Unless you have been totally oblivious to what’s going on in the world for the past couple of decades, you know how amazingly fast technology has been advancing. It has even come to the point that technology has become a very vital part of our existence. Gone are the days when one would need to turn on a computer to get connected to the World Wide Web. We don’t go to the internet anymore. The internet comes to us now, anywhere we may be.
I’m talking about smartphones and their capability to connect to the internet. These mini computers have become a big part of our lives. We don’t just call or text through them anymore. We check our emails, browse the internet, update our “status” on networking sites and even allow it to guide us as we drive. The smartphone has now become an alternative to computers and laptops. In fact, a lot of people report that they do not feel the need for computers anymore because of the smartphone.
Along with this trend, innovators of the mobile internet industry have made a lot of changes in the way we use smartphones. They have what they call apps, short for applications, which you can use to do almost anything on your mobile device. More popularly known as mobile apps, most of them work on specific platforms or operating systems native to the kind of smartphone being used. There are also some that are considered as cross-platform apps, as they can be downloaded and used by any smartphone of any make.
There are many different types of mobile apps and they meet almost every need of every individual smartphone user. One such type is the messenger app. It’s not just about the SMS or MMS anymore. This can come in a lot of different forms. In fact, a lot of smartphone makers have their own messenger apps that are platform specific – you can’t use it if you’re using a different brand of smartphone. But in less than 5 years, innovators were able to create messenger apps that can serve all smartphone users as long as they have data plans and internet connections through WiFi. Apps like Viber and WhatsApp even allow their users to send messages globally.
Another messaging mobile app that we can’t live without is the push email. This app is usually native to whatever make your smartphone is, but companies such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN have been busy making their email services available to their users independently from the smartphone device’s own app. They usually offer the email service with almost exactly the same user interface as the desktop version, making it easy for the users to move around with the familiar icons and “environment”.
And messaging alone is not the only app that’s being widely used today. Internet browsing, social networking, video calling, even money transfer, documents editing and time tracking mobile apps are now available on our little smartphones. With all these innovations and more going on as you read this article, can we be blamed for not being able to let go of our precious smartphones?