A little over 10 years  ago when the first GSM networks rolled out their services, life and living in Nigeria took on a new meaning. There was great exhilaration that people could now talk with each other, irrespective of the distance, courtesy of the GSM telephone handsets.

The first handsets sold with the first SIM cards were, in light of what is available today, quite rudimentary, designed mainly for voice use. Even then, what became clear to the inquisitive user was that many technologies were converging in the mobile phone handset as vendors strove to corner more market share.

Thus, the commonest, low-end handsets, like the famed Nokia 3310 or Sagem MC 920 had maybe six or eight apps on the menu then. These include Messages, Phonebook, Settings, Extras, Calendar, Ringtones, Games etc. For example, the Extras app had Notes/To Do sub-menu, which some people used to replace their diaries.

Except those for whom the wrist watch had become an integral part of their dressing, people no longer fretted when they forgot their watches; they could always get the time from their handsets, and as time went on, very few people asked their neighbours, “What’s the time?”, no thanks to the handset.

In no time however, more sophisticated handsets hit the market as the phone vendors bid to outdo each other in the fight to get more of the global market share.

Thus, camera phones came, and here, it was a status symbol for some people. Soon after, the multimedia menu featured video cameras, and with the coming of the i-phone, the audio player became part of the standard menu now offered by most handsets.

However, in the upper end of the market, and with the coming of mobile internet, even more sophisticated apps are offered: there are the e-reader, the browser, bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Java, and mobile versions of standard desktop software like MS Word, Excel, etc.

But it could be seen that despite the fact that most phones now come with a lot of apps, very few people know these apps, and how to use them. In fact, it has been observed that most people use their phones mainly for calls, check the time, set alarms, and listen to music, or radio.

In short, most of us under-utilise our gadgets The GadgetSense section of Vanguard’s Hi-Tech pages will, from next edition, bring you information on your gadgets and how to get the best out of them, starting with the phone handset. Keep the Wednesday date!