'Phone trainers'

UK mobile phone operator Orange is running a series of TV ads to tell us about 'phone trainers'. No, you don't wear these on your feet: 'phone trainers' are people in stores who show you how to use your phone. Yes, phones are now so complicated and full of useless functions - well Motorola and Panasonic mobile phones have been pretty complex since day one - that Orange has found most users hardly touching 10% of phone functionality.

This reminds me of the Motorola exhibition in London earlier this year: early models of mobiles were backed by a marketing campaign that included educational videos, demonstrating to wealthy new phone owners how to perform basic tasks such as opening their phone or switching it on.

The reasoning behind the current Orange campaign is that if we're not using our existing phones to their full glorious extent, how on earth can they hope to sell us all-singing, all-dancing new generation phones? I have the tincy wincy suspicion that 3G - in the short term, at least - will go the way of all WAP.