Are Smartphones a gimmick if so why and if not why?

[rick458]

I can Email my wife (or anyone else), Listen to Pandora or Slacker, find my exact location, send a picture of that location, find a gas station, a bank ot ATM to get money for the gas, find an address (and directions to said address) weather report
traffic report, Speed traps etc etc etc...
It is a leap in communications, not a gimmick.

 

[darklide]

One person voted "yes". I want to know who and why???

It seems I always get just one swayed to the other side.

 

[gutted]

Featuures of smartphones can be gimmicky. But the phones themselves are not.

I think this is the best answer in the thread.

As I get more and more acclimated to having a smartphone (this is my first one) I realize that there are certain apps that are... pointless and/or gimmicky. However, the power and potential of the handset itself is definitely not a gimmick.

 

[Eugene]

Yes and no. I don't need facebook, web browser, etc, I needed a PDA/PIM and those are hard to find without a phone and dumb phones the calendar/pim functions have been dumbed down so much they are not useable anymore either.
So the forced to get a smartphone because we stripped calendars from dumb phones is a gimmick, the forced to get a data plan for the smartphone is a gimmick.

 

[grainysand]

Yes and no. I don't need facebook, web browser, etc, I needed a PDA/PIM and those are hard to find without a phone and dumb phones the calendar/pim functions have been dumbed down so much they are not useable anymore either.

This is one reason I laugh at people who insist their dumbphones can do as much as a smartphone. Their "smartphone-like" features are horrible/barely functional, from browser to things as simple as calendars. No sorry, dude, your dumbphone is... dumb.

So the forced to get a smartphone because we stripped calendars from dumb phones is a gimmick, the forced to get a data plan for the smartphone is a gimmick.

Good thing not everyone's forced into data plans.

 

[Eugene]

This is one reason I laugh at people who insist their dumbphones can do as much as a smartphone. Their "smartphone-like" features are horrible/barely functional, from browser to things as simple as calendars. No sorry, dude, your dumbphone is... dumb.



Good thing not everyone's forced into data plans.

Problem was while dumbphones had calendar features in the past (most don't now) syncing them with anything was pretty manual.

Not really forced into a data plan, but to get a decent phone through verizon I needed a $15 multmedia plan even if I didn't want to use any of those features, so when you take the full price of $550 for a droid, subtract the monthly data plan cost you end up paying like $5 per month for the data so it was cheaper in the long run to go that route compared to their mid level $15 multimedia plan. If they would have grandfathered my in the pay as you go I'd have went with that and just disabled data like before (but I had to upgrade the phone since mine was WM).

 

[lekky]

i use my phone more than i use my PC. It has changed my life. Not in any serious way you understand, i mean like things i couldn't do before, or would have to sit at my computer i can now do anywhere.