Advantages of Having a Smartphone

Last week, we discussed the advantages of flip phones. Smaller price, increased durability... But what about smartphones? Certainly they have their advantages over flip phones, or we wouldn't see so many people walking around with smartphones.
Every smartphone user:  Well, duh.

Er, anyway, on to the blog post. Today we'll be talking about the advantages of smartphones.

More Texting Features

"New text from Georgia!"

"�▯ÄÉ^ñ▯▯"

If you're a flip phone user, then you know this pain. Not only do flip phones lack an emoticon feature, they don't even recognize emoticons. So if you receive a text containing an emoticon, it appears like that. Nonsensical gobbledygook because the phone can't read that weird bit of code. "My phone doesn't read emoticons," you tell them. They apologize for the confusion, then forget. Months later, you're conversing with them, and receive a reply that looks like this: ▯▯é�`

Repeat this process forever, because once a person has access to a billion emoticons, it becomes second nature to use them. If you have a flip phone, you're doomed to meaningless tangles of special characters forever.

Also, if people try to send you videos, sometimes flip phones can't receive them because the file size is simply too much. Granted, this doesn't happen too often, but when it does, it can be annoying.

High Quality Media

Flip phones typically have a camera, but smartphones have higher resolution and image quality, and the camera will likely have more features (such as zooming in or out, different camera modes, etc.). Smartphones are also able to take videos, a feature which flip phones lack.

Another issue: if someone sends you a video on a flip phone, the playback is horrible. Imagine a really low-quality GIF that's about 1-3 frames per second, and that's what the video looks like. And it doesn't help that flip phones have considerably smaller screens, so the detail isn't as good anyway.

More Apps and Features

"I need a flashlight."

"Say no more." (pulls out phone)

Along with that handy-dandy light, smartphones have a wider array of games and useful apps than flip phones. Smartphones can also be used to access any part of the internet, and can connect to certain thing, such as social media sites and e-mail, to send instant notifications straight to your phone. They also have a GPS feature, which is handy when you're in an unfamiliar place, or if you're directionally challenged like me. In comparison, there's not as many apps available for a flip phone, especially now that flip phones have fallen out of popularity, and their internet capabilities are fairly limited.

Increased Storage Capacity

With the increased capabilities of smartphones, there's also more storage space for said apps and files. A flip phone has a fairly basic operating system and doesn't run those high-end things, so its programs and even the photos it takes are smaller file sizes than you'd find on a smartphone. You might have 100 MB of storage on a flip phone, in comparison to the gigabytes upon gigabytes of storage a smartphone has.

In conclusion, there's many reasons why smartphones are now favored over flip phones. Each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages, of course.

If you have any thoughts or opinions, let me know in the comments.