Cellphone Woes of a Weary Traveller

'Somethings' they say, 'remain a mystery until someone comes along'. Few hours into the journey, I could feel some discomfort near the crotch and it has nothing to do with the pretty young thing few seats down the aisle. I forgot to switch off the cellphone and the constant jumps between tower, signal hunting has not only drained the battery but the handset was getting bit hot in my trouser pocket. Perhaps keeping the phone in offline mode seems to be better option, since I can quickly go online and make few calls when the trains stops in a station somewhere.

Like most people I store all my contacts in the cellphone and absolutely none in my head. I stopping jotting down numbers on paper ever since the my address book floated away in a house flood caused by an open water tap. Last heard it was somewhere near the tropic of cancer. Darn! I don't fancy being stranded in a strange town with a dead cellphone battery. (Note to myself: start carrying dead tree address book)

A soft spoken clerk travelling with me told me that cellphones get discharged very quickly on these train journeys. He regularly commutes between two states to be with wife and young child (another facet of modern life) and he carries a fully charged extra cellphone battery with him. Finding an free electrical outlets on the train is a rarity. Looking around I found various exotic battery chargers like this of Chinese make ;) . (Its hard to get a steady shot in a moving train)

The cellphones have come a long way from monochrome displays and byte size memories. But the battery technology has barely kept up with the advances, it still is fraught with lack of good backup time, memory effects and performance degradation over time etc. Anyone who going to find a fix and come with a better cellphone batteries would find a nice cosy place in the next billionaires list and win the gratitude of innumerable cellphone users worldwide.