Your cell battery is dead. You have no change. You need to make a call.
Ah, a payphone. I hope it has that Simcard thingy Giblet was talking about.
Yes, there's the logo. Cool. I pop my battery off and remove my simcard. Picking up the receiver, I place the simcard on the reader port on the front of the phone, and a list of all my phone numbers appears on the small screen, and the name of my provider.
I select the number I want to dial, and am connected instantly via the cellphone internals of the phone, also landlubbed line connected as per regular payphones.
An SMS fee is charged to go to the leasee of the payphone, 25 cents or whatever.
When the call is complete, a hard to miss cue would remind you to grab your simcard, and the moment you do, all numbers are cleared from the temporary memory of the payphone.
You could also have 3G, EDGE, GPRS, or WAP internet stations using the same idea, assuming you have data access.-- Giblet, Jul 18 2007 [+] from me. It would be nice also if mobiles had some kind of standardized socket which would give access to the SIM without having to disembowel you phone, for applications such as this.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 18 2007 If we're standardizing things, how about a standardized charger interface? (There are quick charging stations in some airports, but for them having to juggle all the different plugs is kind of silly.)-- jutta, Jul 18 2007 Very cool.
<off topic> When my brother and I were teen-agers we used to be able to stick a needle in to the holes in the mouthpiece of a pay phone until it touched a certain piece of metal. If the pin was held against the metal of the phone rest itself until the dialed call went through we could call anywhere in the world toll free.
Ahh, the small joys of a misspent youth.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 19 2007 [Ian_Tindale] Is this a 2_Cell_Phones style solution?-- Galbinus_Caeli, Jul 19 2007 Like a great one might have said: "Just like a conventional phone, except there's two of them in this instance. A huge improvement."-- methinksnot, Jul 19 2007 [2 Fries] Just like Matthew Broderick in Wargames.
OMG Matthew?!?! Is it really you?!-- Giblet, Jul 20 2007 Missed that one.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 20 2007 random, halfbakery