Benefits of having smartphone

I wrote about "Choosing a mobile phone" last week, and I've chosen the Sony Ericsson P1i, which is a feature rich PDA smartphone that has been around in the market for more than a year and is still a hot pick for many people. I believe now is a good timing to buy it, as its price has dropped for a few hundred ringgit since its launch, and has been stabilized and maintained over than past 3 months.

This is my first smartphone, and I find it very interesting compared with the traditional mobile phone. If you are a technology savvy who like to explore, modify and hack around the phone, then smartphone is your choice.

When I got the phone (supposingly for the Malaysia/Indonesia market), I found that Chinese was not supported by its original firmware. The first thing I did is to replace its firmware with the Singapore version with Chinese support. And now, it can read and write Chinese in SMS as well as all the installed applications. Its touch screen handwriting recognition now can recognise Chinese writing too!

Beside this, other benefits of smartphone over traditional phone include:

• There is no limit to the contacts information (only limited by available memory). Traditional phone has fixed limit on number of storable contacts.
  
• There are a lot of applications in vast variety available (free and non-free) for its OS, and the number keeps on increasing as development is continuous. Traditional phone is very much restricted to Java based small applications/games only.
  
• You are able to modify (mod) and extend its existing features, such as adding the cool Touchlight function with its camera light. This feature is available in some other mobile phones, but not in the original specs of P1i. There also exist mods to the camera to add more function (such as continuous shots) and enhance the photo quality.
  
• You are even able to explore and hack into the Symbian OS file system, tweaking it for faster and better performance.
• You are able to upgrade the applications that come with the phone to a newer version.
• You are able to add plug-in to its web browser, such as enabling the capability to display flash animation.
• ...

Well, if you are not keen on mods and hacks, and will probably use your phone as-is without installing additional application too, then the benefit of having smartphone to you is probably having bigger memory for contacts/SMS/MMS etc. If you like mods and hacks, you can find quite a lot of such discussions in various Internet forums about your phone.

Choosing a mobile phone

Nowadays mobile phone has evolved into an integrated electronic gadget with lot of features and capabilities making it more than just a phone. It is of course good to have everything in your phone, with the richest feature, the latest technology, the finest capability, the longest battery life, ... with everything "in" and perfect.

Unfortunately, such phone doesn't exist. Mobile phone are designed to be strong in certain area, but secondary or weak in some other domain. There exist phones that are close to perfect, but always come with a skyrocking price tag that might be even higher than a brand new PC computer.

From the personal finance perspective, it is advisable to get a mobile phone with all the features that we really need, and forget about those features that are good to have but seldom or never use. Then, among the features that are required, we identify them according to importance to our need. This will help us to choose the most suitable model for us, and without wasting money in features that we will never use.

Here is my way in choosing a new mobile phone.

Firstly, I'll look into the features that I need:

• 3G - Am I ready to pay extra in monthly bill for 3G usage? Am I always need to use the phone to check emails or surf Internet? Do I have a need to make video calls?
• EDGE - Am I a Digi subscriber?
• Wifi - Do I prefer this way to connect to Internet rather than using 3G? Is my home and office equipped with Wifi access point?
  
• Bluetooth - Am I buying a PDA phone or Smart Phone which will frequently interact with my computer? Does my computer support bluetooth? Am I necessary to use a bluetooth headset?
• Camera - Do I just need a basic camera or a high resolution one in the phone? Do I prefer to take pictures with my digital camera or with my phone? Is flash important? Do I need the phone to be my "torchlight"? Is autofocus, night mode, zoom, etc. important?
  
• Screen - Do I need a high colour and big display for watching movies, see pictures, surf the net, use GPS, ... etc. or I just need a normal screen?
• Video capture - Do I really need this feature?
• Speaker - Will I use my phone as MP3/MP4 player?
  
• FM radio - Will I use the phone to listen to radio?
• TV receiver - Will I use the phone for TV, such as getting the news?
  
• Keyboard design/layout - Am I often sending SMS? Can the keyboard facilitate for faster and easier typing?
• Java - Do I plan to install additional applications or play games other than those come with the phone?
  
• Touch screen - Do I really need this feature?
• Stylus - Is this my preferred way which is faster for me to write, draw and manipulate the phone?
  
• GPS - Do I really need this feature?
• PDA functions - Do I need a sophisticated calendar or just a basic one? Will I use the phone as convenience device to take notes (or I still prefer paper and pen)? Is there occasion that need me to open and work on MS Office files with the phone?
  

By getting the answers for the above, I should have a clearer picture of what kind of phone do I plan to buy. This should help me in shorlisting some brands and models that suit my needs. Then I'll look into my preference for:

• Design - what design I like? Big screen, flip, twist, bar, block, ...
• Size - what size I like? slim, compact, normal, PDA style (bulky), ...
  
• Memory - how much internal memory? Do I need the phone to support for external memory card?
• Weight - everyone love a light weight phone.
• Battery - how long can the battery last for standby, talking, online, playing video, using apps, ...?
• Price - how much am I willing to pay?
  

Until this point, I will be able to choose the mobile phone I'm going to buy. If you are also planning to buy a new mobile phone, hope that this can give you some useful guides.

10 questions to assess your job satisfaction

Are you happy in your job? How satisfied are you with your career? Do you agree that employees are happiest and most satisfied when they consider themselves fully engaged in their roles in the company?

Well, what could be making you to have such a good feeling? The 10 questions below can help you to perform a career audit and assess your job satisfaction. Ask yourself:

• Is the company capitalizing on my special talents?
• Does my supervisor have my best interests at heart?
• In the past six months, has my supervisor honestly evaluated my performance?
• Am I receiving challenging assignments at work to help me grow professionally?
• Do I have a mentor guiding me as I move up through the organization?
• Do I have friends at work in whom I can confide?
• Is there a career track to get me where I want to be in five years?
• Does my work give me a sense of higher purpose?
• Are my coworkers trustworthy and committed to excellence?
• Am I receiving the training I need to do my job well?

If you are an employee, the assessment above will help you in clarifying your career prospect and worthiness; If you are an employer or a human resource personnel, the assessment above can give you some clue in improving employee's relationship and hopefully reduce turnover rate; If you are a job seeker, don't be shy off to find out the answers from your potential employer.

If most of your answers to the above questions are "no" but you are still staying with your company, perhaps you are one of those not-so-happy employees who hang around mainly because of the 11th point: remuneration.

(Source of the above 10 questions are from Allyhunt, an executive sourcing company in Malaysia)