It's somewhat difficult these days, especially when the market is thoroughly considered, to tell the difference between a tablet and a smartphone. Indeed, a whole market segment known as the phablet—a portmanteau of “phone” and “tablet”—has emerged to help further obfuscate the difference between the two platforms. Indeed, there are already those who are pointing out that, thanks to a combination of technologies, one never really need buy a smartphone with a voice plan ever again, but rather, put a tablet to work instead.
The point at which we stopped really needing a voice plan began back in 2006, in which fully 16 percent of American homes no longer bothered with a land line for making and receiving phone calls, instead electing to use a mobile device instead. While some suggest this might be a bad idea in the long term—in a power outage, a cell phone loses charge while a land line device can continue to operate—for many it has proven to be a worthwhile approach. But 2006 was actually a year ahead of the iPhone (News - Alert)'s emergence, and the number has only fallen since.
But many users out there don't put those powerful new devices to work to move voice traffic around; instead, most use devices for data, and that's where the idea of the tablet replacing the smartphone comes into play. With technologies like voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and its immediate descendant voice over LTE (VoLTE), we're able to eschew voice traffic altogether and make our calls using that fast 4G data connection. But at the same time, LTE (News - Alert) devices are requiring bigger batteries, and that means bigger devices. Note how much bigger the smartphone has been of late; major makers from Apple to Google (News - Alert) to Samsung have all brought out six-inch devices since 2013, and that's pretty much a tablet, if not really a phablet.
Thus, it's leading some to wonder: why bother with a phone? The bigger phones are sacrificing portability for power anyway; most users will never fit a six-inch phone in a pants pocket, so that idea's out. But what's worse for some is how the billing process is set up. Buying, say, an iPad Mini at T-Mobile can come with a three gigabyte data plan at $30 a month. Meanwhile, buying an iPhone 6 Plus would require a $60 a month bill for the voice plan plus the other features. Moving that over to an iPad Mini with a nine gigabyte data plan would be $60, so the value becomes just a little clearer that way. With tools like Skype (News - Alert) and WhatsApp and a host of instant messaging systems, the functions of voice and texting are taken care of, particularly if the user's in an area with free Wi-Fi on hand.
The case is fairly obvious, in retrospect; why pay for a voice and data plan when much of a user's calling can be done with a standard data plan? An extra six gigabytes of data equates to about 2,000 minutes of talk time, and that's not counting Wi-Fi getting involved. It wasn't so long ago that AT&T (News - Alert)'s CEO back in 2012, Randall Stephenson, suggested that there would only be data plans eventually anyway, so why not take that bull by the horns? The idea might be a little strange, but it's one worth trying out; see how much of your calling can be done by a data connection, and see how much life changes in the interim.
Edited by Alisen Downey