Let’s face it… Smartphones are all the rage! The smartphone market has exploded in recent years to total almost half of all mobile phones sold in the US today. According to Nielsen, this jump in smartphone adoption is a 38% jump over last year. We’ve long advocated the utility of smartphones, including android phones AND iPhone products. Bigger screens and more intuitive operating systems make them a great choice for many consumer types (including boomers and seniors). So I guess we should just wave bye bye to the tradional “dumb phone” eh? NOT SO FAST!
A recent article in The Huffington Post Tech Blog caught our eye. It’s titled “Dumbphones Have Fewer Dropped Calls, Spam Texts And Slow Downloads Than Smartphones: Pew“. Dino Grandoni reports that dumb phones may not be so dumb after all! First off… Who knew “dumb phones” were otherwise known as “feature phones”? Isn’t the point that they have very few features??? (But I digress…) Grandoni also notes that traditional/dumb/feature phones are less apt to be stolen, they’re cheap, and they have fewer dropped calls. What’s so dumb about that I say? (Everybody together now… Nothing!)
We’re big proponents of smartphones (and tablets too mind you), but they’re not for everybody. We’ve previewed a number of traditional senior friendly cell phones on The Senior List and one of our favorites is still the Samsung Jitterbug J. I can tell you that the next time mom or dad pulls out their traditional cell phone, I’m going to think twice about pushing them toward a smartphone. Turns out they might know something about value that I hadn’t recognized yet…
