Now, you may think this a silly question! But believe me, the increasing number of messages and notifications I get on my smartphone all day every day, which probably take longer to type than to make a phone call, is rising rapidly ...
Mobile devices are getting smarter, and some are getting very, very expensive. You can pay as much as £1,200 for a top of the range Samsung or Apple smartphone. And they are incredibly powerful and always connected.
Apart from messaging and browsing, we use them to start our cars, set our house alarms, turn on the heating before we arrive home ... sound familiar from last weeks Internet of Things blog post? We use our phones as the gateway to all other connected devices.
For commercial and industrial use, rugged smartphones and tablets should be the must-have devices for 2021 and beyond. Once bulky, cumbersome and lacking in features, the new breed of devices are not only drop-proof, waterproof and dustproof, they are also feature-rich and stuffed full of technology.
More and more manufacturers (not Apple or Samsung) are producing branded and non-branded, up-to-the-minute smartphones and tablets to an industrial standard (IP68 and 69), which look and feel great and can use all the apps from Google's Play Store.
Caterpillar, Land Rover, JCB and Dewalt all had branded Android-based smartphones designed and manufactured to appeal to the trades!
Other specialist UK based providers have commissioned their own brand of devices. One such company is a major player and has its own brand of devices. The Defender range of phones and tablets can be called a good British brand and is based in my own county of Northamptonshire.
Security is one major aspect that is overlooked on smartphones. You have to remember that nearly all the apps are connected nearly all of the time and most of us search the internet on our smartphones just as much as sitting with a standard computer, be a laptop or PC.
Standard free antivirus and anti-malware can be used to offer a degree of protection to your device and is advisable at the very least. If you use your phone for business purposes, then you may be downloading files from Office 365 or opening attachments from an email. Do you take the same precautions on opening documents on your phone as you would on a computer?
My advice is to have End Point Security or Mobile Device Management (MDM) on all business-issued handsets. There are many products out there in the market and some licences may also be included with your standard PC or laptop security software.
Get in touch if you'd like a demo of these rugged devices or to talk smartphone security.
If you feel inspired to find out more then do call me on 07555 807700 or leave a comment below and I'll be in touch as soon as I can.