John Stokdyk for AccountingWeb UK writes: When an AccountingWEB member recently wondered whether the time had come to replace his 10-year-old Nokia, he got a huge and surprising response. John Stokdyk summarises the resulting debate.
Aside from direct debt recovery, the most intense debate on AccountingWEB this summer was triggered by Marting’s Any Answers query at the end of July, Do I need a smartphone?
Martin relies mainly on a landline and for the past 10 years has kept a pay-as-you-go Nokia in the car for emergencies. The phone coverage in his area is still only 2G and though he only envisages using a mobile for calls and occasional texts, he is contemplating switching to a contract smartphone. His question was: “How many of you with smartphones use the extra functions regularly, especially if you are mostly home based - is it worth it?”
Welcome to the mobile revolution!
For Marting - and anyone else asking the same question - it really IS all about you. Dnicholson captured the essence of the underlying challenge: “If your current phone is 10 years old and you're asking the question, the answer has to be that you don't need one. Whether you could change your life and make use of one is a whole other question, but a much bigger one than you asked.”
Thanks to the miracle of miniaturisation, if the PC you’re using is more than a couple of years old, the smartphone you might get on typical deal is probably faster and packs more memory than your desktop or laptop.
But exchanging a 10-year-old Nokia for a superfast smartphone is a bit like going straight from a moped to a 900cc BMW motorcycle, as seems so popular among many 60+ men. Using a smartphone is a lot less physically dangerous, but will you be able to handle all that extra power? And more importantly, do you know where you want to go with it?
The answer boils down to your inner desires and technological habits. If you are comfortable with the bigger screens and physical keyboards attached to PCs and don’t need 24/7 access to the net, what’s the point of changing?
Yet smartphones offer unimaginable possibilities. You’ve got to be able to imagine them. As our community editor Rachael Power explained, “The tool is what you make it, that's the beauty of technology nowadays.”
A good smartphone could transform your working life - but as often happens with tech, changing one element may demand a major rethink about a lot of other aspects of your set up. The best 3G/4G coverage or long-term plan might be available from a different supplier than your current landline provider. Or the glitzy smartphone that everyone tells you to get will create incompatibilities and niggles with the software you work with on a daily basis.
Need a smartphone?
A sceptic’s view from Andrew Hyde - of course you need one, otherwise you will find yourself:
- actually listening to people you are having dinner with
- sleeping through the night instead of being woken up by the arrival of yet another unwanted message
- concentrating on the road when driving
- having to find other ways of annoying people on public transport
- thinking about things, instead of replying instantly to an email/text with a misspelt, rude, half-witted, ungrammatical, stream-of-consciousness, knee-jerk reply
- rejoining the human race
You’ve also got to have the aptitude, enthusiasm and commitment to make the investment in a smartphone worthwhile - and you may well need a bit of training and advice before you set off down that road. Fortunately, scores of AccountingWEB members were on hand to share their thoughts.
One of the biggest surprises about the summer smartphone debate on AccountingWEB was that the comments ran roughly 2:1 against getting a smartphone. Dnicholson nailed the practical point of view, while others fretted about the psychological impacts of smartphone use (see right) and the spectre of commercial brainwashing. Mikhael commented: “A lot of new gadgets are just variations on a theme, people trying to sell you something you don’t really need, and you feel stupid not buying into it... because everyone else seems to be.”
What do you need it for?
Apart from identifying whether you really want one and will know how to use it effectively, the next most important consideration is to work out what you might actually use the thing for. Paying £40 a month to make a few calls and send some texts does not make a sensible business case.
But what are the possibilities that might appeal to someone like Marting? AccountingWEB member AS painted a convincing picture: “If you regularly travel to clients… then a smartphone makes life very easy and, if properly set up, you have your emails, contacts, diary etc to hand, this data is backed up and amendments in one device get replicated elsewhere.”
Several sceptics in our smartphone debate confessed they owned one, including Old Greying Accountant who admitted, “The camera alone is the only reason I have kept the phone because it is invaluable as a portable scanner/copier to collect information when at a client.”
Several people including Stepurhan pointed out that you don’t actually need a smartphone if you do most of your job on a PC. But Happy liked the flexibility a handheld device brought to his working life: “I can take a day off or half day, go out, and no one knows I reply to emails on my phone just as if I'm in the office. Brilliant for school hols. It was also invaluable when my broadband was out of service earlier this week.”
However the always-available nature of the smartphone can be disruptive and distracting. Some seasoned accountants said that they liked using their smartphones, but hardly for making calls and withheld their mobile number from clients. And like children or pets, mobiles need regular feeding; managing battery life and keeping track of the device can bring a new layer of stress to your life. [snip] The article continues @ AccountingWeb, click here to continue reading....
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