As some of you know, I now have a smartphone. Man, do I feel old! Actually, I’m getting younger every day because it seems like every day I learn something new about it and thus I have these daily surprises that aren’t all that depressing.

I know there’s still a lot of people that don’t have smartphones, and it’s just possible that I’ve learned something that people with smartphones don’t know yet. I doubt that second one, but who knows, right? I figured this was fodder enough for a top 5 things post, so here we go:

1. These suckers run through battery power like whales eat krill. Initially it was like we’d charge the things all night and by 5PM we were down to our last bar, whether we’d done almost anything or not. Turns out there are apps for that (man, what commercial is that phrase in?) to help at least a little bit. One is called Open Advanced Task Killer. The other is called Juice Defender. None of them are perfect, but they have helped to a degree.

2. Some apps you just can’t get rid of. There’s a lot of junk on these suckers that comes pre-packaged. Unlike with computers, where you can delete it all, if it came with the phone it’s staying with the phone. Now, one might think that’s not all that problematic; unfortunately it is because…

3. Apps are always running, whether you’re using them or not. And even if you use the ATK I talked about above, it only temporarily shuts down apps. Now, if you downloaded something and turn that off it stays off, but all the other stuff already on there is always running, always consuming some of your battery power. The weasels!

4. You have to get a cushion of some kind to put around your phone. My wife and I got these little rubbery things to put on ours. You’re not necessarily putting it on for protection. You’re putting it on so you don’t accidentally keep clicking on stuff on the top and sides that you just can’t avoid otherwise. The other day I got a phone call from a friend of mine, only she didn’t mean to call me. She’d sent me a text, then set the phone down but accidentally hit the button to call me. My cell recorded about 4 minutes of whatever was going on in her car before it disconnected; I’m just glad she didn’t say anything bad about me. lol

5. It’s wonderful being able to access the internet wherever you are. Wow, how great is this? I can find out where places are, look up things that I can’t fully remember but have on the tip of my tongue, get directions, access websites, etc. I’m on one of those unlimited plans that I hear might be going away, and I hope I get grandfathered in. It’s just the neatest thing; I never thought I’d care but now it seems I do.

That’s all I have; what say you?