How to do More with your Cell Phone

Everyone knows you can make calls and send messages with your cell phone, but have you thought of using it as a flashlight or making your life easier by using it to unlock your car.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Cell Phone

1. Have you locked your keys in the car? Does your car have remote keys? If so, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away,and if you can reach someone who has the other "remote" for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).
2. It's evening, you drop your keys in a parking lot and there is no light or you are trying read directions to your friends house, what do you do? Use the flash on your camera phone to light things up. Look for a setting on your flash menu that will allow your flash to remain on until you turn it off or try using the flash on your camcorder option.
3. The emergency number worldwide for mobile networks is 112.
   
   If you find yourself out of coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked.
4. Are you musically creative? Have you written a song? Turn your song into a ring tone.
5. Imagine your cell battery is very low, and you are expecting an important call, and you don't have a charger. Nokia phones come with a reserve battery. To activate, press the keys *3370#. Your cell will restart with this reserve and the phone will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell next time.
6. Do you want to take a nap in your car during lunch? Use your cell phone alarm feature to wake you up.
7. Instead of using your carrier's messaging service, use your Bluetooth to transfer photos and other files from your phone to another Bluetooth phone.
8. Doing some comparable shopping or got into a fender bender. Use your cell phone to record everything. Don't just take a photo of the item but take a photo of the items description. Don't just take a pic of the dent, but take a picture of the street sign and tire tracks or license plates.
9. By texting simple queries to Googl 46645 (or "Google" on most devices), you can find the closest restaurant or theaters. Then just text the name of the restaurant to get the address and phone number.
   
   For example, if you want to look up the phone number of a pizza joint to place a take-out order, text-message the name of the business and its city and state to GOOGL, and a minute or so later, Google will send you a text message back with the full restaurant name, and street address and phone number. To save time, enter the zip code instead of the city and state.
   
   To look for more-general information, text something like pizza 94618 to receive the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all the pizzerias in that area.
10. Instead of pricey 411 use a free alternative: 1-800-FREE-411.
    
    Just like the name implies, a quick call to the number puts you through to an automated voice-recognition program that asks for the city, state, and name of your listing. The catch is that before the service gives you the number, you have to listen to a short ad.
11. Parking at the mall can be confusing so use the voice record feature on your phone to record where you are parked. Did you just realized you need to pick up milk on the way home from work. Record it on your phone and then set the alarm to remind you to play the message back before you get home.
12. You can text Google for all sorts of conversions, too. For example, if you want to convert pounds to kilograms, or liters to quarts, or even find out the number of miles in a light-year, text GOOGL and enter 2 liters in quarts. You'll receive a text back with the answer faster than you can say '2.1133764188651876'. To convert foreign currency at the current exchange rate, text: $100 in euros (the three-letter abbreviation for different currencies also works, such as 100 usd in eur).
13. In the event that your phone may get stolen find the mobile phone's serial number, which is a number unique to every GSM and UMTS mobile phone. It is usually found printed on or underneath the phone's battery.
    
    This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. Then, if your phone does get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody did this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.
14. You can use your cell phone for Skype, a phone service that uses the Internet to make calls. So, why Skype when you can call the same person on the cell phone? You don't use up minutes. You will, however, need to subscribe to a data plan. Skype is free to download, and until the end of the year, it's free to call any U.S. phone number. U.S. calls revert back to a few cents per minute beginning in January.
15. Lusting after the iPhone but don't have the money? Then, download nuTsie and you'll be able to listen to your iTunes library anywhere, no PC required. After you sign up online, nuTsie mirrors your music collection on its servers and streams your tracks to your cell phone.