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Mobile Email Versus SMS
By Monika Mehra

Are mobile emails gaining precedence over text messages?

Mobile Emails are quickly becoming an entrenched part of the modern lifestyle. Earlier emailing was limited to the P.C only .For accessing your emails you had to depend on a computer system. Thus, for immediate messaging SMS (Short messaging service) gained popularity. SMS is used to send short messages. And the best part of SMS is its incredible speed and is built into every mobile device without exception.

The research done in this field in the past 2 years reveals that there has been a steady decline in the use of SMS. The GSM operators have witnessed close to 9% drop in outgoing SMS since the past quarter. This decline in usage could perhaps be linked to revision in SMS tariffs by several GSM service providers and the easy availability of free mobile emails on the basic mobile hand set allowing users to read, reply, compose, forward, sent and delete emails from their mobile phone, the question that tosses our mind is "Are text messages slowly losing their flavor with growing cellular base?"

The allure of email has transcended both the fixed and wireless worlds. SMS is simply wireless, and more limited than email.I think the big difference between SMS and email is the amount and the size of the text message one can send. Where SMS is often used for personal short messages with the size of the text not exceeding 160 characters per message, email service can be utilized for sending from a short to a long descriptive email, with attachment of your pictures, sound, text/doc/pdf file.

Although viewing of attachments is not supported by many of our ordinary handsets but the rapid advancement in mobile technology has brought such email solutions to our door step which provides free email access on our ordinary mobile phones and that too with attachments.

I recently came to know about certain mobile email solution providing free access to email on an ordinary GPRS compatible mobile handset along with attachments which not only included text and document files but image files too. Moreover you can use your existing mobile phone with a WAP 1.2 & above browser, to wirelessly access your e-mail box as well as register for new email ID through your basic mobile phone .

I personally feel "Email is like placing a letter in the mail box. You can open it whenever you feel like whereas SMS is like tapping on the shoulder and forcefully giving a message in the hand." The biggest drawback of Text message is that it occupies a major part of your phone memory stuffing it with unwanted text messages, out of which, very few are really important.

On the other hand, the best part about mobile email is that your phone memory is absolutely free and unaffected from unnecessary storage of messages, as the emails along with the attachments do not get stored in your phone memory .You only get a mobile view of them. Your emails remain in your mail box at the server. Whenever you want to access your email on your mobile phone you simply have to point your mobile browser to the URL like wap.emailatmobile.com, enter your email-ID & password and your mails are pulled from the mail server to your mobile phone.

Above all, for accessing your emails on mobile, you are not dependent on your personal mobile phone You can easily access your emails from any mobile phone that is capable of internet browsing. But SMS binds you to your hand set. If you loose your hand set your entire information is lost but with mobile email as nothing is stored on your hand set your information is absolutely secured.

Apparently SMS seems to be cheaper and popular as all the mobile phones have this capability but with Tariffs of major service providers' going up has actually made it an expensive affair. But for accessing emails on mobile one need to pay the basic charges applicable for browsing net on the phone and that provides you with a hoard of other facilities besides emails.

I feel over the coming years emails on mobile will become increasingly popular with million of business and individual users with access to wireless email in the world. The increasing availability of wireless email support would definitely take over SMS in the near future.

Monika Mehra is a lecturer in English at G.C.W College, Punjab.
She is in the field of teaching and education for the past 7 years.
She is a patron of Mobile Email and has greatly benefited from it which she would like to share with her readers.


Article Source: EzineArticles