The Dumb Phone

Mobile phones are actually filthier than toilet seats because they are never cleaned even after being handled by different people, thus swarming with germs, say researchers.

Tests showed that up to 10 times the amount of pathogens which cause nausea and stomach upsets were present on a mobile phone than a toilet seat.

Data collected from telco companies and network operators shows that smartphone penetration has broken the 50 percent barrier in the United States, with these devices now outnumbering their feature phone brethren for the first time. According to a report compiled by market consultancy Chaten Sharma, smartphones overtook feature phones during Q2 of this year - a push largely driven by Android and iOS-enabled devices.

According to statistics released by a recent study conducted by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) ’chinplants’ are quickly becoming the fastest growing cosmetic surgery trend. Care to guess what the main culprit for this crazy trend is? That’s right, Smartphones!

If the ASPS study is right, sagging faces, dubbed “Smarphone face” could be behind the growing trend for skin tightening treatments and chin implants which cost around £4,290.

If you love texting and chatting on your smartphone, often with your face bending over, you may be risking the beauty of your face.

Leading plastic surgeons believe that spending lot of time leaning over gadgets may cause saggy faces in users.

The phenomenon is called ‘Smartphone Face’ and is believed to encourage a trend of increasing chinplant cosmetic surgeries. According to statistics available with American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), the chinplant or the skin tightening treatment which costs around $ 7000 has overtaken other popular cosmetic surgeries like breast augmentation and liposuction in 2011.

You thought you had ‘smartphone problems’ while dealing with needing a new phone charger or having those tech-addicts who are glued to their phone, bumping into you? Well listen to this!

Believe it or not, aesthetic professionals are announcing that technology addicts could be at risk of saggy jowls. It is said that smartphone and laptop use could very well cause facial muscles and skin to reduce its elasticity. This is mainly due to the crazy amount of time people are spending with their heads looking down playing angry birds or posting on their social media page.

The growth of smartphones has been phenomenal. From a virtually non-existent flyspeck in 2007, to over 400 million units sold in 2011 and the most popular consumer electronics device in the US, smartphones are a huge money maker — but only if you’re Apple or Samsung.

A Smartphone Future? But Not Yet
THE occasion of taking out my cellphone has provoked considerable mockery in the last 18 months or so.

“Zack Morris wants his phone back,” I have heard more than once, in reference to the “Saved by the Bell” preppie’s bricklike mobile (a late-model Motorola DynaTac, the first cellphone sold commercially, in 1983). For the sitcom’s run from 1989 to ’93, Zack’s early adoption was a totem of his Los Angeles affluence and his wheeling-and-dealing scampish streak.

Were Zack still prank-calling Principal Belding these days, he would surely have an upgrade over my calling-and-texting device. It’s a bulky clamshell phone selected for its military-grade ruggedness, as intimated by its name, the Samsung Convoy. It came free with my two-year contract. The only time it has Internet access is when I accidentally hit a button that launches a primitive Web browser (out of which, fearing usurious charges from Verizon, I exit immediately as if from a burning building).

Shortness of breath, increased heart rate and utter self-loathing are what I experienced when I thought I’d left my iPhone at the grocery store last Saturday. This anxiety was short-lived, as moments later I found it on my desk. Nonetheless, my minor panic attack exemplifies just a slice of our dependency on smartphones. Smartphones have become a staple of our generation and one of the defining inventions of our time. However, not everyone is attracted to the finesse of phones with Internet connections and applications. There is a counterculture of mobile phone users who prefer what has been called a “dumbphone.” This demographic of dumbphone users who are sticking with the early 2000’s mobile technology reject smartphones on the basis that such distracting technology deprives people from being fully engaged in their surroundings, and therefore diminishes the ability to simply enjoy life.