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If you’ve owned a smartphone for more than a week, you probably take its power for granted. You may use you phone to check email, play games, send text messages, check social media, take pictures and maybe even make phone calls.
If we stop for a moment and think about how much our smartphones can do, we may begin to appreciate its capabilities. For the first time in human history we have instant access to nearly all of the knowledge in the world at our fingertips.
We enter information, launch and use apps, and dial phone numbers all by merely tapping on glass. But we don’t even have to tap or type our commands, we can speak them and have our phones understand what we’re saying, albeit with mixed success. Our phones can even translate words into our native language, bridging communication gaps.
The power and features of our phones expand exponentially each year when new models are launched. Phones are getting thinner and lighter as companies pack more specs into less space. We come to expect these advancements and wonder when our shiny new tech will become obsolete. What seemed to be phenomenal features last year now seem outdated by today’s standards.
Yet while the advancements continue the price of tech decreases. The Cray supercomputer launched in 1988 could store 512MB of data and cost $6 million, which would be $12 million in today’s dollars. If the iPad 2, launched in 2011 for $499-$849, had been around in 1988 it would have been the most advanced supercomputer in the world, storing up to 64GB of data.
Smartphones now can hold 128GB of data and more. Laptops can store 1TB of data, which may seem minuscule in a few years. Will we eventually have computers that have more storage than humans have information?
Even more amazing is that we gained this smartphone power recently, within our lifetimes. We are witnessing history in the making but instead of marveling in awe at this life-altering advancement we accept our phones as common part of our daily lives.
While we may acknowledge our dependency on our phones, we rarely harness their power to tap them as a font of knowledge.
From Reddit:
Q. If someone from the 1950’s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about life today?
A. I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man.
I use it to look at pictures of cats and get in arguments with strangers.” –nuseramed
Do you take your smartphone for granted? This infographic is a fascinating reminder of how far we’ve come with tech in such a brief time:
*Infographic courtesy of Visual.ly
Poll
How do you use your smartphone? Vote in today’s Wonder of Tech poll and let us know what you use your smartphone for. You can vote for multiple choices.
Your Thoughts
Do you take your smartphone for granted? What do you use your smartphone for? What do you wish your smartphone could do that it doesn’t do yet? Share your thoughts with us in the Comments section below!
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* Phone image (edited) courtesy of Placeit.net
Hi Mohr,
Thanks for sharing the great infographic.Almost all information new for me. Hope it will help me.
Hi Carolyn, Smartphones surely has done something that no one has ever imagined few years back. No one knows before that they can access any information through them. And we never know what’s in store for us in future.
I personally use my smartphone to check everything from mails, social sites, watching videos, music etc etc and of course for calling purposes. Because, if I am not using all these features than I can have a normal phone too to say Hi and Hello to everyone.