The Ubiquitous Cell Phone

Many people today have a dire need to stay in touch with people all over the world. A person who goes to work needs to communicate with his boss, a woman needs to communicate with her child, and so forth. People need cell phones for endless reasons. Most importantly, a cell phone allows people to talk to each other over long and short distances. A cell phone has several parts including its components, some features, and functionality.

The main components of a cell phone include buttons, a screen, and a rechargeable battery. Some models may include an extendable antenna, and even a built-in camera. Also, one can buy various accessories for a cell phone including an ac-adapter to recharge a cell phone's battery. A faceplate simply covers the internals of the device, and some stores sell external faceplates, which overlap the buttons and screen of a cell phone. The commonly found buttons on a cell phone include the on/off button, buttons with numbering of zero through nine, a dial button, a hang up button, pound button, star button, and arrow marked buttons to navigate through the various menus on a cell phone. The display screen for a cell phone usually includes some type of screen, sometimes colored and sometimes not. Additionally, and perhaps obvious, cell phones have built-in microphones and speakers for capturing and transmitting voices.

Basic features of a cell phone include menus, submenus, and a list of contacts, similar to a phone book, but digital. The various menus include a call log, messages, profiles, settings, system, calculator and even a games menu. The call log keeps track of missed calls, received calls, and dialed calls. Missed calls refer to unanswered calls, for whatever reason, including not answering the phone, or having a dead battery when someone tried to call. Received calls keeps track of all the answered calls made to a cell phone. The dialed calls menu keeps track of all the calls a user makes. Furthermore, a cell phone keeps track of time stamps, to allow a user to know when calls occurred, and keeps listings of the phone numbers. The messages menu keeps track of voice mail messages; voice messages a caller leaves when a user of a cell phone is unreachable. Also, the messages menu keeps track of various text message activity including sent and received messages. Opposite to talking to someone verbally over a cell phone, cell phones have the ability to send and receive text-based messages, even electronic mail, to other cell phones. The profiles menu allows a user to modify certain properties regarding how a cell phone behaves when receiving calls. In particular, the profiles menu allows a user to select the exact type of ring, called ring-tone, which a cell phone plays to denote a received call. In the settings menu a cell phone keeps track of time settings and phone settings. A user can set the current time in a cell phone here, at the time setting option. In the phone settings a user can select which language the cell phone should display to a user, because cell phones can support multiple languages. The system menu allows a user to select which phone company will support a cell phone's signals, called radio waves. The calculator menu allows a user to make computations using the buttons on a cell phone to perform basic arithmetic. The games menu simply includes a listing of all the various built-in games included in a cell phone. Users, during leisure time, might select a game to play and use the buttons on a cell phone to control the figures on the screen. All these features allow one to control and modify their own personal cell phones to their liking.

The most advanced topic for a cell phone includes functionality. A cell phone's most important feature includes the sending and receiving of phone calls. Cell phones have a device called an antenna, which handles the sending and receiving of radio signals (the phone calls). Phone companies have put into orbit satellites, which bounce off the radio signals generated by cell phones. The satellites orbiting around the earth allow users of cell phones to call each other locally, within the same city, or even globally. In addition to satellites, phone companies have various towers setup throughout the world to further boost signals and allow cell phones to call other cell phones.

Cell phones, as small portable devices operating on battery power, have many uses. In particular, people use cell phones as a communication tool. Most importantly, however, the embedded software controls the operation of a cell phone. Cell phones come with many different built in menus, which allow users to modify various settings. Cell phones also store phone numbers, and other important information.