The cellphone is one of the best blessings of technology, provided people use it with discretion. Unless there is fine discipline in its use, the ubiquitous gadget will become not only a nuisance to others but also an inescapable irritant to you. The most misused feature of the cellphone is that no one can find out where you are or what you are doing while you speak over it.
Almost all the points we mentioned in respect of the land phone are relevant in the case of the cellphone. Some of the dos and don’ts in the use of cellphone are as follows.
Fancy ring tones: They may be a source of fun in privacy, but not a symbol of elegance in official or other serious situations. You should keep only a generally acceptable simple ring tone, lest you are misunderstood. In many organisations, the use of cellphones is prohibited at the workplace. This regulation should be honoured. You have no right to disturb others’ work. Most of the good instruments have features permitting muting and a vibration-mode setting that alerts the user to an incoming call. You may take the call quietly or make it a missed call. There are places where you have to keep your cellphone switched off, as during a flight or in a library.
Shouting: It is bad manners to walk in public places, shouting into your pet instrument kept close to the ear. Yet another uncivilised practice is to keep the loudspeaker on, with the volume at its peak, so that even strangers are forced to overhear the conversation; the person at the other end imagines that what he says is being heard only by the other user. But his words assume the form of a public announcement, which will annoy others in the neighbourhood. This has to be avoided. Shouting into a phone undermines clarity. The listener will appreciate a lower voice, if it is sufficiently audible.
Public places: As far as possible, avoid long conversations that may irritate others aboard trains and buses and public places, such as a restaurant, street, footpath, lift or railway platform, You may move to a corner or other inconspicuous places and finish your call. If there is no facility for this, and the call is very urgent and essential, request the neighbour to excuse the inconvenience for a moment and then finish the call as quickly as possible.
Perhaps, you can tell that you will call back, and do so later. Speak softly in such situations. It is possible to cut the call on grounds of poor reception, but that does not reflect good manners. Further, there is no guarantee that the caller will not make an immediate second attempt to reach you. The best formula is “use common sense; be considerate.”
Driving: Driving and speaking on the cellphone should not go together. It is dangerous, and in most places, a punishable traffic offence. Worse still is typing an SMS while driving. A cynic once remarked that these days the cellphone is being used by people for anything other than speaking to others. Perhaps, he had in mind all those innovative options, such as watch, alarm clock, calendar, notepad, calculator, digital camera, audio/video recorder, radio receiver, music player, short message service, text-to-speech conversion, e-mail, games and satellite navigation. No activity related to any of these should be attempted while driving. There are hands-free devices that permit cellphone conversations, with both hands kept on the wheel. But the best option will be to park and talk.
Varied uses: A wide variety of applications were indicated in the previous paragraph.
All these may be used if you find them to be necessary or convenient, especially during travel. It is interesting that a prominent company has come up with a new cellphone which runs on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system and features a built-in hard drive.
It offers 3 GB of storage, which allows you to store up to 1,000 songs on it for playback through the music player. The 3 GB hard drive is similar to that found in Apple’s Mini iPod. These 1-inch drives with low power requirements may become popular with cellphones. Mobile phones gradually become “teleputers,” a term from George Gilder, techno-utopian writer from America.
Use of the camera: You should never shoot a picture clandestinely under any circumstance. Courtesy demands that the person on whom you focus your lens should know that a snapshot is being taken.
Never leave the phone in strange places. You never know if someone will misuse it.
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