Why I'll never be without a smartphone
As you may expect, I love phones. I rarely call anyone, I try my best to get off the phone when anybody calls me and if you text me I’ll probably reply the following week, if at all. But, I still love phones. My smartphone obsession started a while ago and now I'll never be without one. Here's why.
Smartphones can be daunting for anybody who hasn’t used them before, but once you have a go you’ll see how easy they can be to use. My mum (who I’m sure won’t mind me saying) struggles to turn on a light switch, yet she has a smartphone and a tablet and uses them regularly to check her emails, watch TV shows and send me pictures of the dog at every opportunity. Before she had one she was adamant she would never use any of a smartphone’s features, now I’m fairly sure she’d be lost without one.
My first proper smartphone, and by proper I mean one that made my life easier – not harder, was an iPhone 3G bought for me by my extremely generous (and at the time, new credit card-wielding) girlfriend. I had the phone for a week, downloaded a few games to mess around with, set up my emails, only to find out that nobody ever emailed me except to offer me spurious miracle cures, and realised that the more expensive a phone is – the more you drop it. Fact (not really).
The following week I headed to Canada where I’d be spending the next year of my life. We had flights all booked and accommodation arranged in a very swish looking (and suspiciously affordable) house for a month. We arrived in Vancouver after travelling for 28 hours between Manchester, Heathrow and Toronto, grabbed a taxi and headed to the place we’d be calling home for a month while we set ourselves up. We arrived at the house which turned out to be right in the centre of the thriving Chinese community where very few people spoke English. We entered the house (through a wide open door) and had a look around for the lady we arranged the stay with but she was nowhere to be seen, in her place was 4 very confused looking Chinese students who were, understandably, unsure why two bedraggled English people had turned up in their kitchen with lots of bags whilst they were having dinner.
After an hour of leaving messages it became clear that the hostess with the mostess was not showing up and we had nowhere to stay, plus no idea where we were. Then I remembered that my phone could do more than try and sell me stuff or act as a conduit for a besieged prince from a royal family that nobody had heard of to ask for money, but who promised to repay me plus 3000% interest (I think his name is Nigel).
The first step was to find somewhere to stay, so I downloaded a travel accommodation app and within 3 minutes had managed to convince a local hostel into holding a room for us for 30 minutes, which, with it being a Saturday night in downtown Vancouver, they were less than happy to do. Next we needed to get to the hostel. I already had a taxi service app on the phone and was delighted to find that it worked throughout the world, so was soon on the phone to a taxi office who would be more than willing to pick us up, the only thing was that they kind of needed to know where we were. Whoops. After a quick check on Google Maps I rang them back and we managed to get a taxi and a place to stay for the night.
If I didn’t have the phone to use I’m sure we’d have been okay eventually, but it was the speed and ease with which we sorted ourselves out that impressed me, and since then I wouldn’t be without a smartphone of some sort. Also my smartphone lets me play Sneezies, I love that game.