Smartphone birthday

Cast your minds back to 2006. Eleven years ago. You hadn't heard of Facebook, MySpace was something that you may have heard of but weren't quite sure exactly what it was. You had had a mobile phone for around the ten year mark, maybe longer if you were an early adopter.
If you were anything like me you had finally upgraded your mobile to the fabulous flip phone... I was a Nokia girl all the was your back then. The internet in your palm and easy access to data was still just a pipedream for the majority of the general population.

Do you remember the days of the flip phone or the PDA (Personal Digital Assistants)?  The PDA was kind of an electronic diary - but damn they were hard to manage carting around with a phone, and your laptop computer (which generally weighed roughly the same as a small child), and you never had internet connectivity until you got back to your office with your whiz bang ADSL connection (if you were fortunate enough to be in a town where it was connected) being shared wirelessly to your laptop and hardwired to your desktop - if you even had both.   
Oh I dreamt of the day when my computer would be connected to the internet regardless of where I was using it!  I dreamt of it not costing me a small fortune.  I tried it all, the early VoIP phones (which my mother once threatened to stop taking my calls if I insisted on calling from that particular service, it was THAT bad!), the PDA, I gave up as a bad joke due to the need to constantly, physically connect it to my PC to sync with my Outlook calendar or risk RSI in entering everything twice.  
I resisted the first iPhone, and the second and third.  I mean I had my trusty Nokia and it could send and receive dodgy, grainy photos!  Not the iPhone, nope, not MMS on them for the first or second generation.  Not even a camera if I can recall.  So I waited.  Then the video calling on my Nokia - only issue was the camera was only on the back of the phone - you could send your face, but not see the other end at the same time!  So frustrating!  Then came the iPhone 4.  That was my first iPhone, that was in 2010.  So even though the smartphone as we know it today is 10, I am not exactly one of the first users.  
I was ready for the smartphone of tomorrow about 15 years ago, I am not the most patient person on the planet.  I'll own that, I'll also own the fact that the possibilities and potential that technology offers us as a community both personally and professionally excites me!   Most people who know me would probably tell you that.  But I am just another user in the mix, and sometimes I can wait.  
Remember when you didn't have Facebook in your face?  You had to sit at your computer and check your feed!  Imagine that!  I can remember when the SMS service first came about, I can actually almost remember the first message I got, it was from my little sister (who teaches me more than she knows sometimes!).  
Last week saw Apple unveil not two, but three new iPhone models.  The 8 and 8+ are the latest updates to the 7 model from last year (skipping over the S version they have been known to produce on alternate years) and if you're like me, you sighed at the end of that presentation!  It was like one of those infomercials where you just know there HAS to be a set of free steak knives coming surely!!  Surely that wasn't all!   Then, and only then, they told us there was MORE.  Woo hoo! 
They revealed the iPhone X - (said iPhone TEN, mind you) it is the latest and greatest - a phone for the NEXT ten years of smartphones, according to Apple.  With all the latest and greatest functions - retina recognition - now if I disappear and my unrecognisable body gets washed up somewhere - just contact Apple, they'll have my fingerprints AND my retina scan on file - along with my dental records, I will be easy as to ID!  Seriously though, gone is the home button, the screen is now the entire front of the phone, we don't need wires now at all ... apparently ... I am excited! 
So just how does your smartphone make your life better?  Easier?  Do you go into a melt down if it's offline, broken or misplaced?  Do you, like me, get a little anxious if it isn't within arms reach?  I am teaching myself to let go more ... but it does make life easier... AI - Artificial Intelligence, Siri, she's a gem isn't she?  When she listens correctly ... she reminds me to take the hose (well sometimes the cat - when she's not quite listening as well as she should be) out of the pool so I don't waste water, she reminds me when I pass by the chemist to remember to run in and grab the script I promised I would collect for the dearly beloved.  She messages my kids when I am not able to pick up the phone - she also calls them for dinner - but hey, I've generally already got my 10,000 steps for the day so don't really need to walk all that way!  All of my things in one place.  All of the time.  I think that's what I love the most.  
Imagine what we will be excited about in another ten years time with the things our tech can do for us!

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