Learning via Social Media

References

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The question I will be discussing within my report below will examine the history of computers and smart phones throughout the 21st century and how the development and progression of both through various advancements has led to the question becoming raised to whether the smart phone will actually surpass the home computer in the current day and age. This will be concluded through me comparing the two in terms of various functionalities and practicalities using logic, facts to give my final verdict to which is triumphant.

To simplify the question to a basic level in order to firstly answer it, we need to understand the beginning of the two in terms of the difference with the definitions. A smart phone is a ‘’ mobile phone that performs many of the functions of a computer, typically having a touchscreen interface, Internet access, and an operating system capable of running downloaded apps ‘’ (Oxford Dictionaries). On the parallel, a computer is ‘’¹ an electronic machine that can store, organize and find information, do calculations and control other machines ‘’ (Oxford Dictionaries). Therefore this portrays that computers are machines capable of storing huge amounts of information whether it be organizing to finding whilst the smart phone focuses on trivial aspects such as internet access in comparison which shouldn’t even be a skill that deserves praise. This could support the consensus that home computers are built for work whilst phones are more of the games/social media. The definition of the computer also states that it can do calculations and control other machines inferring that it is very powerful and has to be in order to complete that function, whilst the phone only compares itself to a computer without giving any real evidence of what it can do, lacking validity in its statement. Therefore this displays that there is an inferiority complex between the two devices just by the simple definitions, providing me a start of point in terms of my verdict. However in the 21^st century, both devices are very technologically advanced now and up to date with the new interfaces, 4g, streaming, and tap and pay with the smart phone definitely coming a long way from the early 21^st century, and we shall discuss this below.

Smart phones in the early 21^st century have advanced a long way till now in our current day and age in terms of various aspects such as development, usability to popularity. We shall start off first with discussing development. Phones in the early 21st century could barely perform any functions apart from the typical phone calls to texts, basic games such as snake and pictures with nothing much more. This was due to their weak processors that were 34bit to now’s 64 bit. It therefore produced a lot of lag, wasn’t efficient enough and was only capable of allowing a select group of functions to be performed. Compare this to the development of phones now which is labelled as ‘’ Smart phones ‘’ due to their features such as new more powerful and developed processors for example which are each made to their own style by companies such as: Apple, Sony, and Samsung. Sony’s new processor the 2015 Xperia line contains the Snapdragon 820 which is very quick, and provides seamless smooth transition from apps, to the Internet, to games without a problem as it runs on a 350Mhz CPU which really quick whilst the old generation brick phones would have never been able to perform this function. The processor is also the ‘’first mobile processor from qualcomm to utilize custom cores ‘’ meaning a return to high-end CPU’s, which optimise all of the phones features such as ‘’ learning algorithms and smart cameras that recognize scenes, objects, and text ‘’ (Luis D. 1987) in result producing a 23 mega pixel front camera, the first ever. This development is vast and is continuing to grow in all smart phones and it shows through my example of Sony, with their features of water and dust proof, 23 mega pixel front camera, 2 day battery life, 4k resolution screen. The future looks exciting and bright for all smart phones in the development field.

Popularity within smart phones has grown to a new unprecedented level among the general population at the current moment, whilst before only a few had the top of the range smart phones whilst the others calmly presided with the older generation brick phones to perform their daily functions of phone calls and texts. This has long changed since the introduction of social media and wide range of functionalities of what phones could possess has since flourished into what we have now as the daily smart phone with its general operating system either being; Android to Apple providing users with endless amounts of apps for anything. This is shown by the fact that ‘’ today about half the adult population owns a smartphone; by 2020, 80% will. Smartphones have also penetrated every aspect of daily life ‘’ (Berkley, J. 2015) proving my point that smartphones are at a peak in popularity. Not only this statistic will phase you, here’s another one conducted stating that ‘’ the average American is buried in one for over two hours every day. Asked which media they would miss most, British teenagers pick mobile devices over TV sets, PCs and games consoles ‘’ (Berkley, J. 2015). This is an astounding statement as it disproves the general consensus that teenager’s interest, especially males is within consoles and not smart phones therefore revealing an unexpected and surprising fact. This would have never been the case a decade ago proving that the development of these phones is in direct correlation with the popularity in which both are growing sky high. Smart phones have evolved therefore into a type of necessity that a majority of adults and teenagers need, this was not the case in the early 21^st century with the phone domain being used primarily for work only.

Lastly, usability is an important factor within phones in general. With smart phones becoming further and further complex with every new generation of Apple IPhone to Samsung’s, a new list of applications, updates are created to minimise technical faults and produce flawless new convenient features with usability required to be compatible for high user friendly ratings in order to ensure the smart phone is understandable and simple enough for the majority of people. But testing phones for their usability isn’t just reviewed and collected from customers of these smart phones by surveys and questionnaires. It is done through another more extensive method which is in a laboratory environment to minimise any external variables from affecting the usability apart from the participant as ‘’ the environment of usability test laboratory is a peaceful environment in which the usability tester can only focus on his/her specific task ‘’ (Ahmad.N & Waqas Boota.M & Hye Masoom.A, 2014). All the tests are conducted in every aspect of the smart phone to see whether it is user friendly and each task is very rigorous to prove whether the smart phone is good enough. For example, to test the new high definition camera’s as ‘’ users of smart phones are able to record the screen of smart phones while attaching a mini camera to it and obtain information for later evaluation ‘’ (Ahmad,N. & Waqas Boota,M. & Hye Masoom,A. 2014). This long process of testing the phone for usability is the reason why most users of these complex devices have no problems with their functionality and can use the phone to the maximum without having any faults customizing the settings to their own individual liking.

Computers within the 21^st century have not fallen behind, and have made just as much, or even more advancement in a shorter amount time needed than the actual smart phone in our current period when compared at an initial stage. Home computers, especially have upgraded in development, usability and popularity which all hold weight to whether a product is categorised as a successful one or not. In the 21^st century, through a variety development computers are now as powerful as ever with them performing commands efficiently and quickly without any problem at all, this is due to the increasing size of the processors computers have available to them with desktops becoming bigger, in a more intelligent one. Traditional home desktops in the first part of the 21^st century have all been differentiated by components e.g.: the screen, hard drive, mouse and keyboard. Now, home computers for instance introduced firstly by Dell have created all-in-one desktops that merge the screen with the hard drive making for desktops that are more technologically advanced. With the bigger screens available, touch screen has been introduced to most all-in-ones; processes have increased, processor speeds in range to 2.4 to 3.5 GHz in a majority of all-in-ones which is incredibly fast and smooth. Not only this, computers in general, whether it be laptops to all-in-ones have a relatively incredible storage space, with the Apple iMac having 1 terabyte of space.

There isn’t a home in the United Kingdom and many other 1^st and even some 3^rd world countries were you wouldn’t find a desktop lying around waiting to be used for whatever purpose. This is due to many factors but as I mentioned before, development is one with home computers becoming as fast as ever with the new processors containing high CPU’s, also connectivity plays a key role as ‘’ electronic equipment can be deeply enhanced by having connections to the internet and online world ‘’ (Hansen, D. 2010) which is very true. Having the availability to search anything you want without restrictions most of the time can satisfy ones curiosity for more being an enjoyable freedom whether it be meeting new people through social media, or increasing your knowledge of a particular topic to work related business. Connections allow this to occur, therefore advancing the customers experience on computer, increasing the sales. The home desktop has become the source that can answer a majority of the questions we seek with the web at your fingertips, therefore establishing itself as a necessity, one that we cannot live without, just like the smart phone. This directly links with the reason why the desktop P.C is becoming increasingly shipped across the world for example up to ‘’ 296 million in 2014 ‘’ (Grala, D. 2014). This in translation would equate to a gigantic amount of money one cannot fathom, proving that the computer is still very popular but to an extent as this shall be explained within the comparison between the smart phone and itself.

Usability on the on computer has always been very user friendly. Most complaints within computing have been from the development aspect, and never from the usability, the majority of the people can very easily familiarize themselves with the technology with the data entry input being the mouse and keyboard making this more easy. Since majority of home computers to laptops have either Windows operating system or IOS, buying a new computer doesn’t involve re-learning much at all and you’re pretty much ready to use straight away to its full potential.

Storage space is vital aspect in this question to fully compare whether the smart phone will surpass the home computer, and I will disagree monumentally in this case. The Apple iMac as I’ve mentioned before for example has 1 terabyte of space and is very much affiliated with being a home computer so therefore with this humongous amount of space, a smart phone doesn’t stand chance in terms of storage as its traditionally without any SD card, only has 64 GB. It’s nothing to the average computer and this does weigh in on the answer of the question we are analysing. To have any chance of smart phones challenging the home computer, it needs to challenge in the aspect of storage space and that cannot happen at the current moment. Smart phones can only retain within a certain size in terms of width and length before becoming categorized as a tablet. With that in mind, there is absolutely no way that smart phones could ever reach 1TB or even 200+ GB without having to sacrifice the processor, camera quality, ram, and that wouldn’t happen. Therefore home desktops will come out on top in this aspect.

Home computers will never have the problem of battery life becoming an issue as they’re not portable and will always have electricity available to keep them running. On the other hand, smart phone companies have been chipping away at the problem of battery life, and it’s been very crucial to find differing ways to increase battery life without restricting any of the phones functionalities like the camera or the processor speed, storage for sales. For example, Sony has marketed one of its new Xperia Z5 phone lines as having a 2 day battery life. This can be done through Sony factory settings of lowering the brightness levels of the screen whilst retaining that HD effect. But you can manually change this meaning the battery life lowers, as if you use apps. Therefore phones cannot compete with computers in this aspect.

Home computers in the 21st century have very fast processors as ‘’ of power and cooling. Computers are equipped to provide these requirements for processors, thus being able to feature higher computing power overall ‘’ (Computer Hope) and can therefore open up a range of browsers, videos, games, documents simultaneously without lagging for a second. On the other hand a typical smart phone processor ‘’  is usually less powerful than a netbook CPU, which for those who’ve used them, are frustratingly slow at the best of times ‘’ (Young.D, 2014) so we can imagine it not performing the function that well. Smart phones don’t have the environment to provide high level processors enough power and cooling to perform to the standard of a home computer since ‘’ they are limited to lower voltage processors ‘’ (Young.D, 2014) as of this, and are much more susceptible to lagging, freezing and crashes which is the case. Although these low voltage level processors aren’t on the level of out-performing computers, they are steadily developing in the new generation of smart phone lines such as the Apple IPhone 6 range. The A9 chip processor for example represents this from Apple which provides the new IPhone 6 line ‘’ with improved graphics, longer periods of time, with great performance and battery life ‘’ (Apple 6S – Tech). The CPU performance has been increased by 70% whilst and the GPU is 90% faster. With developments like these from Apple and other phone companies, they may have a chance of rivalling low level laptops, but home computers will always be more powerful and advanced.

Another key aspect to consider in this debate is the data entry user input system used for both devices. Computers have always traditionally from the 20^th century used keyboards to provide data entry, and a mouse for scrolling and clicking. On the other hand smart phones in the 21^st century rely on their touch screen capabilities to do both functions of the mouse and keyboard. Before this wasn’t the case, as demonstrated by the old brick Nokia generation but now, with touch screens being in a majority of smart phones. It has become very advanced although they will still never be able to compete with the home computers input system. Keyboards will ever be so faster especially in terms of work, typing would be more efficient, faster, and smoother with the letters all spaced out appropriately whilst smart phones would lag and you’d often miss-type a letter as ‘’ the smaller keyboard can make typing more difficult for users ‘’ (Computer Hope). So therefore, home computers conquer the smart phone in this domain for definite and this shall not be changing any time soon.

As I was mentioning earlier within the context of popularity for the home computer, we can transfer it along within this debate as an input to helping find out if the phone will surpass the computer in this aspect. Figures display that the shipments of the computer have been declining from 2013 onwards dropping by ‘’ 9.8% ‘’ (Grala, P. (2014) and ‘’ falling another 6% to 296 million from 2013's 315 million ‘’ (Grala, P. (2014). Therefore, these figures are very abrupt and display that home computers are on decline, implying the demand is decreasing, with customers buying smart phones instead as the replacement. Smart phones have evolved into a necessity that seems to be out weighing the computer in the popularity sector as shown by the IDC forecasts, so the smart phone is surpassing the P.C in popularity proven also by this graph.

I’ve finally concluded through my tedious research that the home computer will not be surpassed by the smart phone, not any time soon for definite. Through comparing, the home computer is still very apparent in the manner that it is more advanced than the smart phone in the most key aspects in this debate e.g. storage, development, and user input data that make it therefore more usable. Computers will always be more heavily relied upon within the work industry due it’s capabilities over the phone therefore having more importance within business. Computers are much quicker also and can multi task with ease without getting heated which isn’t the case for the smart phone. They are overall more technologically advanced than the phone and will be so for many, many years to come.