Can Mobile Phones Think?

Nokia has introduced a little app called Nokia Situations, which essentially transforms the phone based on the situation you are in. As the company described it on the Nokia Beta Apps blog, it is an experimental application which users can “use to define how you want your phone to behave in different situations, like ‘In a meeting,’ ‘Sleeping,’ or ‘Playing with the kids.’”  With the application running in the background, the device “automatically senses the situation you are in (e.g. based on time, day, location, available networks) and adapts to it according to your preferences.”
With this app you can do the following:

Change Ringtones, make the phone go silent or louder, turn vibrate on/off, and all the other profile settings.
Answer missed calls with SMS. Especially when you set your phone to silent, you can also make it reply to missed calls, from contacts in your phonebook, with a pre-defined SMS.
Save Power. Not using phone for a while, like when sleeping? Turn Bluetooth on/off or let your phone change to power-saving mode totally.
Change UI theme / Wallpaper. Want to make the phone look different in different situations? Change the Theme during free time vs. when you are at work.
Open a Web bookmark or application. Want to see weather forecast for the day when you wake up? Look at the calendar as first thing? Or open your favorite TV show discussion page at show time? Or perhaps change the Device Mode when at work? (Nokia Beta Labs)

 But this application represents context awareness, which becomes part of the core Nokia experience. Some of Nokia’s other recent applications, such as Nokia Feel and Nokia Bots, all point to a more personal mobile experience and that is what they should use to their advantage.
This kind of context awareness is going to become a big deal in the future, mostly because we are entering a world of infinite app options. As the numbers of applications starts to go up on our phones, context awareness could help solve the app-discovery dilemma as well. Most importantly, context awareness would essentially be key to us experiencing the Internet in a more meaningful way on our handsets.