Nearly Half of American Adults Are Smartphone Owners

First time accepted submitter saiful76 writes "Nearly half (46%) of American adults are smartphone owners as of February 2012, an increase of 11 percentage points over the 35% of Americans who owned a smartphone last May. Two in five adults (41%) own a cell phone that is not a smartphone, meaning that smartphone owners are now more prevalent within the overall population than owners of more basic mobile phones."

Comments

Rots your brain

[RightwingNutjob]

Other than the "convenience" of being able to get at your email, a crutch for a stunted sense of direction, and a safety net for poor before-hand planning, the only reason I can see for having a smartphone is for keeping yourself entertained on the go. That brings me to: are people's minds so empty that they can't stand just a bit of quiet time without outside stimulation? Somehow we've been doing it for millennia without going completely bonkers, just sayin'.

Re:Rots your brain

[cheaphomemadeacid]

Read history, we DID go completely bonkers, just sayin'.

Re:Rots your brain

[Anonymous Coward]

the only reason I can see

Luckily many of us are not as intellectually crippled.

Re:Rots your brain

[Anonymous Coward]

What you say? Besides being very useful, it can also be used for games? As opposed to posting to Slashdot, which is purely useless?

Re:Rots your brain

[PessimysticRaven]

Damn straight! And watches are for people who have a poor grasp on sundials!

Re:Rots your brain

[Anonymous Coward]

My lawn...get off of it.

Re:Rots your brain

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I was saying pretty much the same about laptop computers back in the '90s, and look how far downhill we've come since. It's clear our civilization is on a downward spiral.

Re:Rots your brain

[Erpo]

I can't speak for other people, but it trips me out to be walking through the supermarket chatting online. My inner ten-year-old is so happy. Other than that, I like using it as a music player on trips, an audiobook player, an ebook reader and a geocaching toy,

Re:Rots your brain

[Calos]

And sundials, a crutch for those with a stunted sense of the time of year and ability to judge the position of the sun.

And depending on one's observations of the solar cycle, a crutch for those not well enough in tune with their own circadian rhythm.

And maps, for those with a stunted sense of being able to predict where one will be in the future, and failing to prepare by memorizing maps of the area.

And the internet, just a crutch for those who haven't properly prepared their activities - you should always have several back-ups plans, so you never need to look up a restaurant or anything while out and about.

Anyway. Despite the Neanderthal slant of the GP, I don't disagree that some people use them to escape thinking and any sort of down time, and I don't disagree that that is a bad thing.

Re:Rots your brain

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right! This is why I do not use computers. They make us way too dumb. I mean just look at the post I'm replying to - Clearly the world is full of major fucking idiots.

Re:Rots your brain

[epyT-R]

excellent entailment abilities, sense of direction, and imagination are all still hallmarks of a strong mind. they are not sundials in a watch age.

Re:Rots your brain

[RightwingNutjob]

I don't know how much of this is a luddite streak of "I didn't grow up with it, therefore it's evil", but I remember when I was a wee lad 15-20 yrs ago, when you went on a road trip, you *did* study a (paper!) map of the area so you knew roughly what was where; when you wanted to go out, you *did* have to plan ahead more that 15 minutes; when you went to the supermarket, you *did* have to do some mental arithmetic to avoid ripping yourself off. Maybe it's unsubstantiated nostalgia, but it seemed that people *had* to be more responsible in the dark ages of the 1990's, because there were fewer technological crutches to remove the disincentive against ADHD thinking patterns and general inattention to detail.

Re:Rots your brain

[Ethanol-fueled]

Some like me may argue that participating in an actual unique discussion, even in a static forum, is a lot less useless than playing the same crappy game on a tiny-ass screen...again.

And, for the record, I happen to be an outspoken anti-smartphone guy, likening them to Linus' security blanket. Might as well be suckin' your widdle thumbs, too.

Re:Rots your brain

[dumuzi]

People had to be more responsible 200 years ago when inattention to the details of your stockpile for winter meant death for your family. Crutches like supermarkets have alleviated that responsibility. The result is freedom.

Re:Rots your brain

[Calos]

Oh, I totally agree with you that those are still good and useful things to do.

It's simply a tool, a tool which will improve over time. It's not a cure all, nothing ever is. It can fail, and awareness of your surroundings and common sense are still good things - and always will be. That's no reason to deny the benefits of the tool and decry the users of it.

Re:Rots your brain

[Green Salad]

I'm trying to get off your lawn...honestly. But I can't find the app for that.

Re:Rots your brain

[PessimysticRaven]

I don't really feel that's what the OP meant when he was making the post. It sounded, to me, more like someone that was deriding a hammer for its purpose because there may be people that don't want to headbutt nails.

It's seemed like a shoddy argument, blaming the tool. They have all those features because people want them. Period. There have been self-important people with short-attention spans long before the advent of smartphones, it's just that it's now a much more highlighted portion of society since multi-function phones are "everywhere."

Learned helplessness from the "always on" smartphone causing reliance; now THAT is an issue.

Re:Rots your brain

[knorthern knight]

> ...the only reason I can see for having a smartphone
> is for keeping yourself entertained on the go.

Yup. You can play Angry Birds while taking a dump in the bathroom. Now *THAT* is "keeping yourself entertained on the go".

Re:Rots your brain

[Anonymous Coward]

i am so aware of how dumb i am that i am not an idiot

Re:Rots your brain

[adolf]

I use my smart phone as a tool: In the same pocket which used to contain just a phone, I now have a decent camera (which is fine for documenting things on a jobsite), a bubble level (which is calibrated), a metal stud finder (which really does work fine), an eye-burning flashlight, a tool for measuring arbitrary distances outdoors, a calculator, a frequency generator, a spectrum analyzer, an automated DTMF generator, a satellite finder, a compass, an antenna aimer, a way to carry a huge amount of documentation around with me, a network analysis tool, a barcode scanner, and a few other things that I use on a regular basis.

I don't know what other people do with their "smart phones," but the more I try to use mine, the more useful it becomes.

Re:Rots your brain

[Anonymous Coward]

The same could be said about any technology, from telephones, televisions, computers, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, cars, airplanes, etc. We went for millennia without any of those things too, but they enhance our quality of life. It's called "progress".

Re:Rots your brain

[x1r8a3k]

Whenever I go to a new place, and I'm not in a hurry, I do things the old fashioned way like that. It makes it almost like an adventure instead of just a trip. Just continue to do that sort of thing, then when the battery on whatever device goes flat, you can amaze your friends with your superpowers of basic math and a mental map of your surroundings. Its really fun!

Re:Rots your brain

[chgros]

Other than the "convenience" of being able to get at your email, a crutch for a stunted sense of direction, and a safety net for poor before-hand planning
These are all excellent reasons for using a smartphone (and you don't need a stunted sense of direction to find maps useful). Anything after that is bonus.

Re:Rots your brain

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than the "convenience" of being able to get at your email, a crutch for a stunted sense of direction, and a safety net for poor before-hand planning

And those are not reason enough to have a smart phone? Around here it's maybe 120€ upfront and 3 - 20€/month for internet access for something basic like Galaxy Gio.

Re:Rots your brain

[Anonymous Coward]

The result is probably devolution... or extinction as we burn up our resources to manufacture enough electronic junk for billions of people.

Re:Rots your brain

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also used for comparison shopping while in a store, finding your car in a parking lot, remote start for climate control, remote control of your HVAC (i.e. Nest) making dinner/hotel reservations, checking movie times, booking flights, GPS, etc. That doesn't even cover person-to-person communication.

Just maybe some people would rather "wing it" than spend the day inside planning the trip?

It's also great at fairs that will not sell armbands at the event, but have them online.
You can purchase a ticket online, then they can scan your smartphone.
It's a great way around that scam.

Re:Rots your brain

[tlhIngan]

Other than the "convenience" of being able to get at your email, a crutch for a stunted sense of direction, and a safety net for poor before-hand planning, the only reason I can see for having a smartphone is for keeping yourself entertained on the go. That brings me to: are people's minds so empty that they can't stand just a bit of quiet time without outside stimulation? Somehow we've been doing it for millennia without going completely bonkers, just sayin'.

I use mine for product research.

In case you didn't know, Canadian retail shopping is normally best done in the store - online shopping in Canada is typically just terrible - it costs more (you pay shipping and taxes) or wait for the item (if shipping is free). Unlike Amazon.com, Amazon.ca is barely more than a book/movie/music store (and their prices aren't terribly hot either - it's just they have a good selection).

So yes, I get surprised when I see something in store that I assumed was only available online, and then use my smartphone to look up reviews I may have skimmed to see if it was a good product, and look up what it should cost (sometimes it's cheaper to just buy it from the US and pay shipping+taxes+customs).

And other times, it's just to do quick price comparisons - is that other store really cheaper, or just a few cents cheaper?

So yeah, I could do it all online, if I wanted ot put up with it costing more and getting less service out of it (it costs to return stuff online since you're forced to pay return shipping, and many don't refund shipping).

Re:Rots your brain

[oldmac31310]

For Sol's sake people, just build an henge and stop all of this technological nonsense!

Only 10%

[pro151]

Of that 46% know how to use their smart phone to it's full potential. Most of them just have them because it is the "in thing" to own.

Re:Only 10%

[rubycodez]

not a problem. I don't use my cell phone to its full potential either, just for phone and alarm clock. when my company gives me a smart phone in the next week, I'll additonally use the GPS and look up transit routes but fuck the rest of that shit. it's just a tool

Re:Only 10%

[Jeremi]

Of that 46% know how to use their smart phone to it's full potential. Most of them just have them because it is the "in thing" to own.

... and if you think that's shocking, just wait until you hear what percentage of computer owners have yet to write their first computer program. Or what percentage of car owners haven't entered a single road rally.

Re:Only 10%

[AK Marc]

I loved having GPS in my phone, the only issue is that I have to plug it into the charger to use, and it will drain the battery faster than the car charger can charge it (getting hot enough to be unholdable). HTC Sensation. So I just look it up on maps first, and don't use the navigation unless I am or think I will shortly become lost.

I get the Amazon free ap of the day every day. Best thing ever. I threw music on as well, and some movies, in case I'm ever bored and stuck for something to do.

Re:Only 10%

[Compaqt]

>... and if you think that's shocking, just wait until you hear what percentage of computer owners have yet to write their first computer program. Or what percentage of car owners haven't entered a single road rally.

That's not quite the same thing. A better car analogy would be: 46% of Americans own a 4-wheel drive, and 45 out of those have never been off of tarmac.

Re:Only 10%

[Anonymous Coward]

Of that 46% know how to use their smart phone to it's full potential.

Actually, exactly 0% know how to use their smart phones to their full potential.

Re:Only 10%

[CAIMLAS]

Since I'm guessing they included feature phones, like the Blackberry and iPhone, I'm going to guess the number of "actually know how to use device" people is slightly lower than the number of Android phones out there...

Re:Only 10%

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean to tell me every single cheap ass Android user know how to use their device properly?

Fucking cock-jockey fandroid.

Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Taco Cowboy]

When electronic calculators started surfacing back in the 1960's/1970's, students stop memorizing the multiplication tables

Now it's the turn of the smartphone that will affect a whole new generation of people

Used to be that we know the address of a friend of ours

No more

With smartphone/tablets, you don't need to remember anything - by just tapping on the glass panel you will get all the info that you need

The more gadgets we surround ourselves, the dumber we will become

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Rude Turnip]

Albert Einstein refused to memorize telephone numbers because they could be written down. Clearly, he was an idiot.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[dougisfunny]

Their address?
And their phone number?
And their work phone number?
And their cell phone, pager, work cell?
And their work address?
And their email address?
And their work email address?
And their birthday?
Etc etc.

And for how many friends did you know this? And businesses you frequent? Acquaintances?

Instead of memorizing a rolodex, which is subject to change and being forgetten, carrying an easily accessible one with you is dumber?

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[simplexion]

Yes, because being able to look up information at a whim is going to make people more stupid. Is memorising your friends address and phone number really that important to intelligence?
I find these days that someone tells me something that sounds rather dubious, I look it up using my smartphone, find the truth and memorise that. I find that in checking facts when people tell me something, I am more likely to remember it later on.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[ganjadude]

you arent too far off, I dont know about others, but I cant even remember my own house phone number (although i know my grandparents number that they have had since the 60s)

plain and simple, there is no need to memorize strings of numbers when a phone will hold them all for me, and this was pre smart phone just simply cell phone

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[mikael]

In the past, your friends would draw you a simplified map of the neighboring streets using a device known as a pen on permanent non-volatile memory surface known as paper. The really neat thing was that as long you kept it dry, the information would be retained permanently. If you were really lucky, they might photocopy part of a map and place a photograph of their house. These too were really neat in that they stored street numbers, so you knew what end to travel too.

Sometime they might even leave the front porch light on, place balloons outside the entrance, or place candles along the driveway like landing lights, so you knew you were heading in the right direction.

A smartphone is really that much of a dumb-down.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Calos]

Well, I think your argument is self-negating. Intelligence is not the rote memorization of facts, unless you consider books and computers to be the most intelligent things around.

But aside from that - as usual, I think the truth is somewhere in between your view and the others writing rebuttals.

I have absolutely no problem with conveniently storing data for which it serves no benefit to memorize. And there's far too much data for it to be reasonable to memorize even a small portion of what will be of use to you. That's why we have books and computers... and relevant here, the internet with wireless access. And that can present a trade-off. Before the internet was prevalent, when something broke, I might invest some time figuring out how it works, designing a robust fix, and implementing it. Now, I could save a lot of time by just searching the internet for it - chances are someone has done it before. And the critical thinking and abstractions and everything that would have gone into my solution are lost to the step-by-step directions the internet provides me.

Some will say that technology isn't limiting us in that scenario, because someone still had to figure it out. But that someone wasn't me. Many like me didn't have to. Fewer people will need to, and it's possible society will become more and more dependent on the internet rather than their own abilities. Now, the other side of it is efficiency - time savings. You could argue I could use all the time I save to do something more interesting to me with the same benefits. But I'd hazard a guess that society on the average will use the extra time to stare at a movie or TV show or video game.

Which all assumes, of course, we don't take the more cynical view that most people would just throw their hands up in the air at the problem instead of trying to fix it themselves at all.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Taco Cowboy]

In the past, your friends would draw you a simplified map of the neighboring streets using a device known as a pen on permanent non-volatile memory surface known as paper. The really neat thing was that as long you kept it dry, the information would be retained permanently. If you were really lucky, they might photocopy part of a map and place a photograph of their house. These too were really neat in that they stored street numbers, so you knew what end to travel too.

Sometime they might even leave the front porch light on, place balloons outside the entrance, or place candles along the driveway like landing lights, so you knew you were heading in the right direction.

A smartphone is really that much of a dumb-down

It's the over-reliance of gadgets that are making us more and more lazy

And the most dangerous part is, we are at the verge of being so lazy that we may become too lazy to think, to memorize, to use our own brain

5 or 6 generations ago, the whole world could go on functioning without electricity

3 or 4 generations ago, human beings started relying on electricity

And now, if there is a black-out, you see people started panicking

3 or 4 generation ago, banks could go on functioning without computers

Now? If the "system down" sign is up, there is a sure bet that you won't be able to do almost any transaction in a bank

Human nature, being human nature, we should know when to put a stop before it becomes too late

Over-reliance on the smart phone will only get us into yet another pitfall --- what if the smartphone breaks down? What if the GPS gadgets break down? Are we able to function without them?

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

We've entered an age where people are stupid enough to think rote memorization should pass as intelligence.

Clearly this is due to smartphones.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Beardo the Bearded]

Well, I'm an electrical engineer, so my paycheques would stop. On the upside, so would the cheques of the people who would be coming to collect the payments...

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Jeremi]

Human nature, being human nature, we should know when to put a stop before it becomes too late

Since when has knowing when to stop ever been part of human nature? We'll stop when the oil runs out, or when the Y2.038k bug has reduced us all to cannibalism (whichever comes first)... and not a moment before. :^P

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[icebike]

What is this "pager" thing of which you speak? And why do I have to remember it?

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we can clearly see you're well named, Anonymous Coward.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[icebike]

I find these days that someone tells me something that sounds rather dubious, I look it up using my smartphone, find the truth and memorise that. I find that in checking facts when people tell me something, I am more likely to remember it later on.

This!

It Seems to me, having once gone to the effort you remember longer, even if the effort is small. (Someone will look this up and prove me wrong, but that's why I said it "seems".)

Of course the real beauty of this is the instant calling of BS (in the nicest possible way of course) when BS is spewn.
This prevents a lot of cockamamie rumors from ballooning out of control. I've been at a table of 6 when dubious stuff floated and seen 4 smartphones light up. (I've since practiced the phrase "I stand corrected" more frequently).

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Taco Cowboy]

Human nature, being human nature, we should know when to put a stop before it becomes too late

Since when has knowing when to stop ever been part of human nature? We'll stop when the oil runs out, or when the Y2.038k bug has reduced us all to cannibalism (whichever comes first)... and not a moment before. :^P

Can't argue with that :)

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[icebraining]

It's the over-reliance of gadgets that are making us more and more lazy

That's just another way of saying effective. Time gained by offloading unimportant tasks to machines is time that can be better spent on more important goals. And yes, "having fun" fits too.

And the most dangerous part is, we are at the verge of being so lazy that we may become too lazy to think, to memorize, to use our own brain

I suppose you're demonstrating that by making big claims without showing the evidence that supports them?

5 or 6 generations ago, the whole world could go on functioning without electricity

3 or 4 generations ago, human beings started relying on electricity

And now, if there is a black-out, you see people started panicking

3 or 4 generation ago, banks could go on functioning without computers

Now? If the "system down" sign is up, there is a sure bet that you won't be able to do almost any transaction in a bank

Human nature, being human nature, we should know when to put a stop before it becomes too late

Over-reliance on the smart phone will only get us into yet another pitfall --- what if the smartphone breaks down? What if the GPS gadgets break down? Are we able to function without them?

So? Worse things have happened and we've pretty much always survived. Occasional blackouts are just a nuisance, nothing more than a drop in a bucket compared to the advantages of these systems, and if shit really hits the fans and the systems go down permanently, our survival instincts will kick-in.

If members from the nobility who were used since birth to have servants to take care of their every need are able to do whatever it takes to eat and survive, I think we can l live without GPS or smartphones. Well, I still do, but it's not because I share your concerns.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we can clearly see you're well named, Anonymous Coward.

So why don't you carry your white ass into the black ghetto and see how welcome you are?

Then and only then, tell me how unreasonable I am for wanting nothing to do with them. But you won't try this little experiment. You already know what will happen and you are too afraid to see if you are wrong. Yeah just keep on blaming me.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and then that drawn or photocopied map just gets thrown out once you remember where your friend lives and how to get there. You don't even remember the address any more, just what the place looks like, and how to get there.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[pympdaddyc]

The ability or desire for memorization does not imply intelligence.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Adriax]

I used to have a calculator watch that stored phone numbers, long before I had a cell phone.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Adriax]

I believe everyone should experience being a pizza (or related) delivery driver for 3 months, without assistance from GPS.
Just learning how to read a map and knowing how addresses are numbered are extremely useful skills to have. A couple weekends ago I helped a lady who was following her smartphone's driving directions and ending up at a park when she needed an office building. Turns out her app couldn't tell the difference between 610 Jefferson St and 610 E Jefferson St. Relying on that app made her an hour and a half late for an interview.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Kjella]

Yes, because being able to look up information at a whim is going to make people more stupid.

Well, if you stop gathering and remembering facts because you can look them up you might not be stupid but you're ignorant in the "I couldn't point out Europe on the world map but I could look it up if I needed to" way. Ignorance leads to stupid questions/statements like "Why didn't AMD buy nVidia instead of ATI?" / "AMD should have bought nVidia instead of ATI." because you don't know the fact that nVidia was about twice as large AMD in market cap. There's a saying "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it", how will you learn from the past when you have absolutely no recollection of it?

Of course you could say all of this is poor research, not poor knowledge. That you should have looked it up, not that you should have known. It's like walking around with a lantern, it's illuminated exactly where you are and it'll be dark again once your mind moves on. I prefer it to be more like lighting torches, once I've visited a subject area I should end up knowing something about it. Okay I might not remember every side street or detail and it dims over time but I know the main roads, it's not simply a dark maze I'd have to start over again with my lantern. That I start recognizing patterns, relations, analogies, how these subject areas fit together. Of course I'll never cover the whole maze and know everything about everything, but I'm trying to understand more today than I did yesterday.

I don't understand the people who think the world can be reduced down to simple, single discipline fact-finding missions. Let's for example say that I'm trying to make a team be more productive. How many fields would you like to draw on? I mean it can be individual, what motivates people? Demotivates people? Is it the group dynamics, the working environment? Is it poor communication and collaboration tools? Is is a stupid incentive model? Is the workflow wrong? Maybe you need to know a little psychology, technology, economics, domain knowledge and so on from a wide range of fields. That's pretty hard to do if you're just running around with a lantern, no matter how smart you are. You have to actually have a working knowledge in each field.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[slasho81]

What do you have against periods?

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Culture20]

When electronic calculators started surfacing back in the 1960's/1970's, students stop memorizing the multiplication tables Now it's the turn of the smartphone that will affect a whole new generation of people

Ordinary cell phones have already affected several generations in at least one way. What's the last group of phone numbers you can recall? Where they all from before you got a cell phone?

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[chicago_scott]

You're assuming that the ability to memorize makes a person smart.

It doesn't.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at what orators said when writing became cheap and common. Look how much their criticism mattered. Now complain about something useful.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Osgeld]

did memorizing a calculated chart really make us smarter?

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Albert Einstein refused to memorize telephone numbers because they could be written down. Clearly, he was an idiot.

Are you suggesting some people actively try to memorize phone numbers? For me, if it's someone I care about, and I dial it a few times, it just sticks.

Did he actively try to not remember them? Like my credit card number from the 80's - I have to agree with Einstein that it's a waste of resources, but it's just stuck in there - nothing I can do about it.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[mikech2000]

The point is that you dont see how bat shit crazy it is to connect the two points. You must be consumed by bigotry to think your original comment was relevant in any way.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[LynnwoodRooster]

The more gadgets we surround ourselves, the dumber we will become

And that includes mastery of basic grammar and proper sentence structure as well!

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[LynnwoodRooster]

The ability memorize basic facts and rules (such as those in grammar), however, allows a person to gain more knowledge in a much more efficient, effective manner. Try not using the memorized rules of language, or the memorized basic properties of mathematics and see how far you get in nearly any intellectual effort.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[davidwr]

I didn't know Raymond Babbitt was Asian.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[mapkinase]

What is this obsession with "smartness"? With the ability of multiplying two digit numbers in your head? With memorizing ten digits on the fly?

Those skills are just tools, like calculators you mention or abakuses.

I used to call overseas directly 7-8 years ago, when VoIP did not pick up yet, and I used my phonebook. I did not have to memorize a single number, I lost the ability to memorize. It was very hard and took enormous amount of time to memorize numbers when I needed.

After that I switched to phone cards: dial local number, punch in a 10-digit code, punch another 10 digit number. It was impractical to store all of those in one number: not all phones supported that, my workphone addressbook was unmanageable, so I had to regain the ability to memorize those numbers, and I did. It takes me to look on the number I get from RussianSeattle for 5-10 sec, I can start dialing it right away.

Those abilities are not here, because they are not needed. If a human needs something he learns something very quickly.

We did not lose anything. We did not lose anything by stopping learning obligatory Greek and Latin post-Victorian England. We did not lose anything by stopping learning how to multiply with a slider.

Stop obsessing with rudimentary skills. Smartphones do not make us dumb. If anything, they make us even smarter. I learn about stuff faster than before, because I am surrounded with people with a data plan (I am still lingering on my old Samsung pre-data plan smartphone), and instead of forgetting about an atom of knowledge that I wanted to learn I am asking nearby brother in the mosque to check it out in Wikipedia.

I can imagine how much more stuff that I need I could learn by actually subscribing to one of those data plans.

I talked to an older brother from the mosque - he just got himself one of those and now is constantly reading Quran from it. "Why don't you go to the shelf pick a nice Mushaf and read from it?" I asked. "He said, it's too far and I will lose my place in the first row".

The revolution of a data plan is simply amazing and you people are talking about getting dumb?

I consider myself a neo-luddite with my aversion to technology, but _you_ are beating me hands down.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[travbrad]

Yeah I don't see how memorizing random numbers signifies "intelligence" in any way. I had memorized some phone numbers when I was about 5 years old, so it doesn't seem to require a tremendous amount of brainpower.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[travbrad]

I see your point. We should get rid of agriculture and farming, and go back to being hunter-gatherers. All technological progress is bad.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[shutdown -p now]

If you stop gathering and remembering silly minutiae - precisely the stuff that your gadgets can deal with - you'll have more time to remember things that are actually important.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or more likely SHE couldn't tell the difference between 610 Jefferson St and 610 E Jefferson St and forgot to enter the E on her "stupid" GPS. The same mistake would easily have been made on the ancient technology of the map based on the even old faulty tech of the brain.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[bill_mcgonigle]

What is this "pager" thing of which you speak?

Ah, we've got an urbanite in our midst. ;)

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[dougisfunny]

I suppose I should also point out as a contrast, those olden days before the whipper snappers got all dumb using smart phones, there were also a lot fewer numbers to remember. The most common scenario was a single number for an entire family, as opposed to a separate number for each member plus one for the house in general.

I suppose having dns instead of remembering all the ip addresses for the websites we visit. Is another example of getting dumber through advances of technology. Or not even remembering the site names, just using google instead.
Heck, the internet in general is us getting dumber. It used to be you had to go to the library and use a card catalog and look things up or memorize an entire encyclopaedia rather than just accessing the information on the internet. Kids these days. Am I right?

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[KahabutDieDrake]

Funny, if you were better educated (or just smarter) you'd probably know that your 5 year old self had considerably more brain power available to him than you do in adulthood. Particularly in regard to memory.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Why would we be 'dumber' as opposed to freeing up our brains for other things?

I ask because as the internet has become
more and more ubiquitous I have observed more and more people using it to figure out how to do the things they want to do instead of lamenting how they'd have to take classes. I have actually watched people read Wikipedia recreationally, never saw anybody do that with an encyclopedia. I know people with successful careers who were self-taught, using the internet to gater the resources they need.

I don't see 'dumbing down', I see less memorization and more emphasis on knowing how to find what you need.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Taco Cowboy]

It's like walking around with a lantern, it's illuminated exactly where you are and it'll be dark again once your mind moves on

Many thanks for the most luminous description above!

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Taco Cowboy]

Kids these days. Am I right?

No, I ain't gonna fall for this type of blanket statement

We old geeks have had plenty of encounters with the dumb ones in our generation, as well :)

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[jones_supa]

What I have wondered sometimes is that do cellphones have a way to see what is your own phone number? Or is it unable to retrieve it?

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[thegarbz]

When electronic calculators started surfacing back in the 1960's/1970's, students stop memorizing the multiplication tables

So in 1960s/70s students suddenly stopped dedicating their time to learning by rote a needless and very limited answers to a set of math problems, and you think this was a bad thing?

I've met people who memorised multiplication tables. The conversation goes like this:

Me: What's 5x8?
Them: 40!
Me: What's 9x9?
Them: 81!
Me: What's 12x12?
Them: .... erm. .. one hundred .... and ... forty ... ... four?
Me: What's 52x27?
Them: How should I know?

When you spend your life memorising a small set of details you get screwed as soon as you are faced with a problem outside your bounds. People spent much of the childhood memorising facts rather than methods. With information at people's fingertips we don't need the facts anymore, we can get those at any time. We can train our methods and be more useful for it. Here's a question: Do you remember how to do proper long division? Ask your friends and find out how many people actually are capable of doing things like multiplying and dividing huge numbers by paper? If they can't, then memorising the 144 answers to the multiplication table doesn't really make them very smart.

Why waste my valuable brain power memorising countless addresses and phone numbers when a little box can guide me there?

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on the model, really. Most modern Android phones display the number in the "About my Phone" section of the settings (as far as I'm aware). However, the Samsung flip phone I owned a few years back had no (simple) way of retrieving your own number - you either had to memorise the number or add yourself to your contacts list. The "proper" way of retrieving your number on aforementioned phone, for the record, was a 10 digit code hidden somewhere in the back of the manual. Entering this code brought up a screen that displayed your number, IMEI and information about the phone's firmware.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[LordSnooty]

You'd think that old geeks would be overjoyed that people have access to all information in a matter of milliseconds. Hardly a surprise if people take it for granted. But would you want it any other way?

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[thegarbz]

This is another nearsighted post. We're not lazy, we're ill-equipped to handle such problems.

Let's compare the problem of loss of electricity to the equivalent of 5-6 generations ago: Loss of ability to make fire and light candles. Yes there would be quite a lot of panic if people weren't able to light their homes or cook their meals. The problem these days is that electricity is the new fire. Loss of electricity at our house is trivial due to the torches in every other room and the knowledge that there's a full box of candles and matches downstairs. Life goes on.

Banks are just the same. How many banks do you know 3-4 generations ago that handled multi million transactions daily? How many banks instantly allowed you to transfer funds from one account to an account in someone else's name? How many banks worked with the multitude complicated interest calculation methods that include offset account and the like? You want another equivalent example? Go into a bank 3-4 generations ago and snap everyone's pencil, and break everyone's abacus. Then tell me how many transactions they will be processing within a reasonable time.

The answer to your doom and gloom story is quite simple. If something becomes critical enough that our very survival depends on it we build in redundancies. What if my GPS breaks down? Well I have my smartphone. What if my smartphone breaks? Well my girlfriend has one too. What if they all break? We go to a petrol station and look up a map. Just like the banks have built plenty of redundant capacity in their computer systems, a branch may go down but it's almost unheard of a whole bank being unable to process any transactions.

It's never going to be too late, because we don't have a problem.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Lumpy]

"The more gadgets we surround ourselves, the dumber we will become"

Only for lazy people. Those of us that are smart and non lazy they make us smarter. I know the phone numbers and addresses of my parents, siblings, and top tier of friends. Mostly because I am not lazy like the typical person. I use these "gadgets" as augmentation not a replacement.

I am certain that there are many others that also do what I do. Your statement might as well be the mantra of the Modern Amish movement.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[vlm]

Me: What's 5x8?
Them: 40!
Me: What's 9x9?
Them: 81!
Me: What's 12x12?
Them: .... erm. .. one hundred .... and ... forty ... ... four?
Me: What's 52x27?
Them: How should I know?

When you spend your life memorising a small set of details you get screwed as soon as you are faced with a problem outside your bounds.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzt. The fail you're talking about is a total inability to generalize and skillfully apply knowledge, which unfortunately manifests through all human experience not just math problems. Inability to apply history. Inability to apply science skills. Inability to apply driving skills. Inability to handle social relationships based on past general experience... You can recognize this anti-pattern when you hear things like "I do know how to change the oil on one specific model car, but I've never done that on a different model car, so I'll just have to give up take it to the dealer". "I do know how to untar, make, and make install one software package, but this is a different software package so I'll just have to fail because change is not OK". "I know one OS completely, but this is a microscopically different version so I'll just give up and say its impossible" . Almost all people can generalize and estimate, its kind of a learned helplessness thing, assuming no organic brain dysfunction as an excuse.

The answer to 52x27 is fifty is a bit less than 52, and 30 is a bit more than 27, so my guess is going to be "about right" to only 1 or 2 sig figs, but for 99.999% of life tasks, thats close enough, assuming your judgment and discrimination is any good. 50x30 does not require a calculator assuming you memorized those difficult x10 multiplication tables and x3 tables, thats 5x10x3x10 or 3x5x10x10 or (3x5) x 100 or 1500. The width of the error bar should be in the general range of 2x27+3x52 or about 2x25+3x50 or about 50+150 or 200 wide total. So the answer is (obviously?) 1500 +/- 100.

I came up with that answer and error estimate in about 3 maybe 4 seconds, with no real effort. Using my smartphone calculator took about 30 seconds (gotta think about if the phone is charged and where it is, get the phone off desk/outta cargo pocket/outta coat pocket/whatever, wipe the eternally greasy filthy screen so I can read it, wipe my hands in a pitiful attempt not to filth up the screen, unlock the phone because the russians are after me and I store nuclear missile launch codes on my phone, remember how to start the calc app, type it all in (using RPN thats 52, enter, 27, times), fix touch screen typo where my finger slipped on the non-tactile screen and I entered 47 accidentally instead of 27, then try again, and eventually it seems 52x27 = 1404, so my estimating skills still work and are about ten times faster than using a calculator.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[w_dragon]

I think he's ok with agricultural, just not the mechanization bit. We should go back to needing something like 90% of our population to work agriculture to get enough food.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[dougisfunny]

And here I thought my name would somewhat make the need for a sarcasm tag redundant. Especially when I used a reductio ad absurdum argument.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Oswald McWeany]

I'm ahead of the curb then- I've been practicing canibalism since Y2K.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was born after 1980. We memorized multiplication tables and couldn't use calculators on tests until calculus.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[Adriax]

No, the app couldn't. Notice the part where I said "I helped..."?
I wasn't from the area either, I was in town because my wife had a conference so I was killing time at the park with our daughter. The lady approached me thinking I was a local, so I scrolled around in google maps and found an E Jefferson across the river.
Her iphone and my droid both told us, when we put the address into our mapping apps, that 610 E Jefferson was on the 500 block of Jefferson (the last bit of the street before the river) while the real address was next to the hospital.

To her it made perfect sense that 610 E Jefferson was on the 500 block of Jefferson because her smartphone told her so, she never knew there was actual rhyme or reason to street numbering and it never occurred to her that her app may not have the right directions.
I drove pizzas around for two years, my "old faulty tech of the brain" beat out the best google and apple offer in 30 seconds because I can pattern recognize instead of just look shit up in a database. A database, I might add, that was created by the lowest bidder "old faulty tech of the brain."

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[rwv]

When electronic calculators started surfacing back in the 1960's/1970's, students stop memorizing the multiplication tables

False. I was in 4th grade in 1992. We were forced to memorize our multiplication tables up to 12x12.

Used to be that we know the address of a friend of ours

False. Rolodex was invented in 1956. Also, knowledge of addresses is more a factor of living in tight, geographically close locations. The geographical distribution of the modern "civilized" world is much to broad for actual addresses. Knowing which highways to take to get from place to place is much more useful. During previous centuries, there were few roads and the choices of how to get from one city to another were few. During previous centuries, you probably would rarely make visits to addresses that was 10 miles away from where you lived. So now, you know, you need to keep a rolodex for extended friends and family.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[houghi]

Time gained by offloading unimportant tasks to machines is time that can be better spent on more important goals. And yes, "having fun" fits too.

This is what people told us when we started to use computer. The extra time would be used to do other tasks they said. In reality they let the few that were left work just as many hours and fire all the rest.

So with all this great time saving, we have indeed gotten more free time. However it is not shared equally. Some have all the free time and others have none. Unfortunately for those that were worced to take all the free time, the checks stopped coming as well.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[icebraining]

And it's true. They only forgot to add that you'll need social and political changes to achieve that; technology doesn't solve everything.

Re:Are smartphones making us dumb?

[thegarbz]

Thankyou for answering the question. So you got a ballpark figure? Congratulations you may just have been ripped off by $200, but hey it's within the margin of error right?

Memorising the answers to a table is not a measure of intelligence, and neither is having a calculator on you at all times. But the latter is a matter of convenience. I bet if the above example was something you actually were buying and did not trust the cashier (not an entirely unreasonable scenario) you would likely reach for your smartphone rather then guess your way through the problem or whip out a pen and paper? Does that make you dumber?

A smartphone is something that does work for me so I can dedicate my life to more important tasks. Calendar? Email? Navigation? Remember the phone numbers of some 100 friends and associates? Not dedicating effort to such inane tasks is not a measure of how dumb people are.

Did you like that word inane? I looked it up in a thesaurus. You know one of those book things that forms a huge reference of facts and relationships of words so people don't need to actually memorise the dictionary. Which is incidentally another reference we have used for hundreds of years to make our lives easier. But hey I own both of those so that makes me dumber than those people who speak the queen's English too right?

Your argument equating intelligence with having a personal hand-held reference device is deeply flawed for the simple counter example that we as a species have gotten smarter and faster at doing tasks in the last thousand years.

46% eh?

[girlintraining]

The other 54% must have realized that the offerings in this country are so third world they might as well just go with the cheapest, most basic offering because their peers expect them to have a cell phone. The other 46% think they're actually getting a good deal paying $80 or more a month for bandwidth caps, high latency, and cell phones with half their features turned off because America's mobile infrastructure is so crappy it can't handle what would, in the rest of the first world, be considered basic service.

Re:46% eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot about people that do not give a crap about cell phones at all or chose not to have them. People like RMS.

46% means that majority of cell users have smartphones. I expect death rates on roads to increase (it already has where I've lived, especially on highways with headon collisions)

Re:46% eh?

[ganjadude]

since when is 46% the majority?? has there been some new math findings i am unaware of?

Re:46% eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are dumb. 46% of Americans have one. 41% of Americans have a non-smart phone. Therefore a majority of cell phone users have a smartphone as grandparent post says.

Re:46% eh?

[HarrySquatter]

That would be a plurality not majority. A majority by its very definition is a subset of more than half of the group. 46% is not more than half.

Re:46% eh?

[AmberBlackCat]

Sprint doesn't have bandwidth caps. I'd agree with the rest though.

Re:46% eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

46% of all adults have a smart phone. 41% of all adults have a non-smart phone. Therefore, 46+41=87% of all adults have a cell phone (assuming those two groups are actually distinct) and 46/87=52% of those with a cell phone have a smart phone. 52%>50%, so it is a majority.

Re:46% eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the fact that 'the group', in this case, is 'cell users'. According to the statistics, 87%, or 46% + 41%, of those surveyed have cell phones. 46% divided by 87% yields 52.9%, which is indeed a majority of the group in question.

Re:46% eh?

[Darinbob]

Actually I am a bit surprised by the number. These are luxury items after all, and I'd suspect at least 25% of American just can't afford them even if they wanted them. The survey shows 13% of older Americans have the phones which should be the largest group in the demographics (or else my social security is safe after all). Thus numbers just don't feel right. Maybe they're defining "smart phone" in a simple way; ie any mobile phone that has any application at all, which includes what most kids would call dumb phones?

Re:46% eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

even the poorest of the poor can seem to afford smartphones, many on medicaid and ssd seem to have them (my patients), I will note that many pay as you go carriers have unlimited data (3g) for a fairly reasonable rate.

Re:46% eh?

[Compaqt]

I think they are saying "majority of people who matter". Or maybe they're excluding flyover country.

Something like the math that says "No one ever goes there anymore--it's too crowded."

Re:46% eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are looking at the wrong group. Out of all *American adults*, 46% have smartphones and 41% have non-smart phones. Out of all *cell phone users*, the smartphone owners are thus the majority, because 46% > 41%.

Re:46% eh?

[million_monkeys]

Actually I am a bit surprised by the number. These are luxury items after all, and I'd suspect at least 25% of American just can't afford them even if they wanted them. The survey shows 13% of older Americans have the phones which should be the largest group in the demographics (or else my social security is safe after all). Thus numbers just don't feel right. Maybe they're defining "smart phone" in a simple way; ie any mobile phone that has any application at all, which includes what most kids would call dumb phones?

Just because they can't afford it, doesn't mean they can't have it. That's the beauty of credit. It's made it harder for people to recognize what is a luxury.

Likely many people don't have enough income to justify paying $80/month (or whatever it is) for a smartphone. But that doesn't doesn't stop people from doing it.

Re:46% eh?

[oakgrove]

I'm not saying you're wrong here but I'm curious what all thos cool stuff I'm missing out on is. I have a Galaxy Nexus on Verizon with a grandfathered unlimited data plan. Its definitely unlimited as I regularly exceed 500 MB a day. I don't pay for texts as I use google voice and my phone is with the lowest minutes as I make calls via voip. So I get all the internet I want and its pretty much instant loading as lte has good coverage here and I have unlimited mi utes since I use voip. So what am I missing? I hear they watch TV on phones in Asia. Not interested even a little bit.

Re:46% eh?

[narcc]

These are luxury items after all, and I'd suspect at least 25% of American just can't afford them even if they wanted them.

Don't be ridiculous. You can get a smartphone free on contract and unless you're terminally incompetent, you can get a plan that actually costs less than a land-line. Failing that, there are numerous pay-as-you-go plans that are both incredibly inexpensive and still offer reasonably priced smart phones. PAYG dumbphones are practically free, with many costing less than $15.

If you need a phone, like most people do, you'll find that having a cellphone is often the cheapest option.

Re:46% eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Number of smartphone owners in 100 people: 46

Number of dumbphone owners in 100 people: 41

Number of cellphone owners in 100 people: 87

Percentage of *cellphone owners* owning smartphones: 46/87 * 100 = 52.9%

Smartphone owners are most defiantly the the majority of cellphone owners, assuming the reported statistics are correct. (Remember, 13% of adults do not OWN a cellphone)

Re:46% eh?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Okay, let's recap. AC said:

46% means that majority of cell users have smartphones.

The appropriately named ganjadude said:

since when is 46% the majority?? has there been some new math findings i am unaware of?

AC (probably another AC) said:

46% of Americans have one. 41% of Americans have a non-smart phone. Therefore a majority of cell phone users have a smartphone as grandparent post says.

You said:

That would be a plurality not majority. A majority by its very definition is a subset of more than half of the group. 46% is not more than half.

You are invited to read the above exchange of posts carefully, and think about what the phrase "a majority of cell phone owners" (as opposed to "a majority of Americans") actually means. Hint: 0.46 / (0.46 + 0.41) > 0.5.

Re:46% eh?

[Gavagai80]

Nobody's making you sign a contract. I pay around $3 a month and enjoy my smartphone, only using wifi for data. Still quite useful.

Re:46% eh?

[sulfur]

This was exactly my reasoning. I realized that I'm close a computer or have a laptop nearby almost all the time, so why bother paying extra for a smartphone, peer pressure be damned?

Re:46% eh?

[CannonballHead]

This is exactly my reasoning. I do have a wifi only tablet (viewsonic gtablet) that I can use almost anywhere, just need to find a McDonald's, Peet's, Starbucks, etc. Other then that (for travel... could also use a laptop but tablet is nice for just checking e-mail :) )... I'm rarely away from home for such a length of time that I really NEED TO CHECK MY E-MAIL on the road.

I'd probably use it occasionally, sure. I'd probably find the GPS stuff useful. But it's hard to justify an extra $200-$500 a year for that. :)

Re:46% eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. You can add yourself to the "stupid" category.

Good god!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worse than we ever suspected...
My friends, my family.. Every one of them could potentially be a smartphone owner.
I could be a smartphone owner myself and not even know it!

Re:Good god!

[asylumx]

Thank God I'm not! Sent from my iPhone

Re:Good god!

[rwv]

I *own* a Droid. All I do with it these days is use it to play Pandora over a Wifi connection. The "phone" network refuses to talk to it because I "upgraded" to a "simple phone" a few months ago since $30/month got to be too much to pay for access to the Verizon data-network. My wife owns a Droid (also "wifi-only") and a Galaxy Nexus (paid data-network access).

Between the 2 of us, we're probably counted as 3 smartphone owners for the purposes of the "survey" instead of the more-correct-count which would be 1 out of 2.

And 10% have no cellphone at all.

[ClioCJS]

Yay, us.

Re:And 10% have no cellphone at all.

[ChefInnocent]

Are there that many of us?

Re:And 10% have no cellphone at all.

[ClioCJS]

Maybe a little less now?

Re:And 10% have no cellphone at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Count me in that 10%. Cellphones, like cars, are a tool used to control and monitor you. You do not need either to live a happy and productive life. People have just been programmed to believe they need a car and a phone. Instruments of control that is all. Don't give the corrupt and evil "law enforcement" bodies of North America a single foothold on your life, not one, give them nothing. They are corrupt, evil and the largest governmentally sanctioned crime syndicate in existence.

I mean really: 19 years old? High school graduate? Three months training? -> Here's your gun, little boy in a cop suit - now go terrorise the public. That's a good boy now.

Re:And 10% have no cellphone at all.

[ClioCJS]

I.... lost what the point you were trying to make was. I wouldn't go nearly that far. Simply that they have diminishing returns. They cost more than landlines. I have a GPS that I got for free. So it's not going to keep me from getting lost. Even then, I already decided I'd rather get lost now and then than pay for it. Most importantly, I'm usually near one, so I get some benefit without paying a damn penny. Meanwhile, the audio quality on my landline is excellent in comparison to every cell I've used in my life. My wife has a cell phone, so I'm usually near one anyway.

Yeah because you can't buy a normal phone anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything now is a bloated smartphone with poor reception and even poorer battery life

So when will the price come down?

[NixieBunny]

At some point, this market will reach saturation. Then the service providers will have to compete on something like price or service to keep market share up. Hopefully, this will be good for the users of these fine machines.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are smartphones for less than $80, no contract or lock. How much cheaper do you want them to be? Do you realize that even the simplest smart phone is a far more powerful computer than the computers which people used when the Internet became available to households?

Re:So when will the price come down?

[ohnocitizen]

Is price keeping people away? As the user of an older non-smart phone I procured to let me text easily (it has a keyboard) while avoiding a smart phone, price is the issue. Not the price of the phone, but the price of the service. Why buy a smart phone when I have to pay an extra $30 a month min for a paltry amount of bandwidth?

Re:So when will the price come down?

[amiga3D]

The price of the phone is nothing really. It's the damn contract that costs your ass. I refuse to pay out the ass for 3G data that is about the same speed as a dial-up modem in actual practice and is choked even harder once you actually use it for anything other than checking e-mail and browsing a few youtube vidz. All for more than my 20mbps always on and never throttled connection at my house. I just can't bend over and take it like that.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think parent was referring to the massive price gouges for shitty service that pass for cell plans in this country. Smartphone prices are fine.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[NixieBunny]

The price of data service is what I'm talking about. Right now, the providers can upgrade old-phone customers to pay $30 more per month for a data plan, and this boosts their revenue year over year. Eventually they'll run out of upgraders. That's when the pricing fun begins.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[evilviper]

The price came down a couple years ago. You can get an Android slider for $99, and Virgin Mobile unlimited data (they've been threatening to cap it for some time) with about 300 minutes included for $35/month. Boost Mobile is $40-55/month. Other pre-paid services are nearly as cheap.

If you're paying $80/month for your cell phone service, you're probably an idiot, who is a slave to advertising and doesn't know how to shop around.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[tepples]

$35/month

Please read my reply to Anonymous Coward.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[Keychain]

no at that point marketing will invent the next "must have" gimmick and it will start all over again

Re:So when will the price come down?

[Darinbob]

Well I won't pay more for a data plan than my high speed internet costs while being forbidden to use it as an internet gateway. Give me a smart phone that will do wifi without 3g crap and I'll be happy, until then the dumb phone is still far more than I need.

And if I can check email chances are it will be the stupid phone's email and not the address I've been using for 16 years, and I just don't want to browse through web mail on a screen that small, no matter how many kids quiver at the thought of the marketing scam called retinal resolution.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[icebike]

Give me a smart phone that will do wifi without 3g crap and I'll be happy, until then the dumb phone is still far more than I need.

Any smartphone without a cell plan (even with out a sim installed) will do wifi.
And people you probably know have a drawer full of these phones that they are no longer using.
Ask them to factory reset one of them (wipe), and give them $20 bucks for it.

You don't get much besides web browsing and email, and you have to be in wifi range, and
you can even arrange for it to get incoming and maybe outgoing calls for zero money.

As long as you have wifi.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[evilviper]

I've heard your complaints before, and it's irrelevant. Your figures are dishonest, anyhow.

If you don't want a smart phone, don't get one. You don't need to chime-in every time to point out how cheap you are, and how you don't understand why you might want a smart phone. 50% of the population does, and that number is sure to keep growing. Nobody is trying to force you to upgrade.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[tepples]

You don't need to chime-in every time to point out how cheap you are

All I'm trying to say is that a minority is as cheap as I am, and this minority is still substantial especially among people who do not rely on a cell phone for their job. Some people who have posted comments to other articles are under the impression that spending beaucoup bucks on telecommunications service is an expected part of life.

Nobody is trying to force you to upgrade.

Other than Google, formerly, which until the fourth quarter of 2011 didn't allow Android Market on a 4" tablet.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[houghi]

I declare most people who have a pre-paid plan an idiot. Unfortunatly for may that is not an option anymore.

Phone prices without a plan are not real prices. They are inflated prices to show how 'cheap' the ones with a plan are.

These phones are not free. They are not cheap. You paid for them. There is no such thing as a free lunch. And please keep telling yourself that you are the one that beat the system and make money out of it. As long as you tell that to yourself, they do not need to spend it on marketing to make you believe it.

Re:So when will the price come down?

[bdh]

Well, after years as a Nokia fanboy, I finally went out and picked up cheapo Android phone last summer. I grabbed the LG Optimus One for $99 (Canadian), and I use SpeakOut wireless as my provider. It's a "pay as you go" provider, so I pay 30 cents or so a minute for phone calls, plus about $1.25 a month for 911 service. The only stipulation is that I have to top up once a year for a minimum of $25. The phone has wifi, and since I don't use data, I disabled 3G, so I get about 5-8 days battery life on average. I've been told it's not "really" a smartphone, since I don't have mobile data. Maybe not, but this setup replaces my old Palm Pilot (PDA), MP3 player, GPS (NavFree is a nice free offline GPS that works quite well, at least in my area), and alarm clock. It also happens to make and receive phone calls and the occasional SMS people send me. You're right about email, though. A 3.2" screen is pitiful for a web-based mail client, and the whole pinch/zoom thing is a pain. It will do in a pinch (like when you're in a restaurant with wifi), but I certainly cannot see pay $50 a month for the few times I want to check email or something and there's no hotspot around.

What's a smartphone anyway?

[Tony Isaac]

I have a phone that has a Web browser, can send and receive e-mail, has a full QWERTY keyboard, and run Java apps. But I'm pretty sure it's considered a "dumb" phone. What exactly is it that makes a phone "smart"? Gestures? Siri? Android or iOS? My dumb phone would have been considered "smart" just 12 years ago, when the first Blackberry was introduced!

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[ganjadude]

Actually tony, They call those "feature phones" these days, not a "dumb phone" but not a "smart phone"

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[WiiVault]

I guess the "feature" isn't having to pay monthy data fees even if you bought the phone at full cost.. My mom will be feature phone user as long as somebody is will to make them. The trick is to find a feature phone that has wifi and a usable browser for smartphone at hotspots, dumbphone everywhere else. If my phone wasn't an addiction I would seriously considering following her lead.

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[Darinbob]

But the survey does not necessarily check out your phone. In 2011 survey it seems 1/3 of respondents just claimed they had smart phone, only 2/5s were identified as smart phone based on the brand or platform. So some of those surveyed could have just reported something different than the term that kids use. Language is fluid, and marketing language is super-fluid. "Feature phone" is a term I had not even heard less than a year ago.

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of web browser? I'm thinking you have WAP, or Opera Mini that uses remote-server pre-processing. Smartphones get the full web, and they can multi-task.

But YES, the feature difference between a bottom-line Nokia and a "smartphone" right now is very slim. The term is teetering on irrelevance.

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[sayfawa]

A dumb, or feature phone, can come with all the programs you need, but doesn't have a good avenue for installing any other arbitrary program you might want.

Smart phones are more like computers that way; they're meant to have programs installed after you get it. You're not limited to what the manufacture shipped the phone with.

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[CAIMLAS]

My dumb phone would have been considered "smart" just 12 years ago

And my granddad had the latest, greatest, fastest car when he bought his Model A.

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[SeaFox]

My dumb phone would have been considered "smart" just 12 years ago, when the first Blackberry was introduced!

Yes, 12 years is hardly any time at all:

* People were still buying 5100-series Nokias powered by Ni-Cd batteries as on-contract phones.
* The end of the Newton MessagePad was still a recent event.
* Everyone was (mistakenly) hyping up for the release of Windows M.E.
* The term "smartphone" didn't even exist.

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[ganjadude]

really? the original enV was marketed as a feature phone from the very beginning and i got that if IIRC around 05 or 06

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knows. "Smart" as in phone doesn't seem to correspond with "tidy appearance" or "high intelligence". More, it is just a buzz
word like "cloud".

In general, it is best to avoid using terms invented by marketing until a real definition can be found for them.

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[narcc]

Smartphones get the full web, and they can multi-task.

Some smart phones get the "full web" (depending on your criteria) and can multitask.

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[tutp36]

i dont have smartphone either its too expensive for me. i prefer general cellphone. just like what i see in www.ngebid.com

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[saihung]

In 2005, when I bought a Nokia N75, a Symbian S60 phone with a number keypad, AT&T said it was a featurephone. In 2008, when I bought a Nokie E71 that had basically the same OS (and exactly the same capacity for installing applications), AT&T said that I owned a smartphone and cancelled my unlimited featurephone plan. I've been told that AT&T labeled some J2ME phones as "smart" phones, even though by most definitions they aren't because they cannot run native apps. The distinction seems to be arbitrary, and always to the benefit of the carrier over the subscriber.

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[Compaqt]

Most so-called dumb or feature phones allow you to install Java programs.

There's plenty of stuff you can do with the MIDP API:
http://www.developer.nokia.com/Develop/Series_40/

>Smart phones are more like computers that way; they're meant to have programs installed after you get it.
http://www.getjar.com/

People were installing Java apps before Apple even awoke to the concept.

So the question remains, what's a smartphone (other than the acid-wash jeans/Swatch of the 2000s)?

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[Compaqt]

What he's trying to elicit is some kind of identifiable definition of smartphone, other than "the cool kids' phone"?

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[Compaqt]

OK, "smartphone" is a moving target? That would also mean there's no clear line defining smart from non-smart, right?

And when someone says "I have a smartphone," he's saying "I have one of the top X% most expensive phones?"

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[Compaqt]

The reason people on Slashdot are wary of the term "smartphone" is that engineers like precision, and "smartphone" is one slippery marketing term.

Re:What's a smartphone anyway?

[Lobachevsky]

Smartphone = WiFi. If your phone can do WiFi, all the big service providers, Verizon, Sprint, ATT, etc. require you to get a "data plan" because they're shit scared you'll be happy with just WiFi and never subscribe for a data plan. It doesn't matter if your phone can crack 128-bit encryption in a minute or has a pico-projector to play 1080p 3D on 80" screens, an integrated deep blue and that IBM bot that won jeopardy, if it lacks WiFi, you'll be able to avoid paying for the data plan with service providers who'll deem it a dumb phone / feature phone and not a smart phone.

and the rest of the majority

[ThorGod]

Couldn't care less about the features of a smartphone.

Re:and the rest of the majority

[Pharmboy]

Me either. I just upgraded two days ago to the LG Extravert (hate those stupid names). It is a dumb phone, but with a physical keyboard. I do end up texting a lot with family all over the states, and even the boss. My old phone was 6 years old (but state of the art for a dumb phone then) and I would still be using it if texting with it didn't drive me crazy.

On the upside, this $79 (with contract) phone cost me nothing since Verizon gave me a 100 buck credit for not changing phones in forever.

Re:and the rest of the majority

[amiga3D]

I've noticed the vast majority of smartphone users simply browse facebook all day long. How smart does a phone need to be to do that?

Re:and the rest of the majority

[DogDude]

I don't think that in this case it's a matter of a smart phone, but dumb users.

Re:and the rest of the majority

[LoadWB]

Not very. My Sony Ericsson "feature phone" has a built-in Facebook app that I've been trying to remove. When I have a text or media message to send to a contact, the first phuqn option in the "Send" menu is "To Facebook" or "To YouTube." Annoying as hell.

Re:and the rest of the majority

[icebike]

I've noticed the vast majority of smartphone users simply browse facebook all day long. How smart does a phone need to be to do that?

I'm surprised you have time to post on Slashdot since you are keeping tabs on the "the vast majority" of smartphone users.

Re:and the rest of the majority

[steveha]

I've noticed the vast majority of smartphone users simply browse facebook all day long. How smart does a phone need to be to do that?

Microsoft tried a social featurephone. It was called the Kin. RIP. It made sense when they first thought of the idea, partly because there was going to be a special data plan for it that would cost less than an unlimited data plan. When a manager at Microsoft decreed that the Kin project needed to use Windows Phone OS, the project was delayed by over a year, and by then Verizon got fed up and scrapped the special less-expensive data plan, and people were getting really excited about iPhones. So the monthly cost of the Kin would be about the same, the cost of the Kin was nearly the same as the cost of an iPhone (assuming the carrier subsidy of course) and instead of "there's an app for that" the rule was "there's no app for that".

So, does it really surprise you that the Kin failed and people chose smartphones instead?

P.S. Consider two classes of cars:

a) can only go a short distance (most electric cars)

b) can either go a short distance or a long distance (most cars)

The second class is outselling the first class, even for people who spend all week only going a short distance. Are you surprised?

steveha

Re:and the rest of the majority

[blueg3]

That's about what the majority of computer users do all day long, too.

DragonballZ SuperSayin! He said it so I must too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Read history, we DID go completely bonkers, just sayin'.

Just sayin', just sayin'.

Do you think your phone is a Smartphone?

[brokeninside]

If so, it would have been counted as one.

From the full article:

45% of cell owners say that their phone is a smartphone, up from 33% in May 2011
49% of cell owners say that their phone operates on a smartphone platform common to the US market,1 up from 39% in May 2011

So the criterion is whether the user says their phone is a smart phone.

Personally, I think a more interesting poll question would be if phone owners use the `smart' functions on their phones or just use them as old fashioned feature phones.

On the Other Hand

[rueger]

A significant number of those people aren't as smart as their phones...

Re:On the Other Hand

[WiiVault]

that's true even for most dumbphone users.

Re:On the Other Hand

[Anonymous Coward]

they're still smarter than the average smartphone owner, though. just the fact they don't have one is proof enough.

Recurring Costs....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the monthly recurring cost which is most discouraging. In my area this is $70.00/month which equates to $840.00/yr. The problem I see is that there is not enough competition between the carriers to drive the recurring costs down and this coupled with demand will keep prices high for the foreseeable future. This won't change until there's something else to replace the smart phone which changes the demand side of the equation.

I have a CDMA dumb cell phone on a grandfathered plan Sprint introduced in 1997 where there is no monthly cost, and air time is 0.35 cents per minute, and I still have telephone sets in every room of the house. I don't subscribe to standard POTS, and instead use Asterisk and VOIP termination.

damned lies ... urm ... statistics

[pz]

From the article ...

About the Survey

This report is based on the findings of a survey on Americans' use of the Internet. The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from January 20 to February 19, 2012, among a sample of 2,253 adults, age 18 and older. Telephone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish by landline (1,352) and cell phone (901, including 440 without a landline phone). For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. For results based Internet users (n=1,729), the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

So 41% (conveniently rounded down to "two in five") is 5 percentage points below 46% (conveniently rounded up to "nearly half" when it would have also been rounded down to "two in five" if a consistent quantum of 20% had been used). Five percentage points is *just* above the sampling error of 4.6. Yes, statistics mavens who know more than me, that means significance obtained at p < 0.05, but it also means that the actual values could just as easily have been 43% and 44%, which isn't a very big difference.

My read: about 40% of the adults have an old-style phone; slightly more have a new-style phone. But what do the remaining nearly 20% have?

Re:damned lies ... urm ... statistics

[ae1294]

My read: about 40% of the adults have an old-style phone; slightly more have a new-style phone. But what do the remaining nearly 20% have?

They're unemployed and on the verge of being homeless.

Re:damned lies ... urm ... statistics

[Xtifr]

What's this "consistent quantum of 20%" nonsense? If you round to the nearest 10%, which is much more common, you get 40% and 50% percent, respectively. Now, if you were to express 40% as a ratio, what would be the most normal way to do so? That's right, two-fifths. Which is where the "fifths" comes from. To assume that that means that all the other ratios have to be expressed as fifths is silly. Nobody says "four-tenths". We automatically simplify that. But when it comes to 50%, we simplify that to...get ready for it...one half. Which is exactly what they did.

Other than that, though, your post was a good one. Except for that last question: obviously the remaining "nearly 20%" (or about 13%, which is closer to 10%) have no cell phone at all.

Re:damned lies ... urm ... statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

No, far from. Cellphones are a "necessity" for homeless people. Search for "homeless cellphone" on . Almost everyone I know who refuses to have a cell phone is making over $100K/yr. Yes, there's a blatant sampling error in my observation; I have one because I've been forced to have one by work.

Re:damned lies ... urm ... statistics

[0123456]

Almost everyone I know who refuses to have a cell phone is making over $100K/yr. Yes, there's a blatant sampling error in my observation; I have one because I've been forced to have one by work.

Indeed. Fifteen years ago a cell phone meant you were so important that you had to be contactable at all times. Today a cell phone means you're so unimportant that people can pester you at any time.

Re:damned lies ... urm ... statistics

[pz]

Phrases like "2 out of every 5" implies quantizing to 20%. If they were consistently quantizing to 10% they'd have said 4 of 10, but then that's not different enough sounding from 46%.

In other words, it's a snow job.

Re:damned lies ... urm ... statistics

[Xtifr]

Phrases like "2 out of every 5" implies quantizing to 20%.

On what planet? You might just as well claim that because they referred to 46% as "about one half", they were obviously "quantizing" to 50%. These are Earth-humans we're discussing here, not Vulcans. We here on Earth routinely simply our ratios without implying anything by it.

Re:damned lies ... urm ... statistics

[LynnwoodRooster]

That's the beauty of math - you can use different denominators in your fractions and STILL make valid comparisons! No need to make them all the same, say a 5...

Work?

[DogDude]

Call me crazy, but I use my phone to have constant access to my Exchange Server so I can... get ready... work! I don't understand why people, who don't need to be connected 24/7 get these things. I'd much rather have a cheap-o, simple cell phone than what I have now, but, as it is, I need to be available all of the time to my company. I'm not going to squint to watch videos on it, and I certainly don't need to know what's going on on Facebook all the time, so I really can't explain why most people would get one other than keeping up with the Joneses. I think the situation is comparable to people who drive giant SUV's and trucks to commute to an office job... there's simply no sane reason for taking on the added expense and hassle unless you're obsessed with what other people think about the shit you own.

Recharge 1 / week ?

[gustep12]

I have a dumb phone, but I only need to recharge it about once per week to once every ten days. It doesn't weigh down my pocket, and It works really well as a phone, too. For everything else, I use real computers.

Smartphones cost $72,381

[Anonymous Coward]

Smartphones are devastating to savings: Lifetime use of an iPhone at current rates will cost one $72,381. Take a look: http://www.kerryonworld.com/technology/total-cost-of-lifelong-ownership-for-iphone

Why does a *phone* cost so much?

Re:Smartphones cost $72,381

[c1t1z3nk41n3]

This estimate is retarded for many reasons. But the simplest is that the author fails at basic math. He states a monthly cost of $105 when the options he's listed would only cost $85.

Re:Smartphones cost $72,381

[Anonymous Coward]

You will be lucky if that iPhone lasts the three year contract.

Re:Smartphones cost $72,381

[Anonymous Coward]

Not when my company pays for it. I never even bothered to own a cell phone until they offered to pony up.

Smarts

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone else is smart enough not to own a smart phone.

On "intelligence"

[Taco Cowboy]

Well, I think your argument is self-negating. Intelligence is not the rote memorization of facts, unless you consider books and computers to be the most intelligent things around

I totally agree with you that rote memorizing of facts does not represent "Intelligence"

But "Intelligence" must still start from a base point

You see, "Intelligence" includes "Imagination", "Thinking", "Problem Solving"

How do you start imagining?

Often that not we start imagine something when we are not satisfied with the thing that we are facing in our real lives

When our wives ain't sexy no more, we start to imagine ourselves with very sexy girlfriends

When our house gets to crowded, we start to imagine having a bigger house

See a pattern here?

Yes, we must have a starting point to imagine, to think, to ponder, to begin to solve a question, and that "Starting Point", my friend, is a FACT

If we can't even remembering a FACT, if we relegate the roll of remembering all the facts to a gadget, please tell me how would we improve our intelligence if we can't remember all the important facts?

Re:On "intelligence"

[Calos]

The things you described aren't just facts, in the abstract - they are problems.

Knowing the king in the 1300s in the isles now known as Great Britain is a fact, not an actionable problem.

Fighting to remember and organize phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, etc., is a fact, but more importantly, a problem. Ironically, it's a problem we're mitigating by using our intelligence and creativity to make devices that make this information easily accessible and searchable.

Re:On "intelligence"

[icebike]

But "Intelligence" must still start from a base point
You see, "Intelligence" includes "Imagination", "Thinking", "Problem Solving"
How do you start imagining?

I start by knowing (not imagining) what it is I want to KNOW ABOUT, and having the best and most efficient tools around to get at that knowledge.

Smartphone, Computers, Books and Encyclopedias (even if obsolete), and Libraries, in that order.

Being able to use the most efficient tools to gather knowledge is more a sign of intelligence than is rote memorization.
 

Re:On "intelligence"

[Anonymous Coward]

Being able to understand and use that knowledge is a sign of intelligence rather then knowing how to find it. For example, knowing how to slightly modify someone else's registry patch to suit your situation rather than blindly applying it and breaking stuff.

Anyone can look up a fact, understanding it is a whole new level.

they have smartphones because they were given one?

[Blaskowicz]

more like half people, or half of half people are talked into getting a smartphone, because it's "cheap" as it's almost offered when renewing the subscription, or maybe because smartphones crash in price and soon are to the $100 mark, or because they believe their blackberry look-a-like with a music player and web browser is a smartphone. endless reasons. study doesn't say how many people own a smartphone for text and voice only, and never hook it up to a PC, never plug the proprietary ear buds in, and never use the internet function except for checking a train schedule or something every two weeks.

And the other half...

[hcs_$reboot]

...has a Windows phone :-)

Sucking my thumbs..

[RulerOf]

And, for the record, I happen to be an outspoken anti-smartphone guy, likening them to Linus' security blanket. Might as well be suckin' your widdle thumbs, too.

God damn it... I went to answer a call and I just got slobber all over my iPhone again.

Been around the computer block...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been into computer's since before my Commodore 64, spent over $2,000 for a 300mhz pentium compaq model in the late 90's. Now I just found out from Toshiba repair that my newish $400 Win7 laptop, which after a 'friend' returned to me DOA, had liquid spilled in it. It'd cost me $375 to fix!
      So, a couple of month's ago, I buy a decently reviewed OptimusV from Amazon for $95. And it's great! Really!
        As a 50+ layman user, I get easy access to my email, google navigation (I still have my Garmin, but don't 'need' it now.), some very cool free games, my music all stored on a cheap mini SD card, free classic kindle books, ...
        It's a 600mhz portable computer with a phone app! WI-FI, 3G, accelerometer, and even has a decent 3.5mp camera. I come from the bad old, expensive days of tech. I've even dropped the sucker a few times, no problem! A VirginMobile $25 per month, unlimited (?) 3g,300 minutes plan! (I'm 'grandfathered' in), why wouldn't I want this!

       

Re:Been around the computer block...

[SternisheFan]

I have a VM Optimus phone, and it is the way to go today. Everyone bitching about high data prices are still stuck in the 2000's! or locked into idiotic, high priced, low value phone plans. $35 a month gets unlimited 3g, texting, and a wonder phone of modern technology. Come out of your caves! New tech awaits you! And the OptimusV is a Linux based system which you can learn to "root", and put any operating system you like on. Grumpy old dudes, stay in your caves and moan, but at least disinfect your nasty old keyboards. The rest of us are walking around in the sunshine, digging this amazing life and time we're in. Much to do, all while mobile... Oh, and stop farting in that chair and get out of your four walled prison you keep yourself in. C'mon, the sun feels good! Thanks, Slashdot dudes. Glad I got that off my chest!

Re:Been around the computer block...

[Anonymous Coward]

dumb troll is dumb

Re:Work Sucks Black Cock?

[DogDude]

You're right. "The rest of you" probably don't own your own multi-million dollar business.

Going the other way

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm planning to buy a iPad this year; and, once that's happened, I'm giving my Android phone away and moving back to a "dumb" phone. Smart phones are just too compromised in too many ways.

Smartphone service costs five times as much

[tepples]

There are smartphones for less than $80, no contract or lock.

Dumbphone service on Virgin Mobile USA, a Sprint company: $7 per month for occasional use. Smartphone service on the same carrier: $35 per month minimum. No, they won't let me activate a dumbphone plan on a smartphone, so I have to either carry two devices (a dumbphone for making calls and a smartphone for running applications on Wi-Fi) or pay $28 per month for minutes that I won't use just for the privilege of consolidating the devices

Re:Smartphone service costs five times as much

[Nethead]

Cry me a river. When I was growing up mobile telephones had rotary dials and vacuum tube finals. Calls were about $1.25 a minute ($6 in today's money.) There were 1-3 channels per city and you had to wait your turn. There was no encryption, anyone could listen in. You didn't own your phone, the phone company did, and they installed it in your car.

http://www.wb6nvh.com/MTSfiles/Carphone5.htm

Lawn.

Re:Smartphone service costs five times as much

[Psicopatico]

Duct tape the two things togheter and... tah-dah!!! Here you have your single gadget.

Duct tape: the cornerstone of every healthy and smart citizen.

Re:Smartphone service costs five times as much

[Farmer Tim]

Duct tape: the cornerstone of every healthy and smart citizen.

Not if it's over your mouth and you're tied to a chair.

Re:Work Sucks Black Cock?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us do. We just run them well enough and hire competent enough people that we are very rarely needed for "emergencies".

Next question

[Compaqt]

What % of American adults are smart?

Re:Next question

[blueg3]

50% are smarter than the median.

Duh! Try to find a non "smart" phone.

[t4ng*]

Cell phone companies are phasing out simple cell phone. As the old ones break down and get replaced, the percentage of smart phone owners will go up. Cell phones companies want it this way because they get a much greater profit margin off of smart phones.

poverty line

[bcrowell]

About 15% of Americans are below the poverty line. According to TFA, 19% of Americans don't own any kind of cell phone (smart or dumb). I don't know whether this says more about how Americans define poverty or more about how much Americans love cell phones. Someday soon I expect to be the last affluent, educated American under 50 who doesn't own a cell phone.

Re:poverty line

[tomhath]

The government will give you a free cell phone if you're below the poverty line.

Re:poverty line

[SternisheFan]

The goverment gives celphones away too poorer people because, statistcally, guess who commit more crimes? Low income people! Now, it's a simple matter for police to find out who was at the scene of a crime using cellphone tracking tech. Hell, some of these morons even 'tweet' their no morals, "shiny" coveting asses right to jail, where they rightfully belong. The govt. gives them away to so low level, some violent and pedophiliac types can be removed from further harming the good people of this life. An extra benefit too is the good low income, vulnerable women, men & children now can get help at the press of a few buttons. And what's wrong with that???

Re:poverty line

[makomk]

It'd be even less than that if the US cellphone market didn't suck so much. Here in the UK, pay as you go cellphones are dirt cheap due to competition - if you can afford to feed yourself and keep a roof over your head, you can afford to have a cellphone. In fact, even if you can't you can probably still afford a cellphone.

Yeah the other half are smart, phone owners...

[kimgkimg]

I chose to have a house down-payment rather than spending ~$1000/year on a phone...

Re:Yeah the other half are smart, phone owners...

[Anonymous Coward]

House is paid for your point again? I used the most scrimpy of plans. Land line until land line cost more than the cell per month...

Now I have a smart phone. Changed the way I live. It is MOST awesome. Could I go back? yes... I would be bitching the whole way though.

The cost is still WAY to high for what it is though...

Re:Yeah the other half are smart, phone owners...

[foniksonik]

I bought my wife an iPhone to replace a broken laptop. It's her only connected device. What's not smart about that? It does everything she needs and cost less and is available wherever she goes while caring for the kids. The kids play educational games on it.

We have unlimited data on AT&T and pay ~$50 mo. x 2 (I also have one) with limited call time since we pretty much just use free IM chat with each other.

Our phones are really the equivalent of a laptop for us. The phone part is like Skype. It's just another function - not the primary use case.

Re:Yeah the other half are smart, phone owners...

[vlm]

I chose to have a house down-payment rather than spending ~$1000/year on a phone...

I believe this is another example of early adopter-itis

True, at one (recent) point if you wanted a iphone you were writing a check for $120 per month for 2 years plus $500 upfront is more like $1500/year. So, I heard the price and "Forget about it, I'm priced out so I don't care anymore". Much like I don't bother following the price of sailboats over 50 feet long, or the new Ferrari market.

I "upgraded" in December from paying about $7/month for a dumb phone to a shocking $20/month for an android phone. So far so good.

Another example of early adopter-itis is when first released a picture window sized TV would have cost more than a (cheap) new car, so I ignore the entire market for years. To my complete amazement last fall when my old SD CRT was failing after 25 years of service, a picture window sized TV only costs about as much as a picture window, so I bought one. The TV shows and movies continue to suck, but now they suck in higher res, and my wife is happy, and it was very cheap.

I intentionally removed myself from the market when first released because the price was insane. Now its cheap and I'm shocked to be in the market. This happens over and over...

Re:Yeah the other half are smart, phone owners...

[Sporkinum]

Are you using a pre-paid phone? My wife probably spends no more than $10 a month for her calls. The phone cost $20, for a 5 year old blackberry, and 5 cents a minute for calls. She only uses it as a phone though.
I carry a work supplied blackberry, so I have no costs. If I did not have that, I imagine I would do like my wife and carry a cheap pre-paid phone. I see no need to carry around the internet, and would probably only do an hour or two of calls per month.

You will be investigated

[Jazari]

For police, smartphones are the DNA or fingerprints of the 21st century. Soon every crime investigation will start with "any DNA on scene?" followed by "Who do the tower logs say was in the area at the time of the crime?"

Re:You will be investigated

[mapkinase]

You can have the dumbest phone in the Kenyan village, but it will leave tower logs as tower loggy as your iPad.

Re:You will be investigated

[Anonymous Coward]

...because "dumb" phones are not visible in the logs?

Re:You will be investigated

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you can't do that with feature phones?

Re:You will be investigated

[Jazari]

Smartphones are worse, because once they seize them and download their contents, additional info can be recovered: GPS tracks, search engine logs, etc.

Re:You will be investigated

[mapkinase]

That's true, but the comment I was replying to was about tower logs.

Re:You will be investigated

[gl4ss]

..smartphones??
that time already began with nmt! gsm with smaller cells just tidies it up.

it's quite standard course of action in murder cases, been for years(and disappearances).

Re:You will be investigated

[houghi]

You do not need a smartphone for that. Any cellphone will do that, including the unbreakable nokias.

You missed the point

[shiftless]

His point was to illustrate that smartphones aren't "crutches", they're tools, and the only ones labelling them crutches are luddites who don't understand the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. If he wants to go back to memorizing Rolodexes he can be my guest. I'm loving the fact that I don't even have to ASK people's phone number half the time anymore, since they post it on Facebook, and it automatically updates to my phone. This frees up brain cells which can be more productively used for other things.

Re:You missed the point

[RightwingNutjob]

I do, in fact, like not having to remember trivial stuff. I haven't remembered a phone number since I got a (dumb) phone with speed dial. But then I got a real job, where the company-issued phones on your desk don't have customizable speed dial, and you either had to look something up on a web directory, use the god-awful voice recognition service, or actually memorize people's (4-digit) phone numbers.

The reason I used the word "crutch" is that at this point of the technology, it can still be knocked out from under you, so you'd better know how to stand on your own.

Pen and paper are a crutch too (the earliest recorded materials from ancient Greece are bitchings about how writing stuff down lets people get lazy with their memory), but it's a much more mature and robust crutch that isn't so prone to failure. Paper is cheap, plentiful, and massively stockpiled. So are pens, pencils, markers, and crayons. Cell phone towers, wifi access points? Nothing a little extended power outage or a stupid software error won't take out like a hot knife through butter.

Re:You missed the point

[narcc]

If he wants to go back to memorizing Rolodexes he can be my guest.

No one memorized their Rolodex. They had a Rolodex for that. They also had this neat thing called an address book for taking that data with them on the go.

Those things had amazing battery life (they never needed charging), the most intuitive UI ever, and a great display that actually looked better in bright sunlight. As a bonus, they could survive countless falls on to concrete from astonishing heights.

If that's not enough, while today's smartphones struggle with decent unicode support, those "obsolete" address books managed even the most obscure con-lang alphabets with ease.

Re:You missed the point

[adolf]

Cool.

Would you mind telling me how I can back up my Rolodex, so that if it dies in a fire I can just buy a new Rolodex and have it filled out automatically?

Re:You missed the point

[shiftless]

Those things had amazing battery life (they never needed charging), the most intuitive UI ever, and a great display that actually looked better in bright sunlight. As a bonus, they could survive countless falls on to concrete from astonishing heights.

None of which I care about because:

a) My battery lasts all day, 4-5+ hours of heavy use. Leaving my phone on the night stand to charge at night is not a hassle, and the power required is so small as to be negligible.

b) Really? Reading and writing is something we learn to do from birth, rather than having to learn and practice? There is nothing unintuitive about my HTC Sense UI, and there's no reason to suspect touchscreen UIs will become *less* intuitive as the technology is refined. Paper has been around for how many thousands of years now, vs smart phones for ten? Give em time.

c) I rarely ever use my phone in bright sunlight. Even if I did, I would never opt for or want a matte display. I prefer glossy hands down.

d) I don't make a habit of dropping $250 electronic devices. Even if the phone went through a catastrophe, the SIM card and memory card would likely survive and be usable.

If that's not enough, while today's smartphones struggle with decent unicode support, those "obsolete" address books managed even the most obscure con-lang alphabets with ease.

Who cares? This a nitpick, and will be resolved with evolving technology along with your other nitpicks.

Re:You missed the point

[narcc]

Damn, you're thick.

The parent touts the primary advantage of having a smartphone is ... the address book!

Ignoring for the moment that even the dumbest of dumb phones had this feature last century, he's saying that smartphones have allowed us to advance beyond our limited memory by allowing us to write things down.

It seems that he has confused the advent of the smartphone with the advent of written language.

I rarely ever use my phone in bright sunlight. Even if I did, I would never opt for or want a matte display. I prefer glossy hands down.

Why do you even have a cellphone? You've got to get wretched reception in your moms basement.

Yeah but...

[shiftless]

Who needs a cell phone plan, when you can just use Wifi and Google Voice to send/receive calls/texts, and for FAR cheaper? This is where the smart phone really shines.

Re:Yeah but...

[icebike]

Google voice really does next to nothing without a cell plan. You can't call with google voice alone. Its an elaborate answering machine until that point in time when google flips the switch and turns on SIP/Voip over WIFI.

Re:Yeah but...

[Boycott BMG]

You can already do this. Search the android market for groove ip. Unfortunately, groove ip isn't perfect, you may need to configure it if the sound quality is bad.

yep, same here. costs too damn much

[radarradar]

Can't see paying nearly 1k/yr for smartphone service. It's not even close to worth it. I can wait until i get home or get to work.

I am the 54%.

[antdude]

I don't even own a mobile phone. I wonder how many American adults that would be. :P

Re:I am the 54%.

[bluefrogcs]

I don't even own a mobile phone. I wonder how many American adults that would be. :P

At least 2 .. I don't have one either. ;>

Re:I am the 54%.

[antdude]

Woohoo. We're rare! Maybe there are more. Maybe we can be 1%. :P

Re:I am the 54%.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apperently, 13%

Re:I am the 54%.

[Oswald McWeany]

I wish I were you. Unfortunately I am required to have one for my job.

No desire for a smart phone yet.

Re:Work Sucks Black Cock?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, good for all of you anonymous business owners. None of you need smart phones. Congratulations!

Will this trend makes US roadways safer or worse?

[Anonymous Coward]

My question: smart phone makes driving safer or the opposite?

China’s economy will surpass the U.S. in 201

[mapkinase]

Coincidentally, I saw this today (old, but new for me)

China’s economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016

Know the facts first before understanding

[Taco Cowboy]

Being able to understand and use that knowledge is a sign of intelligence rather then knowing how to find it. For example, knowing how to slightly modify someone else's registry patch to suit your situation rather than blindly applying it and breaking stuff.

Anyone can look up a fact, understanding it is a whole new level.

You got something here !

To understand something you have to first know that something, right?

If one can't even remember a fact, how can one begins to understand it?

Hence lies the danger of over-reliance on the gadgets, and the relegation of fact-retention to those gadgets

In App-Store Walled Garden, smartphone owns YOU!

[davidwr]

Apple is headquartered in Soviet Russia??? Who knew?

They must've started up again

[davidwr]

Last time I checked, my state still required students to learn their times tables.

However, as early as the 1980s, students stopped learning how to use a slide rule, trig tables, and log tables.

oldschool

[fragMasterFlash]

So how many of you have ever owned a little black book of contact information for friends, lovers and family? What year did this book cease to play a relevant role in your day to day life? Was it the year you got an Internet email account, joined freindster, myspace, or facebook, or bought your first featurephone? If I were a betting man I'd bet I could guess your age within 5 years based on you how you answer these questions.

Re:oldschool

[Anonymous Coward]

I never had a little black book. I've never owned a cellphone. I have never joined facebook, myspace or friendster. I have had more email accounts than I can recall. How old am I?

Re:oldschool

[painandgreed]

So how many of you have ever owned a little black book of contact information for friends, lovers and family? What year did this book cease to play a relevant role in your day to day life? Was it the year you got an Internet email account, joined freindster, myspace, or facebook, or bought your first featurephone? If I were a betting man I'd bet I could guess your age within 5 years based on you how you answer these questions.

The year I got a PDA (Palm III). How old am I?

"payers" not "owners"

[robbarrett]

FTFY.... "Nearly half (46%) of American adults are currently paying to use a smartphone..."

Disagree

[shiftless]

Pen and paper are a crutch too (the earliest recorded materials from ancient Greece are bitchings about how writing stuff down lets people get lazy with their memory), but it's a much more mature and robust crutch that isn't so prone to failure. Paper is cheap, plentiful, and massively stockpiled. So are pens, pencils, markers, and crayons. Cell phone towers, wifi access points? Nothing a little extended power outage or a stupid software error won't take out like a hot knife through butter.

I understand what you mean, but when you follow your argument out to its logical conclusions it becomes fallacious. I mean, you could go farther and say (for example) every person NEEDS to learn basic survival skills such as how to hunt, how to skin a hog, etc, and that a person who doesn't is stupid and unprepared. The thing is, they're really not. This person who refuses to learn such knowledge is just making a bet that he/she won't ever run into a situation where having that knowledge clear in one's mind would make the difference between life or death. I myself do not know much about butchering an animal, but keep tons of similar information on my 1TB hard drive just in case. Yes, I am making a bet (which I am pretty confident in) that I can somehow find a way to power that hard drive to retrieve the information in the event I need it.

To think that people will lose the ability to read or write due to over-reliance on smartphones is absurd. As long as the skill is useful it will be practiced. I mean, are you worried that civilization will evolve to a point where nobody reads or writes at all on pen and paper? And you are concerned that at some point, civilization will end, and these people will be left with no way to write since their technology died,? I have a feeling there would be much bigger difficulties encountered by these people than the trouble of how to learn to scratch symbols with a hard object onto a flat surface.

Better batteries, longer lasting dumb phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could these smart phone batteries be used in regular dumb phones to keep them running for around a month?
I'd like to be able to go camping for a month or two and not have to worry about my phone crapping out on me.

Pavlov's revenge

[Anonymous Coward]

brought to you by at&t.

Re:Yeah because you can't buy a normal phone anymo

[martas]

Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me...

You see where this is going.

LOL it turns out /. has a "compression filter", where if your comment compresses too much you can't post it, hence I had to decrease the number of repetitions. Maybe if this algorithm was improved to do more semantic compression, comments like "the US is a theocracy", or "1984 wasn't a manual" wouldn't be posted as much... Just a thought.

Confused

[shiftless]

The parent touts the primary advantage of having a smartphone is ... the address book!

Sorry... you must be responding to the wrong thread

What Hogwash

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1983 I got my first PC clone. My dad had told me about less powerful computers had taken up whole rooms not long before. I thought to myself, "It's gonna be sooo cool when I have a computer like this to carry in my pocket." I got that in about 1996 with my HP100LX and later my HP200LX. They were awsome fully functional DOS based computers that fit in my pocket. I loved it and used it to extend my abilities. I was able to carry a database, my calendar, a calculator, a word processor, a spreadsheet, and nethack3.0 in my pocket! I thought, "won't it be great when we can have something like this that can get on the internet, and is also a phone!" Now we have that, and IT IS REALLY GREAT! I carry around a phone/gps/compass/camera/audio recorder/computer in my pocket every day now. I can pull files from the server at my work. I have developed databases for my job. I have all my contacts in my pocket and available at any internet connected pc. I can email, text, call, or send recorded voice messages to nearly anyone I know. I get cute pictures of my nieces, and share cute pics of my son. I rarely need the help of gps, so I use Waze which instead of telling me how to get to a place, tells me how to get there while avoiding the worst traffic, and when I find mistakes I can using my mapping expertise to FIX the online map which benefits many more people. Someone had the brilliant idea of combining the camera and computer capabilities to make an app that turned my phone into a portable scanner that outputs jpgs or pdfs! The power of having so many tools lumped together in a programmable and portable devise, is only beginning to be exploited. Whine all you want, I love the things that my smart phone enables me to do, and the time it can save me. I did without one until a few months ago, and could do without again, but I'd rather not, it's too handy!

Re:Yeah because you can't buy a normal phone anymo

[hiryuu]

Everything now is a bloated smartphone with poor reception and even poorer battery life

Assuming you can stomach being limited to AT&T and T-Mobile for your service providers, there's always the option of buying unlocked GSM phones from the slightly-more-expansive global marketplace, and dropping a SIM card into one of these. It definitely opens up a lot more choices of phones and features, at a wide range of fairly acceptable prices. The disadvantage - with AT&T at least - is that you don't get a cheaper rate for not having a contract with the "free" phone subsidy charge built in there.