The other day I went into my home office before starting work and noticed that one of my apps required an update before it would work. I think I was checking in for a flight. Anyway, I’m a bit lazy with updating apps, so I decided to update all 20-something apps that needed updating at the same time.

I plugged the phone into my computer and starting work, thinking nothing of it. Ten minutes later I get a message from my phone company that I have used up 80% of my monthly data allowance, and I might want to keep an eye on it…I did, I never exceed my data allowance.

Then I realised that – d’oh – I wasn’t connected to my home network wirelessly. The night before I was low on battery and, not wanting the battery to give up the ghost before the alarm went off, I switched off the wireless and the bluetooth.

Call me old fashioned but I would have thought that a genuinely smart smartphone would go through the following process in about 4 milliseconds:

  • Do you know what, this guy’s downloading a ton of stuff, he’s not connected to the wireless and his wifi is not switched on
  • Location accuracy isn’t great without wireless but I can tell from his GPS location that he’s at home, which is odd
  • I’m going to send him a quick message to let him know that he might want to activate his wifi and connect to his wireless to save on data charges…

Those kinds of situations where the phone never forgets but the human does…it’s not that much to ask, is it?