From being just another gadget a few years ago, cutting edge and meaningful innovations have helped turn the smartphone into an integral part of our lives – an essential device that connects you with your loved ones. It aids your productivity, helps you keep up with news, listen to music, watch movies and much more. There’s hardly a thing that today’s smartphones cannot do!

In fact, smartphones help us stay connected, stay well, and even stay productive and entertained.

Stay Connected

At a time when social distancing is the new norm, your Galaxy phone is the window to the world, helping you connect seamlessly to your office colleagues, relatives and friends via calls (voice and video), texts and emails. Whether it’s about seeking a doctor’s advice or online classes for kids, the smartphone helps you accomplish so much without having to step out of your homes.

[QUICK TECH] My Smartphone, My Precious Companion: Mala Bhargava

Stay Healthy

The local gyms may have become temporarily inaccessible, but that should not come in the way of keeping yourself in shape. With a fitness app (such as Samsung Health), you can turn your smartphone into your gym trainer to easily track physical activity, nutrition, heart rate and sleep too.

Stay Productive

With remote working gaining popularity, it is important for you to stay on top of work via your home office. Thankfully, today’s smartphones can be really handy when it comes to checking emails, setting up video conferencing and even working on spreadsheets and presentations. With a simple USB cable, you can connect your Samsung device to your PC—and once connected, use Samsung DeX to drag and drop files from your phone to your PC.

Stay Informed & Entertained

News is important and available at your fingertips via your smartphone. And after a hard day of work, nothing is more soothing than to tune into soulful music on your smartphone. Gone are the days when families would fight for the TV remote. Today, more and more millennials and Gen Z use their smartphones to binge watch their favourite shows or play high-action games, collaborating with their friends. With screen sizes getting bigger and better, smartphones have become the hub of entertainment for a lot of people today.

Stay in Control

Smartphones help you navigate real world challenges from the safety of your own home. You can conduct financial transactions such as making payments and transferring money safely and securely through your phone. Moreover, you can order food and groceries online and pay for them with apps like Samsung Pay. With Samsung Knox, Samsung’s defence-grade security platform, you can be assured about the security of your Galaxy smartphone.

[We will bring you useful tips to use your Samsung Galaxy. Watch this space for more.]

My dad was the real techie in the family, responsible for us all developing a lifelong curiosity about technology. He would make sure that any new gadget invented soon found their way to our home as soon as they hit the mart – the first intercom, the first cassette recorder, the first cordless phone, and the list goes on. As a child, I more or less took tech innovations for granted – and that doesn’t seem to have changed.

But never at any point in life did I realise what precious companions our gadgets could be. Until one fine day we found ourselves firmly locked down hiding away from a nasty virus. I guess if there’s ever been a time for introspection, this is it.

Today, if I had to choose one gadget I can’t do without, it would be my smartphone. You could say it’s my one big window to the outside world. It is my way to connect with friends and family, and colleagues, and also with the neighbourhood mom-and-pop stores and chemist, who deliver those essentials when I give them a call. I am connected to my bank, I am paying all my bills to keep my WiFi, my TV, my electricity and even my cellular network going – all on my phone. I am talking to and chatting with my friends on it, I get news updates on social networking apps, and I am learning new languages through videos. It’s with me by my bedside, while I am working out, I am in the kitchen, and even when I am learning Belly Dance in front of my giant mirror. Now, I am revealing some of my secrets! More on that some other time.

But while I work from home in these difficult times, I’ve picked up a new way to use the phone. I have been working on digitising old photographs for some time now. While we used to have those scanners in the past, several apps on our phones are now able to do the job as well. I leave it you to choose your app. There are many you will find on the app stores. I am spending this time using my Galaxy Note10 to digitise a lot of old family photos. You get to see them once again, touch and feel the memories of yore, and bring them back to life.

Of all of my gadgets – there are so many around me – I rather like using the Galaxy Note10 because of its versatility. The S Pen makes it easier to navigate, scroll, and calligraph – another thing that I picked up from my dad. I like using the trace method of writing, which I can do easily with the Galaxy Note.

In the hustle bustle of life, we didn’t have the time and energy to look back. We all have a beautiful past. Despite the tough times, look at the positives of being home today. And create something nice for the future.

[Mala Bhargava is an Independent Technology Journalist and writes for The Hindu Business Line. She wrote this piece at the request of Samsung Newsroom India]