The Unreasonable Stance: Only Luddites Don't Have Smartphones
Smartphones are like custom Nikes in a world of 10-peso tourist-shop flip-flops. I can’t think of a reason to pick the flip-flops unless you’re going swimming, and that doesn’t even make sense for the purposes of this metaphor. The point is that smartphones do everything regular phones do, but better, faster, and harder. And entirely separate from that fact, they also do things regular phones don’t even dream of. But Let’s at least be fair and look at the reasons why you might not have a smartphone.
Can’t afford it? Well, you pay $60/mo. for your 1000 minutes and unlimited texts, and you probably paid $50-100 for a relatively nice phone, a RAZR or something no doubt. Well, if you check out our Smartphones Now features, you’ll find you can get a Palm Centro for $100 and a plan with Sprint for about $80.
An extra $20 a month is not going to break the bank, fools. Admit it, you’re being cheap. Next time you take a girl out on a date, cook her dinner instead – there, you saved that $20, plus she thinks you’re the man. Ladies, that works for you too. The cost is negligible, and I won’t accept it as an excuse.
You say you don’t need it? Please, I think I know what you need. What does your phone do, call people? Send messages that you have to type out with the number keys? Wow, welcome to the year 2002! Seriously, let’s take a look at what’s on offer here:
Service | Your phone | Smartphone |
Calls people | Yes | Yes |
Sends messages | Using number keys | Using QWERTY |
Web Browser | None, or crippled | Full HTML, native or Opera |
Cool 3rd party apps | Not likely | Tons |
GPS | No chance | Free and built-in |
Media Player | Cheesy, crippled if even present | Full-on |
Use as laptop modem | Please | Costs an extra $15 but yeah |
Other stuff | There is no other stuff | List goes on forever |
It’s almost 2008, and when your phone can have most of the useful capabilities of a laptop and for a fraction of the price, to choose not to use a smartphone would be most illogical.
It’s been shown that people using smartphones are rated as more attractive by the opposite sex and more intimidating by rivals. This comes as no surprise, since a smartphone is a statement of competence and capability. Once merely the sign of a pompous showoff trying to impress everyone else in the Starbucks line, now they are a necessity and a gift to humanity. So I say this to you: get a smartphone, or at least make a show of trying, or risk being rightly labeled as a bumbling technophobe and social failure.
Unreasonable Stance is a column in which one CrunchGear writer tries to argue for the other, not usually accepted, side. Sometimes it’s satire, sometimes it’s trolling, sometimes it’s gibberish. Most importantly, however, it is an attempt to see a technical issue or product from another perspective, something we rarely do in our compartmentalized, partisan world.