Can you live a day without Handphone ?

[Zeny]

ASIAONE / NEWS / ASIAONE NEWS / DIGITALONE / STORY

Wed, Aug 04, 2010
my paper

One subscriber, many phones

BY CHRISTINA NG

SINGAPOREANS are becoming so tech- and gadget- savvy that they buy the latest equipment just to keep up with the Joneses - so much so that, increasingly, many would own multiple phones.

One such person is civil servant See Wee Lee, 24, who carries five mobile phones - four Nokia handsets and an iPhone.


Remarkably, he claims to be able to keep his monthly phone bills to under $200.

He has a different use for each one of his devices. He uses a Nokia as his main line for chatting with friends and family, and added that this is the phone that rings the most often.

Another Nokia was provided by his employer and is used solely for work calls.

He got an iPhone last July and uses it to surf the Internet and make outgoing calls.

He uses another Nokia only when he is overseas, saying that it is meant "to monitor the number of calls I make when I'm travelling".

The last Nokia is kept as a spare phone, just in case the first four fail on him.

Mr See is not an extraordinary example of someone who is obsessed with communication.

Mobile phones have fast become central to the lives of youth in the region, according to a recent survey by research agency Synovate.

About 28 per cent of Singaporean youth aged between eight to 24 years old said that they could not live without their cellphones, the survey found.

Five other people whom my paper spoke to each carry more than one mobile phone. Each of them said, for instance, that they needed the different devices to play games or take photographs with.

However, most people carry multiple phones to separate their work from their personal lives, as in the case of Radio 100.3 DJ Ken Low.

The 25-year-old said that he carries two mobile phones, one for everyday use and one for calling his girlfriend in Malaysia.

Mr Low said: "I may not want to pick up calls from work or friends when I'm on leave, but I still need to answer calls from my girlfriend. With a phone number dedicated to her, I can safely switch off my other phone."

The number of Singaporeans who have more than one cellphone subscription each has increased in the past five years, according to statistics from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

This was evident in the mobile population penetration rate - calculated by dividing the total number of mobile subscriptions by the total population here - in May 2005, which was 96.7 per cent.

The ratio increased to 139.6 per cent in May this year.

Mr See admitted that his colleagues give him an odd look when they spot him with a handful of mobile phones, but said: "Whenever they ask, I just tell them that I collect mobile phones as a hobby."

ncherhui@sph.com.sg


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[RN53]

Of course..................I can live without it, at all.

But it will be very very boring without the internet!

[Pel]

After using a smartphone for so long, now the time taken to boot up the computer seems like forever, so much so that I now seldom use the computer for surfing.

So yes, while I won't die if I don't use my handphone for a day, I'll probably miss it.

[Nanako]

i can leave a day without hp coz i have done so on Tue...though it coz i forget to bring my HP to work