hatman | (no subject)

Question: Should I get a smartphone?

My current flip phone is 2 years old. I'm eligible for a 2 year upgrade discount. (Although apparently Verizon is now charging a $30 fee for that. Which is ridiculous.) I don't have a texting plan because I don't really have many people to text with. For mobile email, I have a Kindle. That gives me free unlimited browsing... at 3G speed with a black & white screen. So I can check email, glance at Twitter, load FB's mobile page, etc. But it's slow and limited.

My take has always been that I'm not really away from home enough to justify the added expense. Adding a data plan would be $30 a month. Which adds up to $360/year. More if I wanted a texting plan, too. Not to mention what I'd inevitably spend on apps and such. And, of course, the phones (every 2 years) would be more expensive, too.

But I'm also trying to start a business. Maybe a better phone should be a consideration for that.

IDK. Most of my contact with friends and the world at large is online. Which means I have relatively little use for a phone... but much more use for mobile internet on those times when I actually am out and about.

Any thoughts or advice?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I like my smartphone + data connection for things like doing quick price comparisions at the store, figuring out what the hell this song is that is on the radio, looking up directions, so on and so forth. My Twitter stream tends to feature a lot of videos and media, so I like it for that too.

I have also been known to pinch-hit on DW Support if we're getting slammed and I'm not near my computer.

If your eyes and fingers all work pretty well and you use computers often it makes sense to get a smartphone. The decent phones aren't phones at all. Making phone calls is incidental, the devices are fully fledged computers with small screens. My current phone, a relatively mediocre model, is significantly more powerful processor and memory wise than my first few desktop computers. Of course, so is your kindle.

It's handy to have a computer in your pocket. Connected to the net and a large portion of humanity.

The phone thing is going to be relatively short lived, I think. We're witnessing the evolution of the screen and our interface with it. I suspect the device will continue to shrink until it disappears.