When the first cell phone was created we were happy about its single and only feature - phonecalls. Then we wanted more and we got more - phonebook, sms, calculator, clock.

With the advance of smartphones consumers took a giant leap into the abundance. In fact we have been spoilt already but we still want more.

In fact the current level of electronics development allows us to expect almost anything. That’s why I wanted to collect the most ridiculous feature requests. Despite of being pretentious and ridiculous, you’ll see that majority of qwerty cell phone models will be offering at least some of these features if not next year then in 2010 for sure. Mark my words.

After all, the cell phone makers cannot afford to make mistakes of separating features amongst their phones. It was the one and only reason for Siemens to go out of business. They had so many different cell phone models and each was good at a certain thing. There was a camera phone, there was a calculator phone, there was a personify-your-desktop phone but there wasn’t a model that would include all the nice features. Bad mistake!

Crazy Phone Features 2008

So let us start. How about a qwerty cell phone that does this:

  • Universal Remote control. It only takes a cheap infrared output and a bit of programming and any cell phone can be turned into a universal remote control. Very convenient if you have many different TV sets, Hi-Fi-s and other gadgets.
  • Games Console - a Dandy or Sony PlayStation can be turned into a smartphone by re-aligning the controls and adding a couple of electronic components plus a sim-reader. Easy as a piece of cake.
  • Wireless mouse - this sounds crazy, yet it is possible to embed a tracking device into a cell phone and use it via a Bluetooth adapter as a computer mouse or a pointer for digital projectors.
  • Night vision - I have had a necessity for a night vision device on numerous occasions. Any cell phone with a digital camera can be turned into a night vision device. It would probably make a thin qwerty cell phone thicker and heavier, but I don’t care. I’ serious, I’m not joking - give me the night vision! Let the screen show what my eyes cannot see.
  • Solar battery - don’t believe the people who say that solar batteries are expensive. I remember my first Casio calculator. It had a solar battery and the retail price was under $2.00. It would be a nice addition, a little energy saver, and the company that did the first solar cel phone would be named green. It is a fact that companies regarded as green, sell more stuff!
  • Mouse or a trackball - it is hard to fit a mouse on the face of a normal qwerty cell phone yet it is easy to do one on a slider phone (such as Google G1 phone). I don’t know yet why a cell phone needs a trackball but I’d like to have one. This is not my idea - iCEphone will be the first cell phone with a laptop-style mouse whenever it is ready for production.
  • Touch screen with fingerprints detection or a camera with eye detection. Make the cell phones safe and make stealing cell phones useless. PhoneBak is a nice bit of software but hackers can still crack it. Each time we start up a smartphone it should ask for fingerprints or eye scan. On the third wrong scan it self-destructs. It is very easy to program self destruction. Get inappropriate current through the processor and it overheats. LOL - it is dead! Fingerprint scan is dirt cheap - many under-$20 USB pens have it.
  • Health meter. My HTC 620 qwerty cell phone has a thin metallic strip called Joggr - it is either meant to give additional features for scrolling and moving about the files or to annoy the owner. It is a sensor - add a membrane to it and you can measure heart rate by pressing a thumb to it. Make it read and save heart rate and pressure into memory and you have a little helper tool for doctors who want to monitor their patients’ progress. Let me go a bit further - a phone can measure sugar level of blood and alert diabetes sufferers when their health is in danger. Sugar analyzer is more expensive than the heart rate meter but it is still not beyond possible.
  • A shock absorber that actually works. Many qwerty cell phones boast that their anti-shock features are so advanced that you may kick them. Actually you may not. The first real kick-me phone was made in 1998 by Siemens - it was the Siemens S10 and you could play football and drive nails with it.

What will the future bring? Which company will make the first cell phone using nanotechnology? Meanwhile take this list of feature requests and make sure my next qwerty cell phone has them all.

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