Making your mobile truly yours

Mobile phones are mass-produced. You can be sure that thousands of other people will have a phone identical to yours. However, a mobile soon becomes part of your life: after all, you take it more or less everywhere you go.

Change the cover

As a result, it is little wonder that customising mobile phones is popular. You can, of course, buy replaceable covers for several models of mobile phones (the makers see this as a way to sell to existing users as well as a way to make their handsets appeal to a wider audience).

Change the casing

It doesn't stop there, though. You can replace the casings of other models of phone, not designed to have clip-on fronts. This may only involve using a Torx size 6 screwdriver (from an electronics components dealer) and some care, but of course would invalidate the handset's warranty.

Change the lighting

Some people go further, and fit different LEDs inside the casing so that it lights up in a different colour (this is not for you if you value the warranty!)

Turn into a flasher

There are replacement antennas that light up when the phone is ringing and during a call, and versions that use a small laser pointer to beam an image. Of course, these use power from the handset's transmitter, and can seriously impair its performance as a phone - but that's not important to some people! There is some worry about these antennas also causing interference because of poor matching with the transmitter, and non-linear impedance matching. In general, they're not really a Good Idea.

Customisation with utility!

Some customisation has a real use, however. Choose (or compose) a custom ring tone, and you can hear that it is your phone that is ringing. Assign a ring tone to a particular group of entries in your phonebook, and you know who is calling without looking.

Some handsets let you create or import custom graphics to use as the startup image, the Operator logo (the picture representing the network logo) or to display when particular people are calling you.

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