musicMagpie Blog

There's a lot of talk online about how bad smartphones are. According to various news outlets, they've turned us into screen-addicted anti-social zombies with shorter attention spans than goldfish and a deep-seated fear of missing out on even the most trivial of events. We've even written about smartphone addiction ourselves.

But if smartphones are that bad and that dangerous, why do 66% of us (and rising) own one? Answer: because they've made life a gazillion times better. Here's how"¦

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You can find out anything you want whenever you want

Have you ever watched a movie, seen an actor and spent the next ten minutes feeling frustrated because you can't remember what you've seen him in before?

Thanks to that little box of magic in your pocket, you can find out instantly. In the old days, you'd have to put on the computer, connect to dial-up and wait 10 hours for IMDB to load up. In the even older days, you wouldn't even have a direct way of finding out. You'd have to watch the films you had a hunch said actor was in or, even worse, ask people.

That's a trivial problem, but how about being in a foreign country and not knowing the language? Not only can your phone translate phrases instantly, it can read them out for you. Beats rifling through a dictionary trying to assemble a sentence while a local gets increasingly bored, right?

Smartphones have given us a wealth of instantly accessible knowledge right at our fingertips. This article in the New Yorker even suggests that the smartphone is an augment to the human brain that will be seen as a pivotal moment in history. Not bad for something most of us use to look at funny pictures of cats, eh?

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They've made life much easier

If you wanted to make a phone call out and about back in the day, you'd have to cram into a funky-smelling glass box, pick up a gross phone and pile change into a machine while praying it was enough to keep your call going.

Now, you can call someone, text them, message them, send them a photo, send them a video of you with a funny filter that makes you look like a strawberry, challenge them to a game of Uno and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Smartphones haven't just made communication easier, though. They've made everything easier. Fancy a pizza? Press a couple of buttons on an app and they'll send one to your door. Need a taxi? Press a button and someone will come and pick you up. Want to watch a movie on the toilet? Press a button and voila!

Closer to our hearts, it's even made selling your stuff easier. With our free app, you can scan barcodes on your CDs, DVDs, Games and Books and you get an instant price. Press a couple of buttons and that's your stuff sorted. In the past, you'd have to set prices, lug the stuff to a car boot sale at an ungodly hour of the morning and possibly lug it back too!

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They've made us more creative

Yeah, there's an argument that spending all your time looking at Facebook rather than trying to compose a symphony or paint a masterpiece isn't that creative.

But smartphones have inspired a new kind of creativity. Easy access to video cameras have given us all the ability to create our own material, either for our friends or the wider public. Just look at the people who've built a career off Vine and Instagram.

Even selfies – yes, selfies – have become something of an art, inspiring a generation of people to learn how angles and lighting can dramatically change a photograph.

Also, memes. Lots and lots of memes.

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They've made us all more organised

Considering humans are a social species, getting a group of people together in the same place at the same time is surprisingly difficult.

Thanks to Facebook and the like, you can now put together an event, invite people to it and send them a reminder on the day without having to phone up 20 different people to check they're still coming. And if you need to change plans last minute, you can just drop everyone a message in a group chat!

Smartphones have also made organising ourselves easier too. With Wunderlist, Evernote and countless other apps, you can note down your thoughts, get reminders on important dates and generally make yourself a better organised, more productive person. Thanks, smartphones!

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You get everything in the same device

Your smartphone is a games console, a camera, a video camera, a phone, a sat nav, a music player, a torch, a calculator, a web browser, a portable TV, an e-reader and much more.

Now imagine not only carrying all of things around separately but having to pay for them separately too; it would have cost a bomb. Today, you can get them all in the same device for less than £200.

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In short, smartphones are awesome.

If you're planning to upgrade, you can buy iPhones, refurbished phones and much more from the musicMagpie Store. Every refurbished device we sell is quality checked and guaranteed for 12 months, plus you'll get FREE delivery too.

You can also sell iPhones and more with us too. Just get an instant price, pop your phone (and anything else you're selling) into a box, send it for FREE and we'll pay you the same day it arrives!