Some phones amaze me for the kind of features they pack in at a very low price. Some phones, like iPhone, amaze me too for the lack of features they ought to have. While the whole world is in the pursuit of Appiness, there isn’t much of innovation the much-needed features. Sure there are apps from farting to orgasm, but some shouldn’t be apps. They should be features of the OS.
I have listed down 5 such features which should be part of every phone’s – smart or not – repertoire.
Whitelist or Blacklist
This the most handy feature. While this is no substitute for registering with Do-Not-Call registry, Blacklist comes in handy for the pesky calls which get past the DNC net. An anti-dote for tele-marketing calls.
Whitelist is a handy feature too. You might not want to miss calls from few people, no matter where you are. Creating a separate ringtone for your Whitelist users would make a life a whole lot easier.
Fake Call
Don’t you just love it to have a Fake call in a boring meeting?
“Oh! I have to take this, I’m really sorry. But you guys go ahead.“
“Ok. What did I miss”
Apparently nothing.
Canned messages
Someone calls you and you can’ take that call but don’t want to sound ignorant to them. Wouldn’t it be great if a set of messages pop-up when you hit the End call button? It could be a simple message of “I will call you back later”.
This could save so much time and a whole lot of keystrokes. I found this feature first on Samsung Corby. Very nifty. Trust me, you need it.
Metered calls
This might not be a killer feature but if you are in the habit of going long over conversations maybe pre-setting a timer to disconnect at 10 mins or 12 mins will be very handy. This could also help in avoiding the hefty phone bills.
Call recording
Leaving the ethical and non-ethical debate aside, recording a call is needed. This isn’t to quote someone over something they said in a phone conversation. Don’t do that because that would just be ugly and no one will be calling once they know about you.
Recording is for quality assurance. It’s to have a record of all the conversations you have with a company or a service provider. Or to improve your diction. There are some really good uses to this feature. If the recording is automatic, then it would just be fantastic. And yes, there’s a phone which does this already.
None of these features are hard to implement, because I have seen this in the most basic phones. There could be apps for all these features. Except for call recording, other four features should be built into the OS.
Is there any other feature you want by default? Add it in the comments section.