Looking for a large mobile phone?

[Mark Boulton]

Just to continue with what I was saying about o²'s mobile advert and how they were mixing up 'square centimetres' and 'centimetres, squared', I prepared a little tip sheet which will explain to those who can't get their heads around this very simple mathematical precept.

http://boulton.moonfruit.com

While we're at it, it is worth knowing that numbers beginning with 7 have already started to be used in Outer London, and some numbers beginning with 8 in Central London, because they became unused and available. Therefore, the 7 and 8 in (020) 7 and (020) 8 is NO LONGER a cast-iron indication of whether a number is Inner or Outer. As these numbers spread, they won't hold that distinction at all. Therefore, (020) should be, as it always should have been, considered the SINGLE London area code.

One day, numbers in the range (020) 6 will start to be used - so what then? Will the '0207/0208' protagonists start inventing a completely made-up '0206' area?!

[MrTomServo]

1471 does the equivalent of your *69, there are loads of others which tend to vary between companies here.

Ah, there's one I forgot, but hardly use. Mostly because the magic of caller ID on mobiles makes it essentially obsolete. And, at home, since I have no star key, it makes it pretty useless.

And it costs money! Tsk! The cheek.

[MarkN]

Just to continue with what I was saying about o²'s mobile advert and how they were mixing up 'square centimetres' and 'centimetres, squared', I prepared a little tip sheet which will explain to those who can't get their heads around this very simple mathematical precept.

http://boulton.moonfruit.com

Mr Boulton, please excuse my ignorance (Mathematics is not a strong point of mine - especially when I have a cold!), but will you please tell me whether the BBC's method of working out the area of a rectangle is correct?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/education ... rev2.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks3bitesiz ... r1_1.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesi ... rev3.shtml

Unfortunately, I seem to be having some difficulty. For some strange reason, the BBC seems to be using the cm^2 unit to describe square centimetres. Surely, according to your helpful "tip-sheet", this is wrong!

Thinking that a little more research would help me find the correct answer, I went to the official website of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, since I know that it is they who are behind the Système International (SI) unit system. However, they confused me even more!

http://www1.bipm.org/en/si/derived_units/2-2-1.html

They say that the m^2 unit means "square metre", yet you say that "square centimetres" are not cm^2!!!

I hope that you are able to clarify this for me.

Thank you.

[SteveL]

Just to continue with what I was saying about o²'s mobile advert and how they were mixing up 'square centimetres' and 'centimetres, squared', I prepared a little tip sheet which will explain to those who can't get their heads around this very simple mathematical precept.

Thanks for the site, very informative. Just a small note, however, surely since the O2 brand name that BT's cellular network uses means 'oxygen', your site should actually use a subscript 2 [2] rather than a superscript 2 [²] to denote the oxygen-oxygen covalent bond?

[dvboy]

1471 does the equivalent of your *69, there are loads of others which tend to vary between companies here.

Ah, there's one I forgot, but hardly use. Mostly because the magic of caller ID on mobiles makes it essentially obsolete. And, at home, since I have no star key, it makes it pretty useless.

And it costs money! Tsk! The cheek.

Ahh, see it's free here, though you can pay for advance features like if you want to hear more than just the last one number that called. You can also press 3 to call the number straight back, at the standard rate.

Basic voicemail is free on most residential lines too. If you want it you just ring up and activate it.

[Ed Hammond]

Yes, I used 1571 in my old flat, and jolly useful it was too. Much better than the previous horror of fiddling with an answering machine, where inevitably the tape would run out halfway through an important message, because I always forgot to delete anything.

I used to use a British Telecom Tribune as well, and before that in my house we had a Trimphone or Trimline or whatever they were called. Excellent murder weapons, those old phones. You couldn't bash someone over the head with one of these new ones, it'd fall apart.

[Marcus]

Just to continue with what I was saying about o²'s mobile advert and how they were mixing up 'square centimetres' and 'centimetres, squared', I prepared a little tip sheet which will explain to those who can't get their heads around this very simple mathematical precept.

http://boulton.moonfruit.com

Err no not quite right.

13 cm² is exactly the same as 13 square centimeters

It does not mean 13 cm squared, that would be written (13cm)² which is equal to 169 cm²

The power of 2 relates just to the unit not to the number.

for example

1 square meter= 1 m² = (100cm)²=10,000 cm²= 10,000 Square Centimeters

[cdd]

How does it cope with 'Press 1 for this, press 2 for that....' type situations?

Usually, I try to use a different phone for these. But I did pick up a tone generator thingamajig from a car boot sale for £2 - so I can handle these situations when I want to.

You weren't thinking, perchance, of emulating the special operator C5 tones (which are capable of forcing calls through the US, UK (and various other) phone systems for free)?

[Andrew Wood]

I prepared a little tip sheet which will explain to those who can't get their heads around this very simple mathematical precept.
http://boulton.moonfruit.com

Oh dear, you are just so wrong! Go on, admit it!

[James Hatts]

London Today has just reported that numbers in the 020 3xxx xxxx series will be used from next year.

Sadly London Today reported this as a "new phone code for London, 0203"

Grrr.

[James Hatts]

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/lond ... s/11920157

Even the Evening Standard has got it wrong:

London is to get a third telephone code. From next summer the prefix 0203 will be brought in alongside 0207 and 0208.

It's not until the tenth paragraph that it says:

A spokesman for Ofcom said: "Our message is, there's no need to panic because nothing is really changing. The code for London is actually 020 and the seven, eight and three are simply sub-codes."