. They thought it was a software problem. Why software should work one day and not the next was beyond me, but they suggested that it would be cheaper and quicker to take it to a repair specialist.

That turned out to be less than straightforward. Repair shops are often in awkward places, away from city centres. When I eventually got to one, they were busy downloading the latest software and could do nothing for me. They did not want to take the phone to fix later, so I had to call back another day.

It was some days before I had another chance to visit the repair shop. This time, they attempted to reinstall the software, only to tell me that it was not a software problem but something else. They also told me a complicated story about how the warranty system worked, and suggested that I needed to produce a receipt for the phone. That meant going back home.

The next time I was near a repair shop, it was in a different city. This time, I was told the fault described by the first repairer did not make sense and was offered a quite different story about the warranty. They could not tell me what the repair would cost, but insisted they would charge fifteen pounds to look at the phone anyway.

Confused by all this, I checked back with the network operator. An upgrade was quickly ruled out, as to simply get the functions I had already been using would cost me hundreds of pounds. They could do a repair, but the phone had to be sent away. I was warned, only partly tongue in cheek, that if their repair facility could not fix the phone, the manufacturer was the only option and could take up to a year. But at least they lent me a basic mobile phone.

All this has left me without the facilities that now seem at least as important as making calls. It has quickly become apparent that I rely heavily on the integrated camera. Using Bluetooth, snaps are quickly and easily loaded on to a PC. The quality is limited but is good enough for many of my needs. It is adequate for internet images, including selling stuff on eBay. Messages about all kinds of problems are made much clearer by an accompanying picture.

Then there is the electronic diary, which is also kept synchronised with my PC. A diary seems little use unless it is with you all the time. Having it stored in a mobile phone is really useful, as only the one small item has to be remembered, wherever you go. Often, the entries are actually made on the PC but the phone is a constant source of information.

Likewise, a comprehensive list of contact names and addresses is really useful, if you can have it with you all the time. Again, the laborious work of keeping it up-to-date is often done on the PC, but the phone is used heavily as a reference and also captures new information quite frequently.

Ironically, the actual communications functions have been missed less. While I can pick up emails on my usual mobile, often the only reason for doing so is curiosity. Likewise, many phone calls are not genuinely urgent and many are just an irritation. Fortunately, nothing particularly important has cropped up while I have been without a mobile.

All in all, I am forced to conclude my mobile phone is a central element in the information systems that are now commonplace. It has a powerful influence on how everything else is done. But I have to hope the repair network will become speedier and easier to use.