Mobile phones (cell phones in the US) are an important part of our lives nowadays. There is a lot of specialist vocabulary related to mobile phones and it can be useful to know if you want to get a mobile phone number in an English-speaking country. I recently got a new mobile phone, so let me tell you about it. All the new vocabulary is in black. Try and guess what it means (the answers are at the bottom).
Because I’ve been away from the UK for so long, I didn’t have an active mobile phone number in this country so I decided to go out and get one this weekend. I went to the phone shop and the assistant showed me a range of handsets. Some of them were free when you signed up to certain service plans. Others you needed to pay for.
I already have a handset and I’m not sure which service provider has good coverage in my area so I chose a pre-paid service so I could see how well it worked before I signed up. A monthly contract is a waste of money is there is poor reception at my house.
I put the SIM card in my phone and turned it on. The assistant helped me add some credit and I was able to call and send text messages right away. Later in the day, I set up mobile Internet so I could check my e-mails and tweets.
I am quite happy with the service so far, so next month I might sign up for a monthly contract. It’s very convenient to pay the bill by direct debit and I won’t need to keep getting top-up vouchers.
Many service providers give away really good phones when you use their service so I might get myself an iPhone. A smartphone would be really useful for me and I could even blog using it!
- handset – mobile phone hardware
- service plan – a monthly contract that charges calls at a set rate and sometimes gives you a certain amount of free calls.
- service provider – a company that provides the connection for your mobile phone
- coverage – the area where your mobile phone can be used
- pre-paid – a service you pay for before you use it
- reception – signal strength
- text message – a message of up to 160 characters sent from a mobile phone (also called SMS)
- SIM card – the small plastic card that enables your phone to connect to the service provider
- credit – money to make calls on a pre-paid phone service
- mobile Internet – Internet on a mobile phone
- monthly contract – the contract you sign when you use a service plan
- direct debit – when money is automatically taken out of your bank account
- a top-up voucher – a ticket to add credit to your mobile phone
- smartphone – a mobile phone with many extra functions
Today’s image is by Michal Ufniak.