Normob watch

Sat on the train down to London this morning I saw a great piece of normob behaviour. A little bit like Ewan’s recent ‘Does your phone do numbers?’ post, it made me smile, so I thought I’d share it with you.

An older gentleman (possibly 65 ish) got an old Nokia out of his jacket pocket (unfortunately I didn’t see the exact model); took it out of its protective wallet and then got ready to make a call. However, instead of accessing the phone’s address book, he opened up a piece of paper that was in the wallet and typed the number into his phone.

Having a written list of the most used numbers was something that my grandparents used to keep by their old landline phone. If they were alive, I could imagine them using a mobile in exactly the same way as this guy sat near me did. This guy didn’t want to use all the clever applications that you and I might … he just wanted to make voice calls while he was mobile.

While I agree that the industry needs to keep innovating, part of the issue is that normobs like this are still a big part of the market for the operators et al.

Of course, as I was on an East Midlands train, the poor guy had no reception … so even his most basic requirement wasn’t met!

Recently Published

Question: When is the only time a traffic jam is good news in the UK?

Answer: When you're sitting in the back of an Uber and you need reliable mobile signal. Boom! Sad, isn't it, dear reader? Travel all around...

Ah yes, an S23 with a BlackBerry Bold Keyboard: Exactly what I (think) I need

I was playing with Midjourney, the AI/photo generation service and I asked it to show me what a Samsung S23 would look like with...

It’s ok, your moon photos aren’t fake, they are just enhanced – quite a bit

Have you taken a photo of the moon recently? I almost did, the other day, when I spotted a fabulous moment here in Dubai....

Don’t move! You’ll jinx it! This looks like a tiny bit of innovation in the mobile world

It has been quite a while since I’ve seen anything in the mobile industry that’s caused me to want to write much. Just look...

The new BlackBerry movie trailer is here

Were you a BlackBerry fan? Of course you were. At some point, almost everyone was. I still remember the days and the joy that...

Airalo: The easy way to roam globally with a data eSIM

Shortly before I began my FinTech & Banking Tour around the GCC, I popped into the Apple AppStore and searched ‘eSim’. I wondered if...