Hello! Phones are pretty useless once you get out of the stage of doing random street deals, i personally used one again for the first time today after probably over a year and it got me thinking. I have a few ideas that could make phones more usable.
1. A voice mail system. If your phone call doesn't get answered of connected, allow for a short message to be sent. These can be seen by the person your attempting to call when they next log on, giving them your number and your message.
2. Landlines. This ties in with the first idea a little. Allow business to have a landline phone within their property. They will be able to publicly advertise this number to allow for example, reservations of tables as restaurants, placing orders for firearms at gun stores and stock checks at clothing stores.
3. This idea is a little ambitious but a sim system. Allow users to purchase sim cards to get new numbers instead of buying a whole new phone each time. This can be a physical item that can be swapped in and out of phones. This could allow for more in-depth detective role play if a phone was used in the commission of a crime. ( Also, as a little side idea to make phones more realistic, make some sims more expensive to allow more calls, while this may be seen as annoying i think it could make the role play experience a little more fun, E.G, you run out of calls for the day and need to either pay for more or take the risk of attempting to approach either someone you know or someone on the streets.
Let me know your thoughts on these! God bless.