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For the majority of consumers, the smartphone case is a fashion statement. My daughter, for example, bought several cases within weeks of buying the iPhone 5S to avoid any potential fashion faux pas. As such, for many people the case can be considered as an extension of the clothing that we wear. But there’s a dark side to what we wear: ask any young child who has been forced into a ghastly velvet suit, dress, or the like to attend a grown-up function. The scarring is permanent; trust me.

Network broadcasts, cable TV, DVR, on-demand, mobile apps, or apps on your TV? Who needs so many ways to watch TV? Me. Looking at recent viewing behaviors in our home many of these served a purpose, but there is a clear migration towards apps on the TV.

This holiday season some retailers are placing more emphasis on the mobile experience in an attempt to drive greater consumer focus both in the store and online. The smartphone provides the union of the physical and digital worlds and, through this device, the retailer can build an omni-channel solution for all occasions. The result is a “store” where it no longer matters if the consumer is online, in the store, or even online while in the store. As long as the ultimate sale remains within the retailer’s channels then all is well with the world...

The post-Turkey shopping extravaganza saw a significant increase in smartphone use, with some services seeing almost double the use of last year. But the real winner was less an individual retailer and more the overall web platform versus individual retailer apps. As we discovered in the recent Shopping on Smartphones report, many consumers continue to use the retailer websites, not the made-for-shopping apps that all the major retailers have developed.

The week-long flip phone experiment is over, and I’ve switched back to my old (or should that be new) trusty smartphone. Am I happy? Sort of. Frankly it’s a mixed bag of emotions.

“Turn your downtime into banking time” encouraged a radio ad for a large bank that was promoting the availability of its latest banking app. As a flip phone consumer, at least for the week, I wanted to ignore the ad completely, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how this simple sentence highlights everyday use of smartphones. Downtime is considered a bad thing, a waste, when we could be doing more productive activities.

I made my cousin speechless this past week. Literally, mid-sentence, she stopped talking and she stared incredulously at my phone before exclaiming “what the heck is that?” In all the years of carrying the latest and greatest devices I’ve never had such a reaction. Of course, these days pretty much all phones look the same and it’s really hard to carry a device that is so clearly different from the pack. The last such phone was the original iPhone. Before that, it was the RAZR that I’m now carrying.

Switching from a smartphone to an old flip phone is the technological equivalent of jumping into an icy lake: you know that it’s probably a dumb idea but there’s a (small) part of you that wants to see how it plays out. And yes, surprise, the metaphorical water is even colder than you expect; at least on day one.

My name is Eddie Hold, and I’m a smartphone addict. On average, I look at my smartphone more than 100 times a day with activities ranging from checking the time, to email, games, music, and more. It’s the first thing I do in the morning and pretty much the last thing I do before going to bed. One hundred or more “touches” per day is roughly once every 10 to 11 minutes while I’m awake.

T-Mobile unleashed the next stage of its Un-Carrier strategy yesterday, expanding the focus from smartphones to address demand (or lack thereof) for cellular connected tablets. The timing of the move was ideal, coming just one day after Apple’s iPad launches, and Nokia’s launch of its 2520 Windows tablet. The beauty of T-Mobile’s move is based on a combination of factors including the data and the way you can buy new tablets.