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10 Ways to Brand Your Smart Telephone Pay for Itself
Twenty years ago, telephones were simple – and relatively cheap, with the boilerplate U.S.
20 years ago, telephones were elementary – and relatively inexpensive, with the average U.S. household spending $57 monthly on landline telephone service. These days, nearly half of all American adults are packing smart phones, with initial cost tags of equally much as $200 for a new phone every couple of years and monthly service plans costing $100 - $200, sometimes even more.
But your smart telephone doesn't have to exist a upkeep-buster. In fact, information technology might save yous a lot of money. This jack-of-all-trades is quickly replacing plush standalone devices such as MP3 players, digital cameras and GPS. It too tin be used as a diet tracker, a pedometer and much more. Here are ten means your smart phone tin pay for itself:
ane. Equally a Source of On-the-Wing Discounts and Deals
Estimated Savings:
It's up to yous.
A smart phone is a deal hunter'south best friend.
Save coin on every trip to the grocery store without clipping a unmarried coupon. With apps similar Coupon Sherpa and The Coupons App, yous tin can quickly review bachelor coupons from your favorite grocer, check off the ones y'all intend to use, and see the discounts practical at checkout when you swipe your loyalty menu (come across Lower Your Grocery Costs).
At other stores, make certain you lot're getting the best deal by using smart-phone apps to compare prices. For example, with Amazon's Price Check, y'all can scan a production'south barcode to compare prices at Amazon.com and its numerous merchants. Other comparing apps, such every bit Gas Buddy, identify your current location and find gas stations in your area with the cheapest fuel prices, while cyberbanking tools such every bit MasterCard's ATM Hunter tin search for your bank's closest ATM, helping you avoid unnecessary ATM fees.
Location-based services such as FourSquare are also great ways to find discounts. By "checking in" at certain restaurants or stores, yous can "unlock" rewards or special deals.
2. As a Day Planner/Agenda
Estimated Savings:
$10 - $35 for a paper planner (plus annual refills)
Forget most lugging around a daily planner and pen – and the associated hassle of manually logging annual dates and regular appointments in each new yr'southward calendar. Most smart phones come with a basic, built-in calendar and scheduling tool, and y'all can download more-sophisticated planning apps free. You can set alarms to remind you of engagements in advance, colour-code different appointments and tasks, and synch it up with your office calendar.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of using your telephone every bit a twenty-four hour period planner is that you'll almost always have information technology with you lot. Whether yous're at the doctor'south part or at a business tiffin, you can quickly brand note of a new engagement or check the fourth dimension of your next meeting.
three. Equally a Portable GPS
Estimated Savings:
$100 - $250 for a portable GPS navigator
Whether you're out on the road or hit the trails, information technology's easy to utilise your smart telephone to get effectually. With Google Maps integrated in Android devices and gratis navigation apps bachelor on other smart phones, in that location is less of a demand for traditional GPS, specially if you're just looking to go from Betoken A to Point B.
four. Equally a Portable Music Histrion
Estimated Savings:
$50 - $400 for an iPod from the Apple Store
Smart phones are a great place to store your music. With storage limits of up to 64GB, some phones tin actually hold more than songs than a standalone iPod or MP3 player. For example, you could spend $199 on an 8G iPod Touch that holds approximately 2,000 songs, or you could store that aforementioned number of songs on a 16G iPhone 4s (also $199) and still take 8GB of storage infinite left over.
With a smart telephone as your music histrion, you lot tin can stream music from the Internet using apps such every bit Pandora or YouTube. Via apps such as iCloud or Google Music, your smart phone also has the ability to access the music library on your computer, which means it'll take up less storage infinite on your phone.
5. As a Camera
Estimated Savings:
$70 - $150 for a bones point-and-shoot digital camera
With your phone nigh always in hand, never miss a unmarried Kodak moment.
Although photos taken by a mobile telephone traditionally have been grainy and out of focus, the latest smart-phone cameras should satisfy most casual photographers. With resolutions of up to 8 megapixels and wider apertures, smart-phone cameras are "cannibalizing the point-and-shoot marketplace to a certain caste," says Zach Honig, a senior associate editor at Engadget.
Instantly share photos with friends and family by uploading the images from your smart phone to Facebook or sending them in an e-mail. Congenital-in editing software and gratis apps such every bit Instagram permit you edit and customize photos on the fly.Ane matter to consider: if you desire to print skillful-quality photos, Honig says you'll need to stride up to a traditional digital camera.
6. As a Video Camera
Estimated Savings:
$150 - $300 for a full HD camcorder
Traditional video cameras tin can be heavy and difficult to lug around, and you lot have to worry most carrying an extra record or SD carte du jour.
Certain, your smart phone'southward video camera won't lucifer the high-quality video of a dedicated filming device, but the technology is ever improving. Many phones already allow you to tape loftier-definition video.And with a smart phone, you lot tin can instantly upload a video to YouTube or save it to the cloud, assuasive y'all to delete information technology from your telephone before it starts taking up also much retentivity.
vii. As a Home Phone
Estimated Savings:
$360/year on landline phone service
If you're already paying for a smart-phone service plan, why add an extra $30 to $forty a month for an additional line?
The cheapest calling plan for smart phones from both Verizon and AT&T is $39.99 for 450 minutes (long-distance included). In Washington, D.C., for instance, a landline from RCN costs $xxx a month. Add together the charges for any long-distance calls and it's piece of cake to see how ditching the landline tin can salve you money.
Some other reward to using your smart phone as your chief calling device is the ease with which you can make international calls. With costless apps such as Skype and Google Talk, you don't even need a computer or Internet connection to talk with friends and family outside of the land (assuming y'all have a decent information plan).
If you determine to lose your landline, get-go brand sure you get decent prison cell reception around your house. You wouldn't want to find yourself in an emergency and unable to make a telephone call.
Estimated Savings:
$10 - $30 for an alarm clock radio
In many ways, mobile phones are more reliable alarm clocks than their traditional counterparts. Not only tin can you lot set multiple alarms on the aforementioned device, but you lot can programme the alarms to go off on a regular schedule, for example at seven A.M. Mon through Friday. They're likewise great for traveling, especially because how confusing it can be to set the alarm clocks at most hotels.
There are too some groovy apps that can optimize the alarm clock on your smart phone. For case, the Winter Wake-Upwardly app tracks the weather while you're comatose, and if bad weather sets in overnight, it will wake y'all up earlier then yous have actress time for your morning commute.
Just exist sure to charge your telephone every night: Your smart telephone's alarm can't audio if your bombardment is dead.
Estimated Savings:
$90 - $200+/yr on home Cyberspace service
Sharing the wireless Internet connexion on your smart phone with a laptop or desktop computer, known as tethering, can relieve you money, merely only if don't go online at home very often, or just practise so for basic activities such equally sending e-mail service and surfing the Spider web.
For example, on AT&T's 5GB and Mobile Hotspot plan, you could send and receive more than 400 e-mails and view 100 web pages every solar day, and nonetheless stay under your monthly data limit. At $600 per year ($50/month), that programme may seem expensive compared to the $480/twelvemonth you would pay for Comcast's cheapest habitation Internet service in Washington, D.C ($29.99 for the commencement vi months, $44.99 for months 7-12), but it's withal almost $100 cheaper than paying for AT&T'southward cheapest data plan ($240/twelvemonth for a express 300MB/calendar month) AND home Internet (about $450/year). Bump that upward to $30 for 3GB/month, and yous would relieve more than $200/year by ditching your dwelling Internet.
While some online activities, such as surfing the Web or checking e-mail, won't swallow up besides much data, it would be near impossible to regularly stream video via your telephone without paying an arm and a leg. And unless you lot have a 4G connection, you'll likely take to await a long time for the video to fully load. So if you regularly stream more than thirty minutes or so of depression-quality video each mean solar day, you'll probably desire to stick with your home Cyberspace provider.
If you're tethering, be sure to set up alerts on your telephone to let you lot know if y'all're budgeted your information limit.
Estimated Savings:
$50 - $250 for a handheld game console
For the casual gamer on the move, smart phones are quickly becoming the device of pick. Since 2009, Android and iOS went from controlling merely nineteen% of the U.Due south. portable game software market to owning a bulk of the market (58%) by 2011.
Mobile devices offer countless free games, including popular apps such equally Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. Co-ordinate to one contempo study, smartphone users dedicate 39 percentage of their time to games.
Sony has fifty-fifty released its own "PlayStation Certified" Android telephone, consummate with "existent" gaming controls and admission to a growing number of "PS-like" games available via "PlayStation Mobile." While these games typically cost $3 to $15 apiece, that'south all the same cheaper than what you lot might pay for a game on a dedicated handheld gaming device. Sony has announced plans to brand PlayStation Mobile bachelor on more Android devices in the time to come.
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Source: https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/spending/t057-s001-10-ways-to-make-your-smart-phone-pay-for-itself/index.html