Discovering tech in Samsung SGH-E720

How many meters is one kilometer? How many kilograms are there in one ton? What is the equivalent of 1,000 square feet in square meters? How much is 100 euros in dollars? These are questions that you don’t really expect your mobile phone to find answers to but in reality it can.

Doing mathematical conversions in the mobile phone may not be as interesting as making voice calls or sending SMS, MMS or e-mail, but most cellphones have these functions although most users don’t get past the calculator and the currency converter.

If one wants to maximize the cost of today’s mid-range to high-end handsets like the Samsung SGH-E720, one needs to make use of the technology packed in these gadgets and even the lesser known features.

The SGH-E720, for one, has a more expansive converter as it includes not only currency conversion but also length, weight, volume, area and temperature calculations. So, switching from mile to yard or feet or from kilometers to meters to centimeters is a synch. The same goes for weight conversions.

If a need arises to convert kilogram to pound to gram or ounce, it comes in very handy. Maybe not too many people may need to convert square meters to square feet or gallons to metric tons, but it is always good to know that the information is always at hand.

Nowadays, camera phones are the norm. As handsets morph to become calling and clicking devices at the same time, more and more people are opting for the phone-and-camera bundle to go with the trend. This, however, raises the bar and toughens competition among handset makers as they battle for megapixel supremacy.

Samsung has somehow secured a foothold in this department as it launched a seven-megapixel phone earlier this year in Hanover, Germany.

However, for most people, a seven-megapixel phone is far from reality; one-megapixel camera phones are more the industry norm. The SGH-E720, however, is not your average one-megapixel phone. It features three kinds of shots – single shot, multishot and mosaic.

The last two are really for effect and unless you are doing professional photography, may not be quite useful in ordinary life. But when capturing a fast-paced action such as a soccer or a basketball game, pressing the shutter once and getting six, nine or 15 shots in rapid succession may be the best thing that could ever happen to a non-pro. A 2x2 or a 3x3 mosaic shot, on the other hand, is best for capturing landscapes or objects.

Like the SGH-D500, Samsung’s first Bluetooth phone, the SGH-E720 is also Bluetooth-capable. Though most people don’t have much opportunity to really make full use of Bluetooth, especially with the looming threat of mobile phone viruses as commwarrior and cabir, it is actually a very useful feature in cellphones.

Once you’ve encoded your namecard – usually includes your name, address, company name, mobile phone, landline, fax number and e-mail address and company website – in the phone memory, you can easily send it to anybody using Bluetooth free of charge to another Bluetooth phone.

So when meeting someone for the first time in a business luncheon or function, you can easily exchange business cards through cellphones. It may sound too geeky and may feel more like the practice of techies, but it’s actually easy to learn and adopt.

As technology advances and handsets become more complicated, people are trying to catch up and find other uses for the cellphones in their daily lives. As with the SGH-E720 or any other phone, discovering technology is a personal journey.