How To Do Everything With Your Mobile Phone

25 things you probably thought you couldn’t do with your cell phone. 


1. Use your mobile phone as a Scanner

Simply head to Scanr to do that. Take photos of documents or business cards with your camera phone and send them to Scanr. Scanr will convert your phone photo into a digital PDF document. Scanr makes your mobile phone a digital scanner.

Qipit is an alternative service that can perform the same tasks and allows you to instantly email those converted digital documents.

2. Use your cell phone as a Fax machine

Both Scanr and Qipit can also convert your mobile phone into a fax machine. Send those digital PDFs as a fax document to their recipients.

3. Use your mobile camera as a Live Personal Streaming Service

Let’s say you are at a stadium watching a live cricket match. Show your friends how the experience is like by live streaming the match from your camera phone by using Qik.

The service allows you to share important experiences with friends and family. For example, the birth of a child with grandparents who couldn’t travel. 

Bambuser is an alternative service that allows you to live-stream from your camera phone and even chat with your viewers while broadcasting.

4. Use Voice Calling to capture notes, set reminders and send emails.

Jott Assistant is a great service, that actually acts as your personal digital assistant.

Use your voicemail to record notes, send texts and emails, set reminders of important events, post updates or listen to the news.

All you have to do is register and dial a single number provided by Jott to get these things done. The service is for US and Canada only.

5. Use your cell phone as a USB drive

Got ample space on your mobile’s memory card? Use it as an alternative to a USB drive by carrying important software setup files that you may feel the need to use anywhere.

6. Get free text reminders of important tasks

OhDontForget and TextItLater are two free services that allow you to schedule SMS reminders for the future.

Instead of forgetting important tasks, just schedule a text message and be reminded later on.

The services can alternatively be used to send free SMS to your friends or family.

7. Listen to your emails from your mobile phone

Dial2Do is an interesting service that helps you get work done by simply calling them. Now this is similar to Jott Assistant, but you can also listen to your emails dictated out to you from Dial2Do on your mobile phone.

8. Escape from a difficult situation with the help of your mobile phone 

GetMeOutOfHere is an interesting way to escape from a boring meeting or a wrong date. When stuck in one of those, simply head to this service and set up an automated call.

You can even select the fake recording you'd like to listen to when called on your mobile phone to make the escape sound completely genuine.

9. Send a phone invitation

PhoneVite is a great way to broadcast an invitation. To use the service, simply enter selected phone numbers, record a message and send it to them instantly.

10. Create free ringtones from your favourite music and send them to your mobile phone

Need the ringtone of your latest favourite song? Well, use MakeYourRingtone to convert an MP3 file of that song to a ringtone and transfer it to your mobile phone.

This can also help you save money by reducing the need to buy those expensive ringtones offered by your mobile operator.

You can even alter the sound quality and also set duration of the ringtone.

11. Instantly create a mobile website

Wirenode is a great service that helps you create a website viewable in a mobile phone.

It is free for personal use and you can publish your created website instantly.

12. Share photos instantly on all your social networks from your mobile phone

MobyPicture is a free service that allows you to instantly share a photo you clicked with your mobile camera on all your social networks or blogs.

13. Read webpages later on your phone

LaterLoop is a Google-powered service that allows you to save important articles or web pages and read them later on your mobile phone.

This makes reading portable, and you can also utilize travel time for reading.

14. Do more with voicemail

YouMail is a service that can change the way you use voicemail. You can visualize your voicemail on your phone or by email, read it and even block unwanted callers.

The service is good to go with Blackberry, iPhone or Android mobiles.

15. Send a free SMS from your mobile phone without using it’s SMS service

Let’s say you are stuck in a situation where you do not have any credit remaining on your prepaid mobile to make a call or send a text message, and urgently need to inform some friend or family member.

Luckily, your unlimited GPRS package is active and you can still contact someone. What would you do - send an email? There are chances that the person you are contacting may not be online, but you know he always carries his mobile phone with him. What can you do?

Well, simply open your mobile web browser, head to TxtDrop and send a free SMS from your GPRS service. TxtDrop allows your friends to reply to the SMS via the email address you specify when sending a text. So you can definitely communicate now.

Alternatively of course, a simple message like “Call me urgently” with your name (as this is not your mobile operator’s SMS service) would seal the deal.

16. Send a group SMS

Tatango is a service that allows you to instantly send bulk text messages to a group.

17. Don’t ever lose your phone contacts again by backing them up on your computer and the internet

We sometimes tend to lose our huge collection of mobile phone contacts. The important thing to do is to back them up on your computer, or the web.

Head to Soocial or Zyb and never lose your phone contacts ever again. These even help you do other things, like removing duplicate contacts.

18. Maintain your mobile phone online

SkyDeck is a brilliant service that helps you maintain your mobile online.

Back up contacts, create an Outlook-like inbox for your calls and search and read your text messages and even reply to them when on the internet.

19. Be alerted when driving

Trapster is a unique service that alerts you of police speed traps when driving. You can choose to use your mobile phone or navigation system to be alerted. Learn more here.

Obviously, it is never recommended to use your mobile phone while driving.

20. Mobile bookmarking

To bookmark a webpage while browsing on a mobile device, simply use mobilicio.us bookmarking service.

21. Get informed of website updates

Pingie is a service that instantly alerts you via text messages when a website is updated.

Simply head to the website, specify your details and the page you’d like to be informed of and you are good to go.

22. Subscribe to Free SMS services instead of paying money for them

Save money by withdrawing your paid subscriptions to Word-of-the-Day, live cricket scores or horoscopes if you are in India.

Use Google SMS Channels to find many free services, subscribe by providing your mobile number and get text updates absolutely free of cost.

23. Test drive mobile phones before buying them

TryPhone is a service that allows you to interactively test mobile phones before you go on to purchase them.

They have got virtualizations of various models for you to ‘test drive’.

24. Chat from your mobile phone

Download a mobile chat client like EBuddy Mobile Messenger or Fring to instantly chat with your friends on Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo or other services from your mobile phones.

25. Get phone call alerts from the internet

WakerUpper is a great service that allows you to schedule phone calls to yourself, which act as reminders. Read more in our full post on this service.