I love looking at duty free magazines in cross-continental flights. They are always filled with gadgets I can only dream about. Glasses that play movies only you can see, auto-balancing electric skateboards that transport you without any effort on your part, functional keyboards that are nothing more than projected images of keys. Science fiction meets reality on these shiny pages. Being subjected to many an international flight since my first trip at the age of 4 months has made me accept a strange fact of reality- most of the cool stuff that exists in this world is entirely out of my reach. People keep wondering why our world does not look like “back to the future 2” but fail to acknowledge it is not the lack of this technology that makes it so, but the lack of mainstream possession of it. Basically, There has always existed technology far more advanced and far more than what we use in our daily lives- but for some reason or another we don’t deem these items as “worth their price”. They are usually referred to as luxury items. Items like the blackberry fall into a similar category-  If I could assign these things a word, it would be “premium”.

The iphone is premium. It came out in 2007, when I was in the 6th grade.  I saw its likeness for the first time on the cover of time magazine, and I thought it was a piece of “too cool to be mainstream” tech that would never end up in my hands. That isn’t to say that I did not want one. But to voice this wanting would have been absurd, this was a piece of premium technology- normal people and especially children like me would never be able to even hold one. So when, a few years later, one of my uncles finally got his hands on the new iphone, I had the mindset that he was part of an exclusive club- the group privileged enough to have such luxury technology. But soon more signs that this was different appeared- literally, more signs. They said “Get you iphone 3GS here” (though probably in more flowery language) and strangely enough, they were in malls where I shopped every day. The slogan was “More to love, less to pay”

– words whose purpose was to remove the “premium” stamp from people’s minds. And then it started. My friends started getting them. I did not realize it at first, it was disguised as the “Ipod Touch”, which to me was just an ipod- a simple mp3 player with a fancy touch screen. Eventually, even I got this iTouch- the first gadget I had ever owned- and sometime in the 3 years that I slept with it under my pillow I must have realized that I actually owned the iphone I had so coveted.

So the question is- when did it stop being premium? It’s now weird to see people that don’t have smartphones. People throw them around- cracked screens are a kind of cultural symbol (wax). People have so many devices laying around their homes- I myself now realize that there are 8 of such devices (smartphones, tablets, and my itouch) laying around my very average, not wealthy in the slightest 3 person home.

In pondering this question, I realized it was not the right question at all. My family pays in cell phone bills what a young family would pay for mortgage each month. Smartphones retail at $600-$1000 when bought without a plan- and when bought with plan usually end up being more expensive. The iphone is without a doubt still premium- or at least still has the characteristics of “premium” devices-  very advanced and very expensive.  And yet, it seems people of all different income brackets have smartphones and pay the undeniably hefty monthly charges (Smith). The smartphone revolution is, in fact, a monumental change in the flow of technology, it is the integration of “premium” technology into the mainstream population (Jung).

What is it about smartphones that broke the cycle of elitism? What is the trait that makes them necessary in the lives of such a diverse group of people- possibly even all people? There are many possible reasons for this. The first, is of course, the multitude of uses that a smartphone can have depending on the user (Jung). A key reason for this is the variety of apps that users can download (Jung). This is undeniably the most customizable element of smartphones, and it allows users to “decide what a smartphone is for themselves, rather than just adopting a given product”(Jung). But perhaps it is not the apps that make smartphones so versatile, but their highly advanced mobile mobile browsers that allow people to connect to the internet outside the comfort of their homes- or even at all, as it is predicted that by 2015 more Americans will access the internet through smartphones than through desktop computers (Jung). In a study that surveyed the various reasons young Korean people use their smartphones, Communication came first, closely followed by entertainment. According to the study, “[Improved] communication leads to sense of comfort mediated by socialization. Sense of comfort can be defined as ‘the state of ease and peaceful contentment’ (Kolcaba & Kolcaba,1991, p. 1302), and individuals can reach this psychological state by having positive social relations (Kolcaba & DiMarco, 2005). For instance, mobile applications for social network sites can make smartphone users feel a constant connection to their peers, and this sense of social connection can help them to reach a state of comfort” (Jung). I have found this to be true in myself- even though I do not actively check Facebook or communicate with a large array of people as many others do, I find particular comfort in texting my close friends, especially given the ability to add multimedia into our communication. This really allows for a sense of connection, as humor and culture permeate the medium of texting on a smartphone.

My desire for an iphone initially was based in entertainment. I wanted to watch movies in a little thing I held in my hand. At the time, the concept of not being in front of the computer late at night (my only free time) and being able to read my beloved books and comics or watch movies in bed was an experience I would have never had before then. Before my iTouch, I listened to music only by sitting at my computer playing songs on Youtube or Napster. The ability to do these things anywhere was radical to me, and it was what fed my desire for an iphone in the early stages, and is still what I consider the primary function of my phone. I imagine that the others in this study who cite entertainment as their primary use feel similarly- they are in awe of the many different types of media they can access at all times, wherever they go. It was for this reason that, when presented the opportunity to get a new smartphone, I chose the mammoth Samsung Galaxy Note 3- at almost 6 inches, it is enormous. And I am not the only one.

The Big vs. Small debate might seem like a strange tangent in this narrative, but I think that within this issue lies the underlying cause for the entire smartphone revolution. Big screened smartphones were an unexpected success (Manjoo), as people thought that devices would continue to get smaller and smaller. The need for bigger phones reflects our primary usage of these devices-  “We don’t talk on them any longer. We use these devices for maps, restaurant reviews, and for texting our friends and listening to music. So the screen becomes very important, and small screens are miserable to use” (Stone). Small phones are certainly miserable when we spend every waking hour on them.

Our smartphones, in the end, are extensions of ourselves. They hold our thoughts, our interests, our friends, and our information. They are both a portal to the outside world and into our own lives. All of these aspects- Communication, media access, comfort, customizability, mobility, and the vast web of information that now connects us all have made this technology an unbelievable enhancer of human life- well worth their “premium” price tag. Iphones are far beyond a luxury item, they are a necessity- for all members of our species, whither they are used by high school girls who plan their study time and watch TV shows or by people in third world countries who would not otherwise have internet access.  My smartphone is my sidekick, and I would  not have it any other way.

End note: If anyone has any posting problems in the future, it might be because you have chrome updates turned off, this fixed my issues.