Technically Incorrect

When it comes to losing your cell phone in the sea, you expect it to be buried there. You certain don't expect it to turn up a week later inside a fish. And you most definitely don't expect it to still be working.

However, British businessman Andrew Cheatle appears to be the owner of the most resilient Nokia 1600 in the world.

He told the Sun newspaper, "I was messing about with my dog, and my phone must have fallen out and been swept out in the swell. I kept calling it, but I gave up hope after a couple of days."

He went shopping for a new cell phone with his clearly understanding girlfriend. Suddenly, her phone rang, and a chap on the other end asked her to swallow the story of a 25-pound cod he had just caught. The cod had swallowed her boyfriend's Nokia.

The caller was a fisherman named Glen Kerley. He was using Mr. Cheatle's SIM card. (The Nokia was still a little wet.) A craggy soul, with a face that launched a thousand shivers, Mr. Kerley seems to be the kind of man whose stories preclude him from ever having to buy a drink.

"Cod are greedy fish; they'll eat anything," he told the Sun. "They have big heads and big mouths."

"Why is my stomach suddenly vibrating and playing 'Ace of Spades'?

(Credit: CC Saipal)

You might think that he is confusing cod with bank officials. But no bank official could surely eat "plastic cups, stones, teaspoons, batteries." On the other hand, Mr. Kerley has also heard of "someone finding false teeth in one."

Naturally, the Nokia was not in pristine condition. The biggest problem was the smell. Mr. Cheatle has not revealed which brand of sanitizer he used to get rid of it, though I understand that his ears were assaulted by several excited cats while he was in a business meeting.

It's hard to believe that this Nokia could possibly still be in working order. All we have are Mr. Cheatle's words: "It was working, but it kept playing up, so I had to get the circuit board changed in the end. But now it's fine. I know it sounds a fishy tale, but it is 100 percent true."

I have to confess that I spent much of today trying to buy a new cell phone. I am even more partial to Nokias than was Mr. Kerley's cod. And salesmen from several providers tried to tempt me into various embodiments of BlackBerry and iPhone.

But after hearing Mr. Kerley's tale, I will hold out until Nokia lets me have a worthy successor to the unassuming but wondrous 9300.

Yo, Finland. I know it's cold. And I know you're probably all out fishing and drinking. But please think of us needy pond life over here. Thank you.

There are some people of means who are desperate for everyone to know they are people of means.

They (men and women) wear gold chains to adorn their leathery necks. They (men and women) wear earrings that sparkle like the eyes of an orgiastic llama. And they (men and women) have the undoubtedly enterprising Austrian jewelry designer Peter Aloisson to make gadgets that might remind lesser beings of trinkets from the artist formerly known as Saddam Hussein.

The latest of Mr. Aloisson's creations is a $2.5 million iPhone. May I quote some of the forbiddingly florid language from Mr. Aloisson's alluring Web site: "Made of solid 18-carat yellow gold, white gold, and rose gold. A fabulous combination. The white gold line is encrusted with a total of 138 brilliant cut diamonds of the best quality."

(Credit: aloisson.com)

But wait, this touching work of art has a unique feature. No, it does not polish your shoes while you talk on the phone. And no, it doesn't have a built-in vibrator to massage your ear. It does, however, have a "home button" that carries a rare 6.6-carat diamond.

The Web site gushes that this button is "integrated in the design, as if this diamond has been made for 'taking you home.'" In order to make you understand that this phone is probably not for you, Mr. Aloisson has dubbed the device the "Apple iPhone 3G Kings Button."

I accept that many things are not for me. A Bentley, for example. When I see one floating down the street, I think to myself: "Hmm, well, the driver's dyed his hair out of a bottle, but that's a tastefully designed vehicle."

However, when I look at the iPhone 3G Kings Button, I think: "Wears shoes from a crocodile, smiles like a reptile, and makes love like a cockroach. Oh, and dons Aramis cologne."

Who knows why I think this? Taste is a highly subjective thing. And you might think that Mr. Aloisson was having an off-day when he designed this homage to catatonia.

I was just wondering whether to finally sacrifice my loyal and beautiful Nokia cell phone for something more contemporary when I discovered that a couple of days ago China experienced its ninth cell phone explosion since 2002.

In the latest, a sales associate in a computer store in Guangzhou apparently charged his new cell phone battery and put the phone into his shirt pocket. It then exploded, severing his neck artery. He bled to death.

Chinese police have not declared the make of the phone or of its battery. But both Nokia and Motorola have denied links to problem batteries in China, declaring them to be the creation of counterfeiters.

Look, I am the ambassador of the normal, slightly tech-skeptic street person on this site. And, because I know clever technological people read this blog, I would be interested to hear how it is that cell phones can blow people to death.

This is from a gas station in Redwood City, Calif. Does this include AT&T cell phones?

(Credit: CC Ten Safe Frogs)

I would very much like to know the chances of such an event occurring in the United States. And I would be very much soothed to have some sense (you know, some odds or at least a semblance of an over/under) whether one brand of cell phone might be more likely to blow up in my face rather than another.

I am extremely sad that an unfortunate employee lost his life because of an apparent cell phone battery malfunction.

And I would like to head to my trusty, if occasionally shifty, AT&T superstore, armed with all the available information that would minimize my chances of being offed while texting sweet nothings and requests for money.

I cannot believe for a moment that any US cell phone might be prone to such a murderous occurrence, but I regularly read the comments left on the blogs of fine writers such as CNET's Matt Asay and Don Reisinger and I have been consistently amazed by some of the information that comes out in these forums.

So please, put my mind at rest. It might, at the very least, make AT&T some money. Unless you tell me to change to Sprint or Verizon, of course.

I would very much like to know what kind of relationships Nokia engineers had with their parents. And what sort of toys they played with as children.

I ask because I was intrigued by a New York Times interview with Tero Ojanpera, Nokia's Executive Vice President for Entertainment and Communities.

Mr. Ojanpera has a simple and positive vision of the future.

There will be you, your cellphone, your needs and your cellphone's YES button.

He believes that Nokia will be able to create phones that will be able to give you access to movies, shows, the finest spiritual lap dancing communities, the nearest clean, vacant five-star ashrams and, for ad agency employees, the nearest gym with a Google logo punchbag, all with just one click of your YES button.

I find Mr. Ojanpera's vision convincing.

Here's why.

I have never been able to use any other company's cellphone.

In the 90s, when America was being dazzled by the supposed revolution that was the Iridium satellite phone (by the look of it, it weighed more than Mary-Kate Olsen, and its ads were as tasteful as Rhubarb and Pepto-Bismol Pie), Europe was already enjoying rather cute cellphones.

I was in Europe at the time and someone wandered into my office and gave me a Nokia.

Though I am as technically inclined as a rancid raccoon, I could actually make this thing work.

I could even send text messages to people in meetings. (me: HOW'S IT GOING? reply: THE CLIENT'S GOT A FOUR-INCH HAIR HANGING OUT OF HIS NOSTRIL.)

There have been moments when, having arrived in the US, I was deceived by unscrupulous cellphone providers who foisted other brands on me.

Couldn't make them work. Even after staring at the instruction manual for days.

It got to the point where I took a malfunctioning non-Nokia back to the store.

and look how lovely Finland is.

(Credit: mdid)

The boy behind the counter, looking for all the world as if he had sniffed glue that was well past its sell-by date, said: "Oh, yeah. We've been having trouble with these. In fact, we've discontinued them."

He then was charming enough to offer to replace my phone with another.

It was exactly the same phone, but, and I want to know who invented this word, 'reconstituted'.

I canceled my service right there and trawled around various sad little stores until I could find a provider with a Nokia.

Again, I could make it work with no manual. It was just like meeting your high school lover after ten years (oh, no, wait, JC Penney says teenage sex is bad for you).

I ask about the engineers and their psyches, because there must be something in the way these engineers think and feel that is different from the engineers of other companies.

They seem to understand the functions of the human brain to a degree that at least I, for one, find uncanny.

I am aware that this post sounds like someone at Nokia has paid me.

The truth is, I keep paying them.

I have a battered, dying Nokia 9300 in my pocket and I bought it in some extremely shady store (the phone didn't even come with an instruction manual) because my last one died from over-exertion.

In this state of mindless blindness, I am therefore already convinced that Mr. Ojanpera and his engineers will succeed in their aim to bring the world to my cellphone and a cellphone to my world.

You want brand insights, naive hope and a warped view of the world? Welcome.

You want objectivity? Try the news blogs.