Short Message Service or SMS as it is more commonly referred to represents text messages with few words sent through mobile phones. The inventor of the SMS service, Friedhelm Hillebrand found out that random sentences used about 160 characters. He then got a brainwave to use an unused portion of the mobile network to send 160 characters as text messages. In the beginning this service was not hugely successful as people just did not want to use it, that is until some teenagers got the hang of it. SMS then became the fad among teenagers. It was cheap, easy to use , quick and could be used anywhere. I really do wonder if the multi-tasking concept caught on from messaging. You can see teenagers eating, working, playing or just about doing anything with the cell phone on one hand and messages being sent at lightning speed. In fact when they really get used to it they do not have to even look down at the keys. So there came the sudden popularity of SMS and the developers started working to enhance the concept. The 160 character limit was no longer enough and so the developers stringed together messages.They also came up with the emoticon concept to express feelings in a graphical way. With developers working to enhance messaging, the teenagers side by side developed the SMS language. The language tried to minimize the number of characters used by converting word like “you” to “u” and “great” to “gr8″. A number of acronyms came about like LOL (Laugh out Loud), ROFL (Roll on Floor Laughing), BRB (Be right back) and many more. This SMS language has become so prevalent that it is being used in normal conversation. For all this, SMS has its disadvantages. Misunderstandings can arise a lot as people find it difficult to understand what tone the sender is using and SMS can never beat a phone conversation anyday. But all said and done Kudos to Friedhelm Hillebrand for this great mini messaging service.

Korean major LG’s `Ice Cream’ phone has come to India. The company has announced the launch of its latest clamshell handset, KF350, also known as the `Ice Cream’ phone, in India.

LG KF350 is targeted at the fairer sex and has been launched to mark the International Women’s Day (falling on March 8).

KF350 has a 2.2-inch QVGA, TFT display capable of displaying 262K colors. It also comes with an external LED Matrix display that can display the time and other notifications.

The mobile phone’s other features include a 3 megapixel camera, QVGA video recording, FM Radio and a full-fledged music player. There’s 25MB of internal memory that can be increased to 2GB using a microSD card. Connectivity options include WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML browser, Bluetooth and microUSB. EDGE over GPRS is also supported.

The 800 mAH battery phone supports a 5-hour talk time and a standby time of up to 350 hours.

Priced at Rs 7,949, LG KF350 is available in White-rosy, Blue and Pistachio colors.