Cellular phones have come a long way since the first commercial cellular phone was launched in 1979. With many modern models, not only can you make phone calls, but there are more and more services being made available to provide the world’s information at your fingertips. Because greater functionality is built-in, smart phones can keep you organized and informed while out of the office.

Smart phones can function as personal organizers letting you make written and voice notes, keep track of appointments with a calendar, manage contact lists and create automatic reminders wherever you may be. You can synchronize your smart phone with your computer so that information is never lost and stays consistent.

With smart phones you are almost always connected to the internet. You can access maps and directions to destinations, weather and traffic reports, watch videos, view your email including attachments and search or browse the internet.

Smart phones offer built-in digital cameras with immediate snap and send functionality. You can instantly photograph and send images of anything from products, site inspections or damaged machinery and send them as email attachments to anybody.

One challenge in making a decision on acquiring a smart phone is that you need a voice and a data plan. The voice plan covers all the phone calls that you would make and are often measured in day time and evening minutes. Data plans cover all the information that your phone sends and receives, is measured in the number of Mega Bytes that you download, and is not quite as straight forward. A mega byte is the equivalent of approx 500 text only emails, 7 or 8 web pages, or 1 or 2 photos. A video is often a couple mega bytes.  Using these numbers as rough guidelines, you should be able to estimate what you will need in a data plan.