Interesting Facts

Paul Donovan called BT at 7.57pm on Saturday, August 1, to cancel his broadband package. He was put on hold with a pre-recorded message saying the 'lines were busy', a female voice then asked him to hold until one of their operators was free, he waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually, he went to bed, but he didn't disconnect and left his phone on charge. (When he got up on Sunday morning, he was still on hold - 14 hours and 31 minutes later, which is believed to be a UK record, but it's not a world record. That honour goes to Australian Andrew Kahn, who called Qantas Airways to confirm his flight from Adelaide, Australia, to New York City. He phoned the airline at 7:22 on a Wednesday evening and finally hung up at 11:01 Thursday morning. During his wait, he surfed the Internet, slept briefly and caught up on some reading, for 15 hours, 40 minutes and one second. How long would it take you to finally hang up? ) Source

According to a survey conducted by Tecmark, the average Brit checks his/her smartphone around 200 times a day. (The average smartphone user spends about 3 hours and 16 minutes every day on their phone, which amounts to about a full day a week. 4 in 10 of those surveyed admitted to feeling “lost” without their phone. I guess that is true, especially if they use a navigation app.)

According to German security expert, Karten Nohl, an eighth of all SIM cards used in mobile phones around the world are at risk of fraud, theft, or being bugged. (Once infected, hackers can remotely access the phone and send premium rate text messages, steal money and personal information, record calls, bug owners to track their location, and other naughty things. They'll be lucky to find my phone switched on.) Source

At Christmas ever popular on Santa's wish list are electronic gadgets. Even for children. According to a survey conducted by the Gadget Show live, the first gadget a child gets is probably a games console, by the age of seven years and seven months. (The last they receive is likely to be a mobile – with which they will be texting their friends by the time they are nine years and three months. In between, they will get their first digital camera at eight years six months, a TV in their bedroom two months later and an MP3 player at eight years and nine months. They’ll flip open their first laptop at eight years and ten months. At an even younger age we give them toy replicas of these gadgets, even working examples, aimed at children.  The future is going to be very interesting as our digital age generation comes of age.)

According to billmonitor.com, mobile phone bills in the UK are, on average, £439 a year. (The largest monthly bill in 2011 was £1,700! I wonder what kind of phone numbers they were calling.) 

According to research from mobile network O2, smartphones are hardly ever used to make a phone call. (Most people use their smartphone for surfing the web, checking social networks or playing games. The research found that the average smartphone owner spends more than two hours each day using the device. Here's a breakdown of what they use it for. Browsing the internet - 25 minutes  Social networking - 17 minutes Playing games - 13 minutes  Listening to music - 16 minutes Making phone calls - 11 minutes Text messaging - 10 minutes Taking photographs - 3 minutes Even though people only spend three minutes a day taking photographs, photography was the most popular thing to use a smartphone for, 74 per cent said that they had taken photos with their handset. For me all the above is true apart from playing games and texting. I have never played a game on my Motorola Droid, and I send about 10 texts a year. In fact my smartphone gets about 30 minutes use a day, I prefer...

In the UK you can dial the emergency services with 112 as well as 999. (Of course, when questioned, no one in Britain knew this, but it is the European emergency number, so it makes sense.)