In the present day, smartphones have become a staple of our lives. Every person with an even moderate income own one and uses it for multiple purposes, including both work and leisure. For the younger generation, a constant use of a smartphone has become its defining trait. The claims that, in the future, smartphones will become the most important electronic devices are outdated by now: they already are.
The popularity of smartphones can be explained by two of its most important qualities, such as supporting multiple functions and ease of use. In the past, people used to have multiple devices for different functions. For example, they had TV sets for watching movies at home, radios for listening to broadcasts, tape recorders for listening to music, fixed telephones for talking to people far away, and cameras for making photos. Now, smartphones combine all of those functions, with the sole lacking function being computers’ creating data for work. While smartphones include gaming, which was previously only available on PCs and consoles, they lack a comfortable way of creating content for work. Instead, laptops and graphics tablets provide users with just enough visual space for proper work. Still, smartphones include every other function older devices used to have individually, and may develop in the future to compete with laptops and tablets as well.
As mentioned above, smartphones have already become a staple in human lives. Even in developing countries, they have become common and a driver for reducing civilization gap between different countries (Glushkova et al., 2019). This is not only limited to simple usage, however. Young people who are constantly looking at their phones in public are a common sight nowadays. Phones have become the most important attribute of social status, especially is schools. People carry them around all the time, with those unable to receive calls by leaving their phones somewhere causing irritation. Thus, smartphones are constantly with their owners, and have become a social phenomenon.
Thus, smartphones will not just become the main electronic devices in the future, as they already are. Having replaced older devices by absorbing their functions, they have become the only devices which their owners carry around all the time. They are used for the majority of leisure activities, and a small yet crucial device for successful work. A future development which would fuse smartphones and laptops, making them one device, could make this status absolute
Reference
Glushkova, S., Belotserkovich, D., Morgunova, N., & Yuzhakova, Y. (2019). The role of smartphones and the internet in developing countries. Revista ESPACIOS.