Your mobile phone isn't quite cool

BETWEEN NOW OR NEVER: Mr Ajit Chakravarty recently gifted an expensive mobile handset to his wife, Sagarika, on their wedding anniversary. The anniversary ended in a disaster. Sagarika couldn’t save her favourite ringtones. So, she ended up screaming at her husband. The handset had simply refused to process!

Every passing day, mobile users like you and me are waking up to more high-end multifunctional gizmos flooding the market. Sadly, the gadgets refuse to work despite their expensive price tags and unblemished brand names.

We don’t know if you already know this, but we are talking Nokia N series, Motorola Razor, Nokia 6600 and several such high-end cellphones that typically cost Rs 10,000 plus. So, what’s going wrong? Industry experts blame both manufacturers and customers for the non-performance.

Market leader, Nokia India’s, head of marketing, Devinder Kishore is almost apologetic: “Multifunctionality does not mean that the customer has to live with some shortcomings in the product. We as a responsible marketer feel that the onus to deliver the product is on us and if there’s any shortfall on that count, it’s our duty to rectify the same.

The big reason why everyone buys Nokia is due to the trust, reliability and the dependability factors. Therefore, there’s all the more reason to be transparent and caring with consumers in such situations.” Reassuring words. But are these enough?

Industry observers point out that the problem lies in the many handset models being pushed in the market. There’s a mismatch in the superiority and strength of platform (printer circuit board) and the number of features (multimedia, FM, camera and others).

“All is resulting in two problems for users — hanging of software or software crash in some cases. In layman’s lingo, it’s as simple as buying an air-conditioned car that refuses to budge when you switch on the AC,” says H S Bhatia, national product head, GSM mobile, LG Electronics.

Friends of SundayET (FoSET) share that this problem’s happening mostly in handsets with an external memory card offering, where the platform is typically not strong enough to support the external memory card and results in hanging or crashing software. Technical experts also say Symbian, a nextgen software file used in mobile phones, is much heavier and hogs up more space than files running on Java operating system.

“Symbian phones are left with lesser space for other applications, as a result of which, on packing more applications (read features), they are bound to eat into the operating system space. This leads to the applications slowing down, and even hanging,” say experts who do not want to be named. Others disagree.

“We can’t generalise here and this isn’t something I agree with, particularly, as we use both Java and Symbian technologies. An important issue, however, is of change of interface, in which the customer ends up reporting something as a problem which perhaps is an absence of a feature that one was used to in an earlier phone, like, say missed calls,” points Lloyd Mathais, head of marketing, Motorola, who feels software crashes haven’t become a chronic problem yet for the mobile industry, as it is for the computer industry.

Be that as it may, but more often, it’s you the customer who’s to blame. “People think if you have a handset with loads of features, you are hip and cool. It becomes an indicator of your socio-economic status.

In most purchases, the customer doesn’t need those features she’s buying, and she doesn’t even ask many questions,” says Mr Bhatia of LG. And top it, the retailer isn’t adept at educating enthusiastic customers. “There is a need for retailer education that needs to be addressed by the industry,” admits Mr Mathais.

Result: Consumers end up suffering their own mistake of buying a handset they actually don’t need and retailers can’t help them much as they are still learning their ropes. So here’s a preventive: The next time you buy a handset, first figure your need, and then, rely on word of mouth. It’s better to buy a handset that has more internal memory than external memory.

Source : ET
 

gaurav200x

Gaurav Mittal
Well isnt the same true with windows.... u get applications loaded with lots of unnecessary stuff which u wont need... so to say that ur requirement would be only 10% of what is contained in the package.

the same holds good for the mobiles. I think the manufacturer should make it feasible for the consumer to remove whatever is not reqd. eg. i have so many ringtones and themes etc which i dont use, but cant remove from my cell as there is no such option. I think if such options are made available, the product can become more user friendly.
 
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