Smartphone apps for university life

144

Your mother just called to ask for the tenth time how to attach photos to an e-mail.

Eyes roll and a sigh escapes the lips before you begin a seemingly infantile description of basic internet concepts.

Judge not lest ye be judged, college students.  There are mighty few people who are completely up to date in the realm of technology.

Consider smartphone applications, for one.  There are over a million apps to choose from. In Utah alone, there are a host of companies that make multiple apps every year.  Are you utilizing your smartphone?

Especially as a college student, modern technology in the form of apps can be useful.  Many of us are taking a full load of classes, working part time, trying to maintain a social life and at the same time hold a church calling.  Our phones can serve to consolidate our reference books, organize contacts and schedules.  But that is so two years ago.  Here are some apps to consider.

[easyembed field=”Photogallery”]

Nigel Goodwin, from Idaho, said that he frequently uses Evernote, an app that lets you have dominant control over multiple aspects of the web.

“It’ll do anything; pictures, audio, video,” he said. “Just cut a part you want and save it to an Evernote folder.”

The Sleep Cycle alarm clock is one of the most unique and credible apps recently created.  You put your iPhone on your bed when you sleep (which probably happens anyway) and the app uses the iPhone accelerometer to detect the lightest phase in your sleep cycle, and then wakes you up with its own alarm.  It has 4.5 star rating on apple.com, with over 30,000 ratings.  This app would be especially helpful to a college students who often have sporadic sleep cycles.

Instapaper is another useful app for the university student.  It lets you save web pages for later viewing, even when offline.  The 2012 college student generally spends a large part of the day on a computer, which means that student is exposed to a tremendous amount of information.  Instapaper offers a way to organize that information that you don’t have time to take in at the moment, but want to read later.

The benefits of smartphone apps bleed into many aspects of life.  Jared Walker, from Las Vegas, said that apps like Wikipanion and Yahoo! Finance do more than supplement his scholastic education.

“[Apps] definitely supplement my education,” he said, “but I would say more for my overall education and knowledge for facts and current events than specifically for school classes type of education.”

Effective utilization of apps can help us harness a power that we will probably use till we die.  Think of it as one more thing to learn in college.
Print Friendly, PDF & Email