‘Til death do us part

                               

                                   

The mobile phone has come a long way since the humble telephone. For many, the mobile phone is an extension of their lives and few, including me, would not leave home without it.

It is the mobile phone’s portability and additional capabilities that make it much more than just a telephone. With satellite communication and ‘international roaming’, it is now possible for mobile phone users to communicate with people virtually anywhere in the world either by phoning them, text messaging them. People can even access the internet and send a message via e-mail or a social network service such as Facebook or Twitter.

There are many more applications which make the mobile phone a must-have item in today’s world. Your mobile phone can provide you with a handy camera or a music player, a radio or GPS, not to mention a calculator, diary, alarm clock and a source of endless information via Google. It is also a valuable source of entertainment as mobile users can download games and play for as long as their battery lasts.

It is not necessary fact that your mobile phone stores your favourite songs and photographs, that makes your particular phone so special. Like any partnership, it is the familiarity of the relationship that makes a phone so hard to part with. I, for one, have had to part with two phones that were both stolen and know how hard it is to lose all my contacts and special memories.

But the hardship of separation is more than the inconvenience of restoring your phonebook or the fact that you have to fork out more money to buy a new phone, it is the loss of a familiar friend which makes it so difficult to bear. Knowing how and where to access your information at the touch of a button is the key to a good relationship with your mobile phone. Even a new, fancier upgrade is going to cost you hours of frustration before you are able to negotiate your way around your new mobile phone successfully.

And this is why, with my the screen of my mobile phone fading and the speaker no longer working I am still considering whether I should write up another ‘sick’ note and send it off for ‘treatment’ - a route which would involve only a temporary separation – or whether to accept the fact that my Samsung Beatbox M3200 is missing more than a few beats in its box and to switch it off for good.

Thanks to Esther Gibbons for the use of the picture. Follow Esther's photostream for more images.