+1000linguini wrote:I'm not sure where you work, but almost everyone I work with has a smartphone, so if your workplace is anything like mine, I'm not even sure how you're finding enough equivalent workers to compare based on their cell phone use.leonard wrote:No. You don't need one.
I have not met a single person that uses a smartphone for work - that actually seemed to get better results because of the smart phone.
From personal experience, my smartphone is totally useless for doing work, but it allows me to provide rapid support for emergency issues in live services while I'm commuting, running errands, etc. and can't be at my desk or at home because it lets me have access to email, web browsing, messaging, documents, calendar, etc. As a general rule, having a smartphone makes you more accessible, but it doesn't make you more productive. So, for those types of work where being accessible is important, then having a smartphone is often beneficial, but it doesn't magically help you get your work done or produce higher quality work.
First of all, if you are going to pay for a cell phone contract anyway, buying a data plan is usually an extra twenty or thirty dollars, not forty or fifty. It's pretty easy to justify the cost of a cell phone contract (useful in emergencies, replaces a land line, convenient when traveling, resolve a lot of stressful scenarios that used to happen a lot when people couldn't contact each other while outside their homes). And, really, it's not that difficult to justify spending $20-$30 a month on data if you're going to use it. We're really talking about the cost difference of bringing lunch from home instead of buying a sandwich two days a week. To a lot of people, that is absolutely worth being able to access email, messaging, navigation, web browsing, games, videos, music, books, audiobooks, weather, check depositing, calendar and documents from anywhere on one device for a month. To a lot of other people (presumably including yourself), it isn't.For personal use - they have a few uses - but are simply not worth the extra $40 or $50+ bucks for expensive data plans.
It seems to me the people saying you don't "need' a smartphone are expressing an opinion with little substantive argument to back that opinion up and seem to mostly have never had one. Those who say it is an excellent tool/device have often provided many examples of how a typical smartphone is used and all the roles it can play. But how about some facts. Here is a quick google link to smartphone growth. Why do you suppose smartphones are growing so rapidly in the marketplace and during generally VERY bad times? Here is a hint...it isn't because they are a waste of money. Ultimately this is your decision on where/if you want to spend say $30 a month more. But trust me, the world is moving to a smartphone model and there is really no argument about that.
https://www.google.com/search?q=growth+ ... 80&bih=935