Jai ho means be victorious, and cell phones are a technology that truly have the power to enable all with a better quality of life. Pakistan and Indian cell phone brands have similar needs. To start, Urdu and Hindi speaking, and … Nokia is at the head as a pioneer and innovator to meet the needs of the Indo-Pak area, especially those in remote sections, in the mountains, countryside, and such.

The needs discussed here are similar in remote areas and areas where infrastructure is not as reliable as more developed areas in not only Pakistan and India but also other areas of Asia, Russia, Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Americas.

Nokia shared its first “made especially for India’ handset in early 2003. Pakistan and India have extremely dusty and humid weather. The writer of this article knows because she has been to the area a total of eight times in the past ten years. The Nokia 1100 had sides that gave the users a good firm grip in the midst of air that is filled with dew. The keyboard resists dust build-up. This particular device is still popular in both countries in 2010.

How could cell phone manufacturers and creators better meet the needs of the Indo-Pak area of avid cellular service users, both individual and businesses?

ALPHA and touch keypad

Lava cell phones offers an ALPHA keypad on their B2 and B5. The keys are set up in alphabetical or … ABCD arrangement. It would drive the current Techistan team crazy and any who are used QWERTY, but feature helps new technology users in general who have never been exposed to the QWERTY keyboard.

(By the way, there is no alpha keypad entry on Wikipedia yet.)

A touch keypad is more excellent for those who are not literate in writing or even to meet the needs of the growing population who are more visual and kinesthetic in thinking and learning than they are verbal.

Two or three SIMs in one phone.

Spice Mobiles was first to offer this in 2008. It would rock the texting addicts’ worlds if they could easily switch from SIM to SIM depending on where they are … in India or Pakistan or traveling to Dubai or Singapore.

The Spice D-88 Dual SIM, the Spice D090 Dual SIM, and the Samsung D880 Dual SIM are some of the most popular.

The recently launch of Airfone’s AF222 DUO, a dual SIM device and supports working of two GSM devices, with dual battery, dual memory, dual speakers, dual camera and dual memory card slot in the device.

Vishal Chitkara, director, Airfone India Ltd, said “This phone targeted at metros and Tier I cities is an important step for us to strengthen our position in these cities”.

A recent poster on pakwheels.com queries, “I have been looking at various varieties of china dual-sim mobiles..particularly concerned about quality..and bingo..today hit up a very decent sets in local mart. Wonder if anyone was using them already? Video not so great as usual. However I’m quite impressed by its dual network functions. The UI was pretty decent based than China Mobile phones I have seen in past. But they all seem to have same LCD touch screen with 5 shortcuts in footnote.”

Text translation in the local languages, not just English.
India and Pakistan are lands of dozens of languages and dialects such as Tamil, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, and Hindi, all having a similar appearance and somewhat similar words. English is a second language to about half the population, but what about the other half?

Will we see triple SIM devices next? Yes, they are already available. GeePee, Intex (first in India in early 2010) and Olive manufacturers offer triple SIM phonesets.

Battery life, but isn’t that a need around the world?

Brown-outs are common in India and Pakistan. In fact, electric outages and too short of battery lifetime capability are a real frustration around the globe. So longer battery life would be excellent. In fact, battery life that does not decrease so quickly in time will be a huge support. Check CNet’s cell phone battery testing charts.

Deepesh Gupta, MD, Zen Mobiles whose M25 boasted 72 hours of battery time, shared with reporters that the M25 phone would be helpful to people the more remote areas where power is unreliable.

Solar powered phones? Yes, they are around.
Samsung who launched Solar Guru E1107 in mid year 2009 as the first solar-powered mobile phone in India. It uses the day time sun’s energy to charge and recharge which means the phone needs to be in the sun, but the problem was that after two hours of charging in the sun, it only lets the user talk for 20 minutes. Approximately 40 hours of solar charging might fill the battery power up.

But all that hot India sun on a delicate item like a cell phone? And they run about Rs.2,799 or $59 USD which is a bit high for most Indian breadwinners.

Techistan and the world of communications developers, manufacturers, entrepreneurs, newbies, and early adopters in the city as well as developing and undeveloped areas are anxious to change the device we all use to communicate, learn, do business. Empowering more people with this technology will make for example, Pakistan and India more productive with families surviving in better quality of life.

Share your dreams and ideas of a better cell phone by commenting here, RT, blog, or on any of your favorite social networks. Be sure to pass the word around about key conferences in Singapore, Malaysia, USA, Pakistan, and India with a focus on wireless, 3G, devices, M2M, smart grid and more at the Techistan recommended events page. RT! TY!