My Magic Wand: Sony Ericsson W880i August 26, 2007

Monsieur Rajeem is seated in the ominously large black leather chair. The tips of his crickly fingers form a caged dome and the corners of his mouth are upturned in anticipation, the expected joy hanging in dark glooping shadows in the crevices of his laughter lines. One eye hovers still over my fingers gently tapping the keyboard, and the other eye keenly observes my subject.

Your expensive little toys, Toobaa! Facilitating communication, are you? Whatever for? Saturated! Tell me the weight of words now? Haha! —Monsieur Rajeem

I take the subject and stand it up in the centre of the desk so as to observe it completely. Only 9.5mm thick, it trembles and begs to lay itself down, pointing at Monsieur Rajeem, so I’ve propped it up against the wall. The stork brought the subject in, my magic wand, at only 71grams. I decided to get to grips with it and see what it was really capable of, other than being an aspiration to size zero-ness. Monsieur Rajeem, you will poke yourself in the eye when you realise the good my wand can do.

The Sony Ericsson W880i is an upgraded downgrade from my previous W800i in that it is a veh hot music phone with no radio! No. Radio. This means I have to go to greater lengths to get my dose of LBC’s giggle-fit inducing Iain Lee [97.3 FM]. Also, the camera has no flash, hence the phone can never morph into a torch and cannot flash SOS signals, either. Hmph.

However, my wand has impressed me greatly on several other counts. This is, of course, partly thanks to the 3 contract that I happily committed to. At just £20 per month I get a generous helping of 500 minutes, any network any time, with a sprinkling of 100 texts, on a toasty base of FREE for life Windows Live Messenger and Ebay.

Amongst other wonderful perks, there is also a little something called TrackID. Its ability to recognise music is not limited to chart music, or even just ‘English’ music. I tested it out. Its sampling time is quick. And it’s free, majaanan, muft. You just point your wand in the direction of the music and hit START. To my unprecedented elation, it successfully identified the following, listed in levels of deliberate obscurity:

• 1) Raba-Raba by Cheb Khaled from the album Kenza. This is an Algerian masterpiece, previously known as Track 6 for a frustratingly long time. Blobby, take note.

• 2) Duur by Strings. This is a reasonably old Pakistani classic.

• 3) Supplication by Sami Yusuf from the album Al-Mu’allim. It even recognises anasheed*!

Harry II will be pulling and stretching his chewing gum between his fingers and his mouth, wondering if I can now identify the bits of uninterrupted soundtrack in Saira Khan’s Pakistan Adventure documentary. Yes. Yes, I can.

So what else can our wands do for us in time for Ramadan? Monsieur Rajeem, you may want to exercise that poking finger of yours. Courtesy of the generous Tigerlily Digital, we can digitally take Islam anywhere. It’s free to download a complete version of The Noble Qur’an in English, or chapters 90-114 with audio, The 99 Names of Allah or A Collection of Simple Duas directly to your mobile phones. OH! And also Ayat ul-Kursi with translation and audio. Click, Click, Click!

Oh. —Monsieur Rajeem

So get your wands stocked up with these dhikr** bursts in time for Ramadan, Noddies! Monsieur Rajeem will poke his own beady eye every time you do. And keep one anti-anti-Christ eye on this space. There are new bundles of joy on the way from Tigerlily, too.

* Nashid pl. Anasheed, song; hymn, anthem.

** Dhikr, remembrance; invocation of God.