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A new study has shed some light on how we use our smart phones nowadays, and it turns out they’re not so much phones as Internet and social networking devices.
The study ranks phone features based on how much time we spend using them every day. Phone calls are fifth, with the average person being on the blower for 12 minutes a day, the Telegraph reports. Internet use tops the poll — carried out by South Korean smart phone superproducer Samsung and oxygenated operator O2 — with an average time of nearly 25 minutes a day. Social media is second at 17 minutes.
The results make for an interesting read, but aren’t all that surprising — after all, when was the last time you heard a review rave about a smart phone’s call quality over and above its many other features? Music takes up 15 minutes of our phone time a day, and games 14 minutes. Emails are only marginally more time-consuming than texts (with 11 minutes to 10), which I didn’t expect. Watching TV shows and films takes up 9 minutes — the same amount of time as reading books. We use our phones’ cameras, meanwhile, for just 3 minutes a day.
While the camera doesn’t take up much of our time, it is the most used feature, with 74 per cent of respondents saying they’d used their handsets to take photos. Still, a drunken snap only takes a few seconds.
“Smart phones are now being used like a digital ‘Swiss Army Knife’, replacing possessions like watches, cameras, books and even laptops,” said David Johnson, general manager of devices for O2.
“While we’re seeing no let-up in the number of calls customers make or the amount of time they spend speaking on their phones, their phone now plays a far greater role in all aspects of their lives.”
What do you use your phone for mostly? With the Galaxy Note standing at 5.3-inches, and devices like Google’s Project Glass on the way, should we reclassify phones as portable computers? Let me know what you think in the comments, or on our Facebook page.
