A recent study has revealed that the average person uses only a third of the features found on their smartphone, meaning that two-thirds of apps and features go unnoticed. Only 8 features and built-in apps are used on a regular base, with the other six being used occasionally. If you consider that an average smartphone comes with around 40 features, it means that only 35% of a smartphone’s power is being really used. Of course, it doesn’t take in to account apps that can be downloaded from the Play Store. The study says that newer features such as fingerprint scanning, mobile payments, voice commands are also barely used, and these are some of the selling points manufacturers advertise to try to get to our pockets. “While the endless list of built-in features is impressive, it seems many of us are paying for a lot of things we don’t use, or even know are there in the first place,” says Stuart Wilson, a spokesperson from Talkmobile. The problem is not only that people don’t use the features, but 59% of those surveyed aren’t even aware of what their phones can do. The amount of people using all the features their smartphones offer is only 8%, and 67% admit that most features aren’t really relevant for the daily life. The study also shows that texting and calling are still the most popular uses for a phone and taking photos and browsing the web are increasingly popular too.
There may be a reason for these disappointing numbers for manufacturers. Smartphones are a relatively new part of our lives, and if you go back in time only 10 years, it would be impossible to imagine that a rectangular piece of glass, metal and plastic would be so important in our day-to-day lives. That said, it takes time for new technologies to blend in and smartphones also evolve quite fast. For example, we didn’t have fingerprint scanners three years ago and all of a sudden, phones can detect fingerprints extremely accurately and the technology is being used to make payments and authorize all sorts of activities on your device. For a tech savvy person, this is all amazing, but for most people this is just too much to absorb. Another problem is that manufacturers seem to be putting a lot of time and effort to build apps and features most users do not use.