I was strutting about with the air of a know-all until my smartphone put me in my place. After discarding my feature phone and acquiring a smartphone, I tried to send messages on social networking sites and found that the letters on the keyboard of my phone were too small and too close for comfort. I erased, retyped and kept repeating the process and learnt the art of texting after much ado.
Once, a friend advised me that I could dictate to the phone and my phone would convert my spoken word into typed script. I dictated, but found soon that the phone deciphered only American or British English and not my English. Proper nouns and badly pronounced words were translated by the phone as per its understanding. My patience level increased due to the tantrums of the smartphone.
I wanted to get up early one morning. I set the alarm on my phone for 5 am and went to sleep. Vehicles honking on the road woke me up next morning before the alarm of my phone. I checked my phone to know why it did not ring at the appointed time. It transpired that the day of the week was not chosen and hence the alarm did not ring. I realised that I had to learn a lot in the art of using a smartphone.
The same morning, I had booked a taxi on a cab aggregator app. A luxurious sedan arrived and at the end of the journey, I was saddled with a hefty bill. On enquiry, I realised that without choosing the type of vehicle like micro, mini, prime,etc., I had touched the ‘book now’ tab and hired a vehicle which happened to be a sedan fitted with WiFi and cost me a fortune.
One of my friends downloaded a few utility applications on my phone. One such was an app for torch. After installing, I touched the torch, but there was no light. I fiddled with the handset and discovered that the budget phone did not have a flash. I went through the phone’s specifications on the internet and realised that the handset was not equipped with a flash even though it had a back and front camera.
I played tennis regularly. I formed a tennis group to communicate with my tennis mates on Whatsapp. I started sending messages like, “Today I will be coming to play at 5.00 pm” or “Tomorrow I will not be coming to play.” A few of my tennis buddies were not on Whatsapp. So they never got the messages. A couple of friends were not tennis players, but were signed into Whatsapp. They got my messages, though the texts meant nothing to them.
Email: mailpsubramanian@gmail.com