Addressing the vernacular language in the mobile world

How do you address a customer who does not read English well?

With a constant reduction in the production cost of mobile phones, the price to customer also sees a constant drop.

How does one address or communicate with the customer who does not understand English well. The answer is simple, delivery is still being challenged/ implemented. Communicating a single word is not difficult. The challenge lies in phrases or sentences. Also the script is not available across Indian regional languages.

To communicate to the customer who would understand the vernacular only, wap and sites have to follow the following process -

Translate
Get the meaning across with the correct placement of the subject, object and verb.

Transliteration
Now used the correct script to represent the phrase.

Most of the mobile phones are not able to recognise every vernacular language there is. The only way to represent vernacular information is by showing images to the customer.

Some useful vernacular tools online -
Google translate
Very useful if you want to translate text from English to some of the key vernacular languages.

Quillpad
Very useful tool if you want to use phonics to type in a regional language.

Use these above methods to communicate with your internet audience. Even customers who do not know how to read and comprehend English.

OEM Application bundling

OEM Application bundling should have options -

The customer should be given the choice either to take a mobile phone with the bare minimum mobile phone operating system, or packed with the applications designed by the OEM for the specific model.

Why?

Well the applications bundled in a phone, only clutter the device memory. And sometimes also leaves the customer with unwanted applications eating phone RAM. When a customer visits the store to procure a device, he/she should be given the option to buy a phone with VAS apps & without VAS apps.

Who will benefit?

The customer

How does this effect OEM?

The OEM does not get to place applications the customer may not otherwise download.

Have been testing android since 1.5, where you had the bare minimum hardware specifications. Today processor giants like qualcomm are even ready to make 2.5Ghz processors for an android phone.

It is strange and crazy how the operating system and hardware specifications keep chasing each other. Either you have hardware which is being wasted, or you have software that is beyond your hardware. Like the perfect mix of hot water and cold water to give you the perfect bathing mix.

Thank you to google for finding a way to get talent across the globe deliver to the mass customer requirement. Thank you for this ever growing application pool.

So How does one solve this OEM application mess -

Root your device and install and OS which does not have bundled applications. How do we do this, refer to xda-developers.com. This team is constantly working on new devices and modded Operating systems for the same.

Email Access from the Mobile Phone

Email access from the Mobile Phone

Blackberry was the first OS to seamlessly provide email access to the mobile phone. But ever since BES and EAS email access technologies, Even the most common Nokia/ Samsung and other phones allow a customer to configure and access email from the phone.

Whether you have a public email account with gmail or your own company email account, configuring the same on the mobile phone today is easy. You would need or some basic information from the administrator in your company before getting the same setup.

Android and IOS are working towards automatic email configuration once you mentioned the email address and put in the password while configuring the same on the mobile phone. Even if the automatic email configuration does not happen, to configure email manually, all you would need is the following -

Email Box - POP3/ Exchange/ IMAP4

Server Name - This is provided by the administrator.

User ID - The user ID.

Password - The password.

Email synchronization earlier use to happen on a scheduled download, however, now with the capability of push email service

Phone WIFI HOTSPOT reduce costs

USE Mobile WIFI Hotspot function & reduce costs

Most of us use mobile phones to access data, and a separate data dongle to also access data from the laptop. We may reduce costs incurred monthly by having one data pack option and use the same data option for connectivity to the internet via the mobile phone and the laptop.

A 3G user most definitely will benefit from having a large data balance, he/ she could use on the phone as well as his/her laptop while on the move.

Argument here is reliability of connection. Well both dongles & phones work on the same pipeline of the operator.

So how does one get this done?

Most of the smartphones today Android/ Blackberry/ IOS(apple)/ Symbian have wi-fi internet sharing capabilities. This is either embedded as a function in the phone like it is in Android and IOS(apple) or you may download an application to add the function. Like for Symbian you may download a software called JoikuSpot from http://www.joiku.com/ and give your mobile phone the wi-fi internet sharing function.

A separate 3G dongle and a separate mobile phone data connection is a waste of resource.

Share your mobile phone internet connection today either use wi-fi or use bluetooth from the phone, but reduce wastage.