A "Smart" Phone Plan?

While browsing the "Verizon Wireless" website, I noticed that there are double the amount of 3G smartphones as there are simple phones. If I was to be doing this four years ago, this result would be the opposite. Phone companies are changing over in a few months to require every phone with access to the internet to be hooked up to the internet. In other words, if you have access to the web on your phone, you must pay for it, even if you do not plan on using it. As the technology generation grows older, the common man feels the pressure to purchase a smart phone to fit into the popular status quo, with the mandatory internet, even if he knows he will not use it.

Since when does our generation require us all to carry so many applications and informational phones with the internet on the tips of our fingertips? Why do we feel peer pressure to buy a phone with an extra $30 per month charge just to be able to check our facebook's and textsfromlastnight.com? Unfortunately, I cannot be a hypocrite in this circumstance, since I own the newest Blackberry Curve. However, I will be playing devil's advocate here, and fighting against societal pressure on buying a smartphone. Phone companies are making internet mandatory on internet-based phones, which is basically all phones. If you do not want to access the internet, you don't have much of a choice, except to buy a simple "cheap" samsung phone which is most likely pre-owned. Why is it that phone companies assume everyone wants a blackberry or other smart phone for it's internet usage? What if this one person wants a blackberry just for the use of the QWERTY keyboard and slim complexity? To get around this, you would have to purchase a simple phone, without the web. By simple phones, I mean ones that can make phone calls, send text messages, have cameras, VZ Navigator, family locator, and V Cast Music. Are all of those options really so "simple"? What makes a phone "complex?" Almost all of my friends own a "smart phone", which has full web browsing, along with many applications available for download, such as Google maps, photosharing via internet, applications only available from personal phone to the same personal phone, such as "bumping" for iPhones which syncs ones contact information with the click of the other iPhone, or "BBM" (blackberry messanger), blackberry's version of "AIM".

Ultimately, although I am a victim of the status quo of buying a blackberry, it doesn't make a right that every person wants the internet on their phone. Some can't afford it, and some just don't want it. This may not be such a "smart" phone plan afterall...