Comparison between smartphone OSs

The number of smartphone user increase quickly in the past few years. There are two main factors that will affect the performance of smartphone. They are the hardware of the smartphone and the operating system (OS) of the smartphone. In my critique, I will focus on the OS of smartphone. I will compare different smartphone OS and find their pros and cons.
 

There are four major smartphone OS. They are iOS, Android, Symbian OS and Windows Mobile. I will talk about their pros and cons one by one and compare them.

First, I will talk about iOS. iOS is developed by Apple Inc. and is used in the products which are produced by Apple Inc., for example, iPhone. It is proprietary operating system and no one other than Apple Inc. can change or modify the system. Also, iOS do not allow user to install third-party naive applications. If iOS users want to overcome the limitation that set by Apple Inc., they need to jailbreak so that they can remove the limitations. Although there are some disadvantages of iOS, there are some advantages. Its performance in entertaining is extremely powerful. You can always see someone use their iPhone or iPad to play games or watch movie. Moreover, many applications are available for the user of iOS. Overall, iOS is a powerful operating system but it is inconvenience to use third-party applications.
 

Then I will talk about Android. Android is developed by Google. Since it is an open source operating system, it can be modified by Smartphone manufacturers to fit with their products. This system is used by many smartphones made by several famous brands such as HTC, Motorola, etc. As Android is an open source operating system, a large variety of applications is available for Android users. Also, as Android is developed by Google, Android users can use many Google features very well. For example, Android smartphones use Google map and checking Gmail without using Internet browser. However, the number of applications that provide for Android users is still not very much. Moreover, Android use visual keyboard to typing words.
It is not convenience for users to type when compare to real keyboards. Overall, it is suitable for users who always use Internet.

Now, I would like to talk about Windows Mobile. Windows mobile is developed by Microsoft. Windows Mobile is a proprietary operating system. Its functions are very powerful. Moreover, it is designed for business usage and therefore it is very suitable for people who always do business with others. However, since it is designed for business usage, its performance of entertaining is not very good. The resolution of the image of the phone use Windows Mobile is not very high and its video player is not very good. In addition, Windows Mobile is not user friendly, it is difficult to use when people first using it. Overall, Windows Mobile is suitable for businessman but not suitable for people who want entertainment.

Lastly, I will talk about Symbian OS. Symbian OS is developed by Symbian Foundation. It is an open source operating system. Since Symbian OS is one of the oldest mobile operating system, it is almost fully functional. It is mainly target on photo taking, listening music and entertaining. Moreover, due to the longtime of development, it provides more software for Symbian OS users. However, the Internet service of Symbian OS is not very good, it do not have many support of different Internet service. Overall, the market share of Symbian OS is decreasing. It is not competitive when compare with its competitors.

To conclude, different mobile operating system has their advantages and disadvantages. If we want to buy a smartphone, we should choose a suitable mobile operating system due to our requirement and personal needs. Different people will have different user experiments in different mobile operating systems because of their different personal needs and their requirements.

The perasive use of Smartphones: The impact on Society

Technology has always had an impact on society. First came the PCs that changed our life as we knew it. Then came along the cell phones that transformed the way we communicated with each other. And finally came the smart phones that enabled us to do most of the things both the inventions did by just using one device. Nowadays there is an increased trend that more and more people have started to use smart phones. Their pervasive use has affected the society in many ways.

The web browsing facilities of smart phones have enabled people to bring their work with them anywhere. For some people it has provided a means through which they can enjoy more quality time with their family while at the same time engage in business ventures.

How the pervasive use of smart phones has affected the human behavior?

Smart phones have now transformed our social interactions.  In recent years, more people are spending more time on their smart phones than on any other things. Although they provide us with a lot of facilities, their pervasive use has made us ignorant.

There was a time that people in public areas or on public transport vehicles actually used to interact with each other and share a healthy discussion. Every day to work or to school, people used to have a healthy chat with the person sitting next to them. The pervasive use of smart phones has put an end to that as people are more interested in blogging or playing games than talking to each other. Although their increased usage for social networking sites has allowed us to stay contact with our distant friends, they have isolated us from the people around us. For instance, on our way to school or going to work, how many of us would have really talked to the person sitting next to us? We may know people from as far as the United States or Canada but this too is at the expense of people right next to us.

The need to be in style and to be associated with a particular social group has also led many people to purchase a smart phone. The type of phone a person owns has now become a symbol of status. In general, the costlier the phone is and the better its applications are, the wealthier the person is considered. They have transformed the way we interact with people. The cell phone is now a fashion custom, decorated to reflect the owner's personality, his friends, his job and much more.

What impact has the pervasive use of smart phones had over the PCs?

One of the most popular things Smartphones are used for are blogging and for accessing social networking sites. This is especially common amongst the teenagers. Both of this has resulted in a boost of social networking sites.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams is reported to have said that 46% of active Twitter users regularly use a mobile device to tweet.

According to a survey conducted by Compete, a web analytics firm, out of all the people using Facebook ,  an increasingly large number of people (66 percent) are using their smart phones to read news feeds,  post status updates (60 percent), read & reply to private messages (59 percent) and post photos (44 percent). This shows that now more and more people are accessing the internet from their smart phones rather than from their PCs. This fact has been even more pronounced ever since the integration of popular applications such as YouTube on smart phones, which now provides access to apparently infinite music and video libraries and do so at great speed.

Along with their entertainment capabilities, many smart phones have also put their technological abilities to a more productive and constructive use. It is now common to see that smart phones are nowadays being used as a scheduler, keeping track of a person's appointments. Navigation has also been aided by the increased integration of internet applications into mobile phones. Many smart phones are now equipped with internet based tools such as Google Maps and even GPS to help people to stay on their course, hence fueling their use over PCs further.

I believe that although the smart phones have provided us with many useful applications, their pervasive use has made us ignorant of the people around us. Social networking sites do connect us to the people around the globe but this too is at the expense of the people around us, people who we meet in our daily lives. Their pervasive use has made them a part of our daily live. We use them to store our contacts, our appointments and all our daily lives work, making us more and more dependent on them day by day. They have also changed the way we think. It's not about who we are anyone but what kind of cell phone do we own. The pervasive use of smart phones has now made them a part of our personality.

The Role of Smartphones in Medicine

Nowadays, we always discuss about Smartphone with friends or others around us. By the way, what is Smartphone? How smart is it? Simply, Smartphone is a combination of PDA and cell phone. In other words, it has features not only like those we can find on a computer but also making phone calls. Smartphone allows us to install and run many applications. It also let us access Internet. These features make Smartphone popular and become a useful device among different fields, especially in the medical field.

To satisfy health care practitioners' desire, many medical apps are developed and released. For example, medical calculators, clinical resource apps, medical dictionary apps, and apps for patients scheduling, prescription drug reference and electronic health record. We can read reference books, dictionary and patients' records on our Smartphone and thus not much space is taken up for storing the materials. In the old days, doctors and nurses need to write up all the data by hand, and stored them in paper form. The data could be ruined easier simply by a drop of water; as time goes by, ink might run out causes lost of important information about the patient's history. In the case of any emergency, it requires to search for the whole data base store which could be time consuming. However, medical apps can solve these problems now and physicians can search data anywhere and anytime. It also provides a better communication platform for physicians to transfer messages. They can just send out important information to the system through apps, and other colleagues can notice it immediately wherever. It seems convenient for physicians to have a Smartphone.

Nevertheless, in 2009, Software Advice surveyed health care professionals about their preference of Smartphone. According to the survey results, email, note taking and prescription drug reference are popular software among the respondents. They seldom do the clinical related tasks such as checking the medical image viewing and patients' records which are the top two tasks that physicians desire to do with their Smartphone. There seems to be a contradiction because those clinical related tasks are too slow to run or integrate with Smartphone. Therefore, they cannot work with Smartphone on a clinical base.

Apart from this, the growing popularity of Smartphone leads to security problem. Many people do many things with their Smartphone such as checking emails online. This would probably provide an extra platform for hackers to steal personal information from our phones. Furthermore, there is lack of software for securely managing the patient's record at present. If physicians handle the health care information with Smartphone, the patients' record could be leaked out easily. Potential danger of physical theft of Smartphone is also a concern. Smartphone is valuable and can be sold for a good price after all. However, it sometimes may not be stolen by others, but physicians lose it themselves; just like the staffs lost the USB which patients' information was stored a few months before. Therefore, it is not possible for physicians to use Smartphone as a "medical" device.

Like cell phones, long term exposure to Smartphone is harmful for our health. According to the report from Environmental Working Group, the top 10 Smartphone with highest radiation averagely emit 1.53 W/kg radiation, which nearly reach the upper legal limit, 1.6 W/kg. Some may probably argue that we can choose some Smartphone with low radiation. However, we would mostly choose the model based on the functions or appearance of Smartphone. Moreover, from the same research, there is a relationship between prolonged cell phone uses and brain cancer, salivary gland tumors and migraines. Health care professionals are "healer" but not the "killer". They should do no harm to themselves.

At last, Smartphone is an evidence of advanced technology. It is convenient for us to do things whenever and wherever. It also helps us to enhance the relationship with each other. There is nothing wrong with Smartphone, but it is not suitable to use Smartphone as a "medical" device now unless Smartphone has larger loading capacity to run the medical apps, can be protected securely, and emit low radiation. One more important thing is that there should be emergency measures in case of damaged medical apps, system or Smartphone. In the future, Smartphone would become a useful medical instrument.

Reference

1. EEZIPC.com. (n.d.). Radiation from SmartPhones . Retrieved from http://www.eezipc.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68&Itemid=57
2. International Business Times. (2010, June 23). E-Records Could Be Hazardous to Your Health. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/30165/20100623/electronic-health-records-hazardous-to-health.htm
3. Software Advice. (2009, July 30). Which Smartphone Will Own the Healthcare Market? Retrieved from The Medical Blog: http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/medical/smartphone-survey-results-1073009/

Carrying a computer all the time? The Pervasive Use of Smart Phones

Mary McDowell, Executive Vice President for Mobile Phones at Nokia, states that “80% of the world’s population is now within range of a cell-tower – people aren’t going to use PCs to connect [to the Internet], they’re going to use affordable mobile devices”.

Few years back with the inventions of portable, compact computers the business transactions became very convenient. But today this technology is being replaced by smart phones at a rapid pace. When asked 79% of the respondents cited the smart phone as a means of organizing the business than the office PC’s or the laptop. According to another survey 38% of Chinese mobile subscribers access the Internet from their hand.

According to a research by Ypartnership/Harrison Group which involved of 2,524 households, three in ten mobile phones in USA are internet enabled phones. One in five of them (19 %) had downloaded travel-related application. Travel app is a particularly easy and efficient way to get information for the business individuals. Previously laptops were used to access to any information. For example with the invention of TripIt, iPhone travel app that keep routes updated whether one is online, offline or in airplane mode have made the trip for the business individual more feasible. According to a research about 47% travelers use GPS to find the way to destination. Hence the use of laptops is becoming outdated from the lives of the business individual in looking forward for the information about the destiny of their business trip. The maps are available in the phone which can be conveniently accessed.

Business individuals use smart phones to keep track of their daily appointments. Applications such as reminder in the smart phone play the role of a secretary. The functions on the smart phone for example a calendar let the user create a reminder and add details of the meeting. In his busy schedule, the business man might forget but the phone serves as his assistant. In order to run the business successfully, one should show up for the meetings on time. Otherwise this will have an adverse impact on the business. Clients may consider one as non-serious or unprofessional.

The smart phones are further used in organizing the business by pairing them up with the computer. The phone can be connected using a USB cable or via Bluetooth. An individual will stay updated with the information. The data can then be processed in text editing softwares which are easily available in phones. The information can be accessed when offline or immediate access in a meeting. So it gets very convenient to access the information just by clicking few keys rather than to carry a laptop. With the push of a button, one has instant access to a client’s email address, phone number, instant messenger name and much more. This becomes very efficient when contacting a client when one is not at the office. With the smart phone a business individual is always in reach of the co-workers and clients. There are no barriers of internet usage which occur while using e-mail service.

With the data and contacts the individual can work at any place whether he is relaxing at home or travelling in a car. The usage is very convenient too as the personnel just have to carry a small device of negligible weight when compared to laptops.

The next question which arises is “does a smart phone have a fax service?” The fax is not the first priority when a business individual has internet access via his smart phone which allows him to e-mail the important documents. The documents can be saved or read in the portable document format (pdf). Fax services such as “Myfax”, “efax” can be approached which allow the user to send and receive faxes on a smart phone.

The camera in the smart phone is used for video conferences with the clients and workers. The smart phone can be used as a mini copy machine as important document can be captured via camera. Some phone cameras, such as the one on the Omnia/Omnia II, include a Text mode setting to make it easier to photograph a document. In some phones, camera can further be used for the efficient uploading of the directory. For example in Omnia there is a business card reader called Smart Read; with this software we can photograph a card and the information is extracted and directly put in the contacts phone book. It makes use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program that converts images to text.

If one is in a field, images of the items can be taken relevant to job and can be mailed to the office. It can even be sent to the client or used in a meeting to give a clearer view to the client rather than describing. Picture of the clients can be taken and later can be assorted in the directory along with their names. In this way it gets very easy to remember the people in future.

Due to the priority given to the smart phones over laptops, the software companies are devising new programs to further increase the efficiency of phones in business organization. One such software is “Google Finance”. It enables fast access to finance data, charts, and reports. With the aid of graphs and charts a person can predict the future trend. This is immensely useful in stock market and in other fields. In stocks a person can evaluate a constant change in stocks rate by device carried in a pocket (smart phones). This enables them to take quick decisions thus decreasing the reaction time. The individual can perform market research. This can in return save a particular company from potential loss as a person can understand the impacts and risks of investment. Furthermore the overall economy will also be strengthened. This is because of the integrated approach of the individuals in managing the capital due to the convenient access to market analysis with the aid of smart phones.

The smart phones on the other hand are not user friendly. They have a small screen of few inches and small keyboard size. It gets tiring while using them for a long time. At the end of the day, the individual may not be able to concentrate on the work and think intellectually. This may further lead to commitments and transaction which may result in a potential loss.

More over from the other aspect I will say smart phones have become essential part of one’s life. A person could not take a day off from using his phone. As a result there is no designated number of hours a person works daily. There is no clear delineation between home life and work life. This further impacts the relationships and give rise to social problems. Additionally this will affect the health of the individual. As the person is under continuous stress and workload with little leisure time, he may suffer from health drawbacks such as psychological problems, diabetes mellitus, cluster headache, blood pressure and heart diseases.

The websites viewed on the smart phones are edited by the software to optimize the web pages for the small screen of the phone. There may be some important data missing. The small size of the screen and the scrolling of the page become exhausting for an individual. As a result a person may ignore some information. This again is an important factor with can have unfavorable consequences.

The cost of using the smart phone for business purposes is relatively higher than using the computers. This is because of the long-term contracts between the users and cell phone providers. According to a research, the internet service provided increases the cost by $70 to $100 for the user. This tells us that small businesses cannot make use of smart phones to organize their business efficiently. So this can be regarded as a drawback. It can be concluded that this technology can only be availed by big enterprises.

Some users find the smart phones complicated. It takes time for them to learn and adjust to new features. As the new technology is emerging this means the user has to spent considerate amount of his time in learning the new programs. Handsets of different companies have unique features and graphics. So as a result it gets difficult for the user when he switches on a new handset. This problem is very frequent as the average life of phone is one year.

The smart phones have several advantages as discussed above but on the other hand there are many setbacks. According to my perspective the unique features of the smart phones outnumbers the drawbacks. The immense importance given to the smart phones can be judged by the sale of the smart phones even during the recession period. According to a research firm NPD Group “the high-end devices, which assemble computer-like features into handheld devices, accounted for 23% of U.S. mobile phone purchases by consumers in the fourth quarter of 2008, up from 4% two years earlier.” Due to the increasing use of the smart phones, the worldwide sales of smart phones grew 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 53 million phones. The number of smart phones in use globally is expected to hit 1.7 billion by 2014.

Under the light of the above discussion, the success of smart phones as mobile computing platforms can be attributed to the ‘micro- form’ factor. It is a tremendous benefit for convenience and portability. The smart phone for a business individual provides a dual function of a mobile and as an organizer or a laptop. Due to this psychological factor the use of smart phones for business is increasing at a rapid pace.


Reference

1. http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/smartphones/?p=1364
2. http://www.allbusiness.com/reports-reviews-sections/polls-surveys/14415704-1.html
3. http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-6452_7-6544038.html
4. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/194137/business_professionals_choose_smartphones_over_coffee.html
5. http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Trends/9-Reasons-Smartphones-Will-Take-Over-Business-Computing-743743/
6. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Finance-Optimized-for-Smartphones-153641.shtml
7. http://www.pavingways.com/category/statistics
8. http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/09/23/how-mobiles-will-drive-social-media-in-developing-countries/
9. http://www.cellphone-advertising.com/mobile-applications-revenue-to-reach-32-billion-in-2015/
10. http://www.ehow.com/how_4524176_use-smartphone-organize-business.html
    

Society Impact on Smartphone

Have you thought what you can do on the home PC - such as checking and sending e-mails, doing researches - can now be done on a Smartphone; which is way smaller and can be put into the trousers pocket for daily uses?

“In 2007 iPhone reinvented what we thought of as a Smartphone” (Jobs, 2010), which I totally agree. Nowadays, most of the Smartphone promotes the large number of applications that users can download, for example, Apple’s App Store on iTunes, provides a very organize place for both program developers and users to upload and download over 300,000 Apps to use, and the total number of the Apps that has been downloaded reaches 7 Billion times in October 2010 (Apple Inc., October 20, 2010); however, in the old days, there were no such App Store, the applications were to be installed with a CD via a Computer, and there were very limited choices.

Different purposes applications, such as games, education, finance and medication can be accessed very easily. As they are simple and easy to use, this then increased the interest and attraction of Smartphone to different kind of users. For young adults like myself, I tend to have about six pages of games on my iPhone; for my dad, he uses his Nokia Smartphone to read news on the go; while my mum only uses her phone as her ‘cook book’.

Some applications provide the uses for communication (calling and texting each other), for example Skype. Personally, I used to be an overseas student; I think the function of Skype is very useful and easy assessed. Being able to install the application of "Skype" on the phone allows me to contact my parents and friends more easily while overseas – I do not need to call a connection line and type in about forty digits of user number and password, this has make my life much easier, especially in the case of emergency. Cost wise, using Skype to call for overseas number is much cheaper than traditional international calls; in fact, it is free of charge if both parties have an account on Skype (Skype, 2010).

Also, users can access to internet and even personal e-mail via WiFi or 3G network provide by the Phone Network Service Provider. Using the internet service on Smartphone is believed to be as secure as using PC at home; this proves the convenience of Smartphone.

The tale of writing a letter and posting it has became a history, email has successfully replaced the traditional mail, with no doubt. Being able to send and receive e-mail has simplified the ways of living, in additional to the Push services (MobileMe, Yahoo!, Hotmail, Microsoft Exchange) (Apple Inc., 2010) allow us to get email when it is sent, rather than we need to fetch it about three years ago. Moreover, large attachments, such as photos, can be attached on the e-mails for reference; our life has become way easier.

Have you thought what you can do on the home PC - such as checking and sending e-mails, doing researches - can now be done on a Smartphone; which is way smaller and can be put into the trousers pocket for daily uses?

“In 2007 iPhone reinvented what we thought of as a Smartphone” (Jobs, 2010), which I totally agree. Nowadays, most of the Smartphone promotes the large number of applications that users can download, for example, Apple’s App Store on iTunes, provides a very organize place for both program developers and users to upload and download over 300,000 Apps to use, and the total number of the Apps that has been downloaded reaches 7 Billion times in October 2010 (Apple Inc., October 20, 2010); however, in the old days, there were no such App Store, the applications were to be installed with a CD via a Computer, and there were very limited choices.

Different purposes applications, such as games, education, finance and medication can be accessed very easily. As they are simple and easy to use, this then increased the interest and attraction of Smartphone to different kind of users. For young adults like myself, I tend to have about six pages of games on my iPhone; for my dad, he uses his Nokia Smartphone to read news on the go; while my mum only uses her phone as her ‘cook book’.

Some applications provide the uses for communication (calling and texting each other), for example Skype. Personally, I used to be an overseas student; I think the function of Skype is very useful and easy assessed. Being able to install the application of "Skype" on the phone allows me to contact my parents and friends more easily while overseas – I do not need to call a connection line and type in about forty digits of user number and password, this has make my life much easier, especially in the case of emergency. Cost wise, using Skype to call for overseas number is much cheaper than traditional international calls; in fact, it is free of charge if both parties have an account on Skype (Skype, 2010).

Also, users can access to internet and even personal e-mail via WiFi or 3G network provide by the Phone Network Service Provider. Using the internet service on Smartphone is believed to be as secure as using PC at home; this proves the convenience of Smartphone.

The tale of writing a letter and posting it has became a history, email has successfully replaced the traditional mail, with no doubt. Being able to send and receive e-mail has simplified the ways of living, in additional to the Push services (MobileMe, Yahoo!, Hotmail, Microsoft Exchange) (Apple Inc., 2010) allow us to get email when it is sent, rather than we need to fetch it about three years ago. Moreover, large attachments, such as photos, can be attached on the e-mails for reference; our life has become way easier.

Reference

1. Apple Inc. (October 20, 2010). Apple Special Event.
2. Apple Inc. (2010). iOS Data Management. Retrieved 2010, from Apple Developers: http://developer.apple.com/technologies/ios/data-management.html
3. Jobs, S. (2010). WWDC . Apple Inc.
4. RCR Wireless. (2010, July 14). The smart phone impact on consumer mobile usage habits . Retrieved from Analyst Angle: http://www.rcrwireless.com/ARTICLE/20100714/OPINION/100719994/analyst-angle-the-smart-phone-impact-on-consumer-mobile-usage-habits
5. Skype. (2010). Skype. Retrieved 2010, from Skype: http://www.skype.com/

Carrying a computer all the time? The Pervasive Use of Smart Phones

Mary McDowell, Executive Vice President for Mobile Phones at Nokia, states that “80% of the world’s population is now within range of a cell-tower – people aren’t going to use PCs to connect [to the Internet], they’re going to use affordable mobile devices”.

Few years back with the inventions of portable, compact computers the business transactions became very convenient. But today this technology is being replaced by smart phones at a rapid pace. When asked 79% of the respondents cited the smart phone as a means of organizing the business than the office PC’s or the laptop. According to another survey 38% of Chinese mobile subscribers access the Internet from their hand.

According to a research by Ypartnership/Harrison Group which involved of 2,524 households, three in ten mobile phones in USA are internet enabled phones. One in five of them (19 %) had downloaded travel-related application. Travel app is a particularly easy and efficient way to get information for the business individuals. Previously laptops were used to access to any information. For example with the invention of TripIt, iPhone travel app that keep routes updated whether one is online, offline or in airplane mode have made the trip for the business individual more feasible. According to a research about 47% travelers use GPS to find the way to destination. Hence the use of laptops is becoming outdated from the lives of the business individual in looking forward for the information about the destiny of their business trip. The maps are available in the phone which can be conveniently accessed.

Business individuals use smart phones to keep track of their daily appointments. Applications such as reminder in the smart phone play the role of a secretary. The functions on the smart phone for example a calendar let the user create a reminder and add details of the meeting. In his busy schedule, the business man might forget but the phone serves as his assistant. In order to run the business successfully, one should show up for the meetings on time. Otherwise this will have an adverse impact on the business. Clients may consider one as non-serious or unprofessional.

The smart phones are further used in organizing the business by pairing them up with the computer. The phone can be connected using a USB cable or via Bluetooth. An individual will stay updated with the information. The data can then be processed in text editing softwares which are easily available in phones. The information can be accessed when offline or immediate access in a meeting. So it gets very convenient to access the information just by clicking few keys rather than to carry a laptop. With the push of a button, one has instant access to a client’s email address, phone number, instant messenger name and much more. This becomes very efficient when contacting a client when one is not at the office. With the smart phone a business individual is always in reach of the co-workers and clients. There are no barriers of internet usage which occur while using e-mail service.

With the data and contacts the individual can work at any place whether he is relaxing at home or travelling in a car. The usage is very convenient too as the personnel just have to carry a small device of negligible weight when compared to laptops.

The next question which arises is “does a smart phone have a fax service?” The fax is not the first priority when a business individual has internet access via his smart phone which allows him to e-mail the important documents. The documents can be saved or read in the portable document format (pdf). Fax services such as “Myfax”, “efax” can be approached which allow the user to send and receive faxes on a smart phone.

The camera in the smart phone is used for video conferences with the clients and workers. The smart phone can be used as a mini copy machine as important document can be captured via camera. Some phone cameras, such as the one on the Omnia/Omnia II, include a Text mode setting to make it easier to photograph a document. In some phones, camera can further be used for the efficient uploading of the directory. For example in Omnia there is a business card reader called Smart Read; with this software we can photograph a card and the information is extracted and directly put in the contacts phone book. It makes use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program that converts images to text.

If one is in a field, images of the items can be taken relevant to job and can be mailed to the office. It can even be sent to the client or used in a meeting to give a clearer view to the client rather than describing. Picture of the clients can be taken and later can be assorted in the directory along with their names. In this way it gets very easy to remember the people in future.

Due to the priority given to the smart phones over laptops, the software companies are devising new programs to further increase the efficiency of phones in business organization. One such software is “Google Finance”. It enables fast access to finance data, charts, and reports. With the aid of graphs and charts a person can predict the future trend. This is immensely useful in stock market and in other fields. In stocks a person can evaluate a constant change in stocks rate by device carried in a pocket (smart phones). This enables them to take quick decisions thus decreasing the reaction time. The individual can perform market research. This can in return save a particular company from potential loss as a person can understand the impacts and risks of investment. Furthermore the overall economy will also be strengthened. This is because of the integrated approach of the individuals in managing the capital due to the convenient access to market analysis with the aid of smart phones.

The smart phones on the other hand are not user friendly. They have a small screen of few inches and small keyboard size. It gets tiring while using them for a long time. At the end of the day, the individual may not be able to concentrate on the work and think intellectually. This may further lead to commitments and transaction which may result in a potential loss.

More over from the other aspect I will say smart phones have become essential part of one’s life. A person could not take a day off from using his phone. As a result there is no designated number of hours a person works daily. There is no clear delineation between home life and work life. This further impacts the relationships and give rise to social problems. Additionally this will affect the health of the individual. As the person is under continuous stress and workload with little leisure time, he may suffer from health drawbacks such as psychological problems, diabetes mellitus, cluster headache, blood pressure and heart diseases.

The websites viewed on the smart phones are edited by the software to optimize the web pages for the small screen of the phone. There may be some important data missing. The small size of the screen and the scrolling of the page become exhausting for an individual. As a result a person may ignore some information. This again is an important factor with can have unfavorable consequences.

The cost of using the smart phone for business purposes is relatively higher than using the computers. This is because of the long-term contracts between the users and cell phone providers. According to a research, the internet service provided increases the cost by $70 to $100 for the user. This tells us that small businesses cannot make use of smart phones to organize their business efficiently. So this can be regarded as a drawback. It can be concluded that this technology can only be availed by big enterprises.

Some users find the smart phones complicated. It takes time for them to learn and adjust to new features. As the new technology is emerging this means the user has to spent considerate amount of his time in learning the new programs. Handsets of different companies have unique features and graphics. So as a result it gets difficult for the user when he switches on a new handset. This problem is very frequent as the average life of phone is one year.

The smart phones have several advantages as discussed above but on the other hand there are many setbacks. According to my perspective the unique features of the smart phones outnumbers the drawbacks. The immense importance given to the smart phones can be judged by the sale of the smart phones even during the recession period. According to a research firm NPD Group “the high-end devices, which assemble computer-like features into handheld devices, accounted for 23% of U.S. mobile phone purchases by consumers in the fourth quarter of 2008, up from 4% two years earlier.” Due to the increasing use of the smart phones, the worldwide sales of smart phones grew 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 53 million phones. The number of smart phones in use globally is expected to hit 1.7 billion by 2014.

Under the light of the above discussion, the success of smart phones as mobile computing platforms can be attributed to the ‘micro- form’ factor. It is a tremendous benefit for convenience and portability. The smart phone for a business individual provides a dual function of a mobile and as an organizer or a laptop. Due to this psychological factor the use of smart phones for business is increasing at a rapid pace.

Reference

1. http://www.allbusiness.com/reports-reviews-sections/polls-surveys/14415704-1.html
2. http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-6452_7-6544038.html
3. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/194137/business_professionals_choose_smartphones_over_coffee.html
4. http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Trends/9-Reasons-Smartphones-Will-Take-Over-Business-Computing-743743/
5. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Finance-Optimized-for-Smartphones-153641.shtml
6. http://www.pavingways.com/category/statistics
7. http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/09/23/how-mobiles-will-drive-social-media-in-developing-countries/
8. http://www.cellphone-advertising.com/mobile-applications-revenue-to-reach-32-billion-in-2015/
9. http://www.ehow.com/how_4524176_use-smartphone-organize-business.html