LEADERS ON CELL

As cell phone manufacturers continually evolve the technology, these hand-held devices don’t just stand as a means to communicate. With people going after the latest brands and designs, the basic reason for using a cell phone has been replaced by cell phone’s brand and the technology it uses.

The Nepalese communication market is prospering and as a result, one can find the latest cell phone products in the market. Mobile phones from Nokia, Samsung, LG, Apple, Blackberry, Karbonn, G-five, and Lava reigns the country’s market.

Nepal’s political development not only overthrew the King, it also turned the country in to a federal state. More than that, it also changed the type of cell phones used by the leaders into trendy ones like Apple’s iPhone and BlackBerry. Scribes caught up with political leaders to know what hand-held devices they are using to communicate.

Maoist chairman, Puspa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda), Kiran Vaidya, Prabhakar Sharma, and Gagan Thapa, youth leader of Nepali Congress (NC) uses iPhone. The cell phone stands as a good combination of a cell phone, camera, wireless, email, mobile data, digital music and video, and photo viewing. Its screen is large, clear and beautiful. Application control is intuitive, engaging and fun. It syncs with both PC and Mac e-mail, contacts and calendars. Everything is controlled with its feather touch screen. For its features many are lured at iPhone.

Prachanda, who earlier used a Nokia set started using iPhone seven months ago. Thapa doesn’t stop with iPhone, which he uses for surfing the internet on Safari. He also uses Blackberry. Compared to iPhone, Blackberry provides more battery life and good messaging product. It has push-based notification and great email functionality. Thapa shared that compared to other mobile devices, Blackberry had a professional look, brand recognition and robustness, durability, call quality.

Sushil Koirala, president of NC, rarely talks on the phone and is less conscious about new models in the market. Koirala has been using his age-old Nokia set for years and is happy with its simplicity. While Apple’s iPhone and Blackberry are expensive, Nokia, on the other hand has a range of cell phones from low to high ends and are therefore affordable and suitable to all age groups. With its consistency, Nokia is an user friendly interface. Known for its durability and standby battery life, Nokia’s mobile phones are still dear to many people.

UML senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal, Lokendra Bista,  Former Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation, and NC’s chief whip, Laxman Ghimire too have been using Nokia cell phones for the past four years. Recently, Ghimire has shifted to E71, which was launched in 2008 A.D. Ghimire feels comfortable using the business class series and is indebted to its storage capacity. Saying that his old phone is gold, Ghimire has been resisting his daughter’s advice to get a new phone.