April 25, 2008 at 12:02 am · Authored by Ewan · Filed under Mobile

You MUST play this trick on your Apple iPhone friends.

I saw it happen almost live this evening. Whatleydude, (”James Whatley, SMS Text News contributor”), was behind it. I’m not sure if it was his idea, but it was priceless to see the reality.

We were with a global mobile operator representative. A fixer. Let’s call him Daniel. Daniel is the go-to-guy for this global operator. If you wanted to discuss a deal with this operator, it would be Daniel you speak to. He can arrange and facilitate. Whenever I meet him, he’s filled with insight and brilliant perspective.

Here’s what the text thread looked like (I’m paraphrasing from memory, I should have snapped a picture of it):

Daniel: Hi James are you there already?

James: Sorry mate, all I got back from you was ‘jjjhhjjjkk’ jibberish in that message?

Daniel: Are you there already?

James; Sorry, all I’m getting from you is ‘kjlkjsjah’ jibberish?

In the end Daniel actually phoned James. Whilst sending these texts, James was in fits of geeky laughter, because Daniel — global mobile nomad and big iPhone admirer — was thinking his iPhone was faulty. Why? Well, the keyboard on the iPhone is misleading. Often you’ll knock out ‘jjjhkjklh’ only for it to magically spell ‘welcome’ — it usually works it out in the end. Very smart. James led Daniel into thinking his iPhone was sending out screwed-up text messages. Heh.

Hilarious. In a really, er, sad, geeky way. I laughed. A lot.

What does that say about me? We move on.