What your mobile phone can do for you?

Since the cellphone was introduced for public in 1973, engineers have always been adding enhancements to cellphone in an effort to reduce the need of dedicated gadgets and combine everything at one place. As of today, there are a lot of these gadgets that have been merged into cellphone. I was trying to list down all such items. The list mentioned below is not final and things are still being added as the technology progresses. So far, I was able to list down below items that have all been merged to cellphone.

• Landline Phone. Phone line is one of the basic necessities of life. After the mobile phone was introduced, this was the first thing to go wireless as everyone likes to remain in touch without being linked to the copper wire. The use of a landline phone is on decline since cellphone entered our lives. Most of the families are no longer using the landline because everyone in the family has got his/her own cellphone.
• Watch/Alarm Clock – Gone are the days when people were fond of wearing a new wristwatch, just to keep up with time. This I believe is the next gadget, after landline phone that the engineers picked up to be integrated in a cellphone. People used to have alarm clocks on their side table to set a time to wake up at a particular time in the morning. Cellphone has taken up this responsibility now to wake us up and that too through melodious ringtones instead of the monotonous sound of the alarm clock.
• Calculator – We are now able to do small plus minus on our cellphone. This was the next enhancement. We seldom see anyone using a calculator for minor calculations these days, though scientific calculator is still used by science students.
• Audio/Video Player – Gone are the days when we used to buy video cassette player or recorder to watch movies on our TV screens. Even the DVD and CD players that came up later are a thing of the past now. Modern day cellphone now has the capacity to record and play audio as well video files for us. The quality of the recording is gradually improving as the time is passing. At the start, it was only a VGA camera in cellphones but up to 12-megapixel camera are becoming a routine thing in cellphones at present. We can record audio or video at any time we want and can listen or watch it later at our convenience.

• Camera – We don’t need to keep a separate camera these days if we have a good cellphone to take pictures. This has made photography quite handy for everyone. Everyone is a photographer now and can click anywhere he likes. This is the reason important moments of life are shared through social media with all our near and dear ones. Only professionals buy separate cameras with multiple functionalities. Cameras in cellphones are good enough to satisfy the needs of a common person.
• Flashlight/Torch – If a flashlight or a torch is needed to look into dark for some time, there is no need to buy a separate one because the cellphone now has the ability to lighten up our dark place for a while. Some phones are equipped with a torch light while others have flashlight that serves for both as camera flash and as a regular torch light.
• Calendars – No one bothers to buy large size calendars to hang them up on the wall to keep up with the days of the month and to remember their activities throughout the month. Cellphone has solved our problem in this matter as well. Now we can add reminders for particular dates and times and forget about keeping them in mind. Our cellphone will remind us ahead of time about an activity that we have planned on a particular day.

• Address Book/Notepad – Some people have a habit of writing a diary on daily basis of all the activities they did during the course of that day. This is a useful activity to analyze and learn from the past experience and it also helps in planning for future. The cellphone will help in this whenever there is a need. We can take notes on our phone to be used later. They have large capacity to store the whole of our address book contact details as well, which we have been storing earlier in our diary. No worries now if we can’t find our diary. The cellphone is there to help us out.
• Portable Storage – With the introduction of internal memory, cellphones are now able to replace portable storage devices like USB flash drives. We can store our data on the memory chip in our cellphone. The capacity is increasing as the memory module is decreasing in size.
• Laptop/PC – If a work for a short time on applications like word/excel is needed, cellphone is there to help. These applications are now available on cellphone screen and we no more need to carry a laptop or a PC if we are on the move.

• Web surfing/ Newspapers – With the introduction of WLAN in the cellphones, a whole world of internet is open for the user through their cellphones. We can browse any site we like on and can read any newspaper from anywhere in the world. Even TV channels are now being offered on cellphones with different packages.

This list is not final and things are always being added. With the increasing advancement in cellular technology, a lot of more capabilities are soon expected to be made available through cellphones. It might replace the laptop/PC altogether in near future.