Page 8 - index

(Continued from page 7)
linked in so I can always know when one is
coming up.
3. You can get some things accomplished dur-
ing what would be wasted time. How many
times have you sat in a doctor’s office much
longer than you expected? Sometimes there’s
a good reason for the delay, but that doesn’t
help you, if you have to sit and wait, unable to
accomplish the things you expected to do.
Well, if you had your smartphone (which is re-
ally a small computer), you might be able to
accomplish some of those things you would
normally do at home. You could check your
email. If you need to, you can even answer
your emails, at least if the answers are rela- 7. You can watch videos, or movies, if you are
tively short. (The keyboards on most
smartphones are probably only good for short
answers, although some people get very profi-
cient, using some of the special keyboard en-
hancer Apps.) You could catch up on the
news. Newsreader Apps are very easy to use.
You could check on your investments. Yahoo
Finance is one App you might use. And if you
have done all the investigating you want to,
you can always play a game like Solitaire, An-
gry Birds, or 2048. Keep in mind that you could
do all this while listening to music from your
own music collection on your phone, or from a
streaming service like Pandora or Spotify.
4. You can check or make a list of things you
want to do, or to buy, or whatever. There are
many Note-taking Apps that keep track of
notes you create so you will not forget all those
things you have to do before next weekend.
Some Note-taking Apps keep the notes in the
cloud, so they’re accessible from any device,
and some keep the notes on your phone so
you don’t even need to have an internet con-
nection.
5. You can determine how to get to a location
and get directions to a place of interest. The
Maps App and Google Earth give you great
views of places you may not be familiar with,
and they can even give you turn-by-turn direc-
tions to get anywhere from your current loca-
tion. With these Apps, you can find the nearest
restaurant or gas station, and get directions if
needed. And with “Cortana”, the Microsoft Per-
sonal Assistant, you can verbally ask for these
things, and sometimes receive audible an-
swers.
8
6. You can take pictures when you didn’t even
think to bring a camera. Most smartphones
have two cameras, as part of the device. A
rear-facing camera for taking pictures of scen-
ery, and a front-facing camera for use with
skype or for taking “selfies”. A camera might
be very useful if you get into a traffic alterca-
tion. By the way, with the camera on the
smartphone, you can even deposit checks into
your checking account without ever going to
the bank. All it takes is the check, your
smartphone, your bank’s App, and a steady
hand.
stuck in a place where there is just nothing to
do. Most phones have enough memory to hold
a few movies, considering a movie might be
about 5 GB. And there is always video stream-
ing if you have a Netflix or Hulu+ account. If
you are in a Wi-Fi area you won’t even have to
use up any of your “data”.
8. You can check the weather, but then you
could always look out the window. However,
you can check the weather at any location,
and find out how the weather is up north
where some of your friends might be. Don’t
you love to do this in the winter? I usually tell
them I just got out of the pool.
9. Your smartphone can act as a bunch of
useful tools. There are Apps that turn your
smartphone into a calculator (that’s not very
earth-shaking), into a compass (that’s a neat
trick), and even into a flashlight (bet you didn’t
see that one coming). One neat calculator
even shows a tape, and lets you go back to
see what each and every entry was. One of
the compasses looks just like the one you
used when you were a boy or girl scout. And
the flashlight is a nice thing to have when the
lights go out, or you are in a dark movie thea-
ter.\
So, you might not need a smartphone, but you
might find some of these things helpful. And
when you look at the total list of things you can
do with that small device, you just might find
this reason enough for you to trade in your
trusty flip phone for a new smartphone.