Smartphone Addiction: Do you own the phone or is it the other way round?

It is the year 2020 and the human race has been enslaved by the machines. But instead of a self-aware artificial intelligence system like the Skynet, it is the simple smartphones that have taken over the world this time around. Sounds very Hollywoodish? If the results of a recent survey are anything to go by, then such a scenario is much closer to being a reality than a plot of a Sci-Fi film.

Countries like the UK, USA and South Korea are the first to have been affected. In a country like UK usage of smartphones have increased nearly 40-times in the past 2-3 years. Of the people surveyed about 37% of adults and a whopping 60% of teenagers admitted that they are highly addicted to their smartphone. In the US about one third of the population would rather give up sex for a week than a mobile phone and a shocking 70% were also willing to give up alcohol for their phone. The level of addiction in South Korea isn’t far behind either, with the country being the only place in the world where you will find rehab clinics for internet and smartphone addicts.

I for one am already a victim of these deadly smartphones. Besides lusting over most of the phones in the market, I’m unhealthily attached to my current phone. If you shadow me throughout the day, you will know what I mean! On an average I check my phone every 5 minutes. Besides calls and text messages, I check my mails, Facebook, Twitter and all the latest news on my phone. In the mornings even before I’m fully awake, the first thing I do is check my phone to see if I’ve received any emails or updates when I was asleep. I also enjoy reading the day’s news on my phone rather than on a newspaper. It has become such an important part of my life that I can’t imagine how I lived with a feature phone for so many years.

If this is what slavery means, I am afraid the smartphones’ plan of taking over the world is already working. Don’t trust me? Look at how many people stand in lines to be the first ones to get their hands on a new iPhone, or how the Nexus 4 sold out in less than 20 minutes after Google launched it last week. These are troubled signs people and it seems a war for survival is almost upon us!

Tablet Wars…

Gone are the days when a person was stuck in his house, office or a shady cyber-café to be able to access the internet. In the age where being connected to the internet means being connected to the world, technology has to ascertain that a person no matter where should stay connected. Laptops and smartphones have had a big role in making this a reality, but a recent trend in the market is all set to try and make them obsolete.

Apple ipad the trend setter

Apple’s iPad, much like many of Apple’s other products, set a new trend in the market for Tablet Pcs. A tablet personal computer (tablet PC) is a portable personal computer equipped with a touch screen as a primary input device and designed to be operated and owned by an individual. The term was made popular as a concept presented by Microsoft in 2001.

A person can use a tablet as a miniature version of laptop or a larger version of a smartphone. You can surf the internet, listen to music, watch videos, use the office tools or just play games on it. Being connected to either the Android store or the Apple store, gives you options to customise your tablet according to your need. Tablets use 3G or Wi-Fi to stay connected and boast of decent battery power and thus are the ideal device to carry with you when travelling.

Though not the perfect piece of hardware by any standards, iPad still was a huge success selling 3 million in just 80 days. It has since then sold more than 14 million devices and this is largely because of the absence of any kind of competition. Though in 2010 other tablets were introduced, iPad still managed to garner 75 percent of the market share in the tablet market.

The competition though has just got tougher with the introduction of two heavyweights; iPad’s successor the Apple iPad2 and Motorola Xoom.  Both incredibly powerful and boasting configurations which are way ahead of the rest of the pack, they are two of the most-awaited gadgets. With other options becoming available like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab series, HTC’s Flyer, BlackBerry’s PlayBook, Viewsonic’s ViewPad 7 and Olivetti’s Olipad among others, this is surely a very exciting time.

There is certainly a buzz going on in the market and companies are eager to cash in on this changing trend in computing. But only time will tell if tablets prove to be a technological revolution or merely a ripple-effect in the ever-changing world of computing technology.