Are Smart Phones Really That Smart?

Phones have always been a very useful and key part of our lives. There's no better way to reach someone than by calling them, whether it be through a landline, or a mobile phone. But when one really looks at the development of smartphones, one has to ask have phone companies gone too far with smartphones and what they can do?

Sure, a smart phone is a fashionable item. Rather than using buttons, swiping the screen to navigate through the phone is a clever form of technology. Secondly, GPS and Wifi signals are fantastic on most smart phones, allowing a much wider range of communication methods compared to most regular phones (i.e. connecting to the internet etc). But the many games, apps and tools developed for the phone aren't particularly useful, and in a lot of cases, they are totally useless.

When paying for a phone, the first thing you expect is a device which can help you communicate via texts and calls. But smartphones offer such a vast array of options that the battery consumption goes so fast.

The owner must charge their phone fully once, sometimes twice a day to benefit from its capabilities. For example, if one were to make an international conference call using their phone, because of the data used between the callers, the battery life would be seriously depleted (and that isn't taking into account video calling, loudspeaker etc).

Smart phones aren't cheap either. With phone companies recently opening twenty-four month contracts with customers, people can pay £30 a month, which means a cost of £720 altogether. If smartphones were to be bought outright, the cost would be into the hundreds - and that is without a contract added on. Smartphones are for people who like their gadgets, have money to spend, and who also have a lot of time and patience.

The phones take getting used to, what with hundreds of apps to download onto the phone, not to mention the general capabilities (such as qwerty texting, swipe control, and video calling). However, most good smart phones come free with cameras ready equipped. This usually includes video cameras, allowing not only pictures to be taken, but homemade videos as well.

The cameras vary, but for example, the Samsung Galaxy SII has a camera capability of 8.0 Megapixels, which is considerable for a phone (which means it could help the owner save money on buying a camera).

 Jane Davids

About the Guest Author:

This article is written by Jane Davids.  He is a international conference call enthusiast writing on behalf of www.conferencenow.co.uk