NO VIRGIN: So you think you're a smart mobile phone user? Don't look now, but your carrier or service provider might be smarter.

Lured by an offer of a gift phone if I signed up for another two years, I went to my carrier and got me a free Nokia celfon. As everything in the box looked factory-fresh, I assumed that even the shiny phone inside, still in plastic wrap, was new.

After about five days of occasional use (it has only five names in its contacts list), out of curiosity I thought of checking its life-timer. This is a built-in meter that logs the gadget's talking time. If the phone were a car, the meter gave its mileage.

I nearly dropped the phone when its life-timer revealed that my supposedly new and rarely used gadget was no virgin when I got it but a veteran that had logged 6,604 minutes of talk time!

* * *

LIFE-TIMER: I went running to the carrier's office at SM City North. Nobody, not even the manager/supervisor who refused to leave her inner sanctum to talk to me, could explain the anomaly.

In fact, they did not even know how to access the life-timer. I had to show them how, and when they still could not get it right, I wrote the code on a piece of paper.

They asked me to file a request for a replacement phone. They were supposed to make it easier for customers so I suggested that they wrote the letter themselves and I would just sign it. That was done.

I wonder what surprises lie in wait. The thought bothers me: Do smart carriers pass on refurbished free phones to unsuspecting customers?

* * *

WARRANTY: Many users know this already, but let us share trivia with the rest, especially loyalists of Nokia which is the most popular brand in this texting capital of the world.

To access the hidden life-timer of your Nokia, type on the main menu *#92702689# (this is actually *#WAR0ANTY# with the second “R” replaced by a space (0). On some celfons, type a straight *#WARRANTY#.

The display then comes on with the phone's serial number, the month and year of its manufacture, the month and year it was bought, the date of its last repair, and the LIFE-TIMER that indicates the talk time logged so far.

* * *

CHECK FIRST: When buying a new celfon, it might be a good idea to install the battery and check first its life-timer. It should register “0000:00” to show that nobody has used the phone.

But cannot vendors reset it to zero the way secondhand car salesmen turn back a vehicle's mileage? (I was told this cannot be done with celfons, but I would not be surprised if there are some Filipinos who can do it.)

Nobody, not even Nokia after-sales people, could tell me definitely the unit used in the “0000:00” readout. Do the numbers represent days, miles, pesos, hours, minutes, seconds, or what?

I checked my other phones and compared their life-timer reports with their respective call log [Menu>Log>Call Duration>All Calls]. I found that the “all calls” report tallies with the “life-timer.” My conclusion: The numbers or units used are in hours:minutes:seconds.

That means that before I got my new celfon, it had been used (“6604:10”) to make calls running to 6,604 minutes and 10 seconds or a staggering 110 hours? Ano ba yan?!

* * *

MORE TRIVIA: More useful celfon trivia:

You do not have to open up your celfon to get its IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity). Just type *#06# on the main screen and it will come out.

The long IMEI number consists of: the first six digits, type approval code; next two digits, final assembly code; next six digits, serial number of the phone; and the last digit which is a spare.

To restore its factory settings, type *#7780#. To check software revision made, type *#0000# on the phone's main screen. I was told that software revision may revert the life-timer to zero, but I have not tried doing this.

I once downloaded from the Nokia website an SMS accelerator software and installed it in my N80 phone that was working slower than desired. The new software sped up its handling of text messages.

* * *

POLL SYSTEM: On complaints of local IT (information technology) firms, a reader who did not identify himself pointed out that RA 9369 on poll automation requires a successful track record of bidders for the supply of a computerized election system.

That being so, he said, the Commission on Elections has no choice but to include that provision in the Terms of Reference for the supply of hardware, software and services for the Aug. 11 election in the Autonomous Region of Muslin Mindanao.

(Why cannot this reader step forward -- like engineer Rodolfo Lozada Jr. in the National Broadband Network deal -- and publicly say his piece instead of lurking anonymously in the background?)

Some local IT firms have complained that the ToR favored foreign suppliers when it required that the voting and counting system of a bidder “should have already been successfully used and proved secure, accurate and reliable in an actual public political election where it was last used, with a written certification to that fact from the election authority of the client county/state/province.”

There are no locally developed systems that had been used successfully in a national election here or abroad.

* * *