Do We Really Know What People are Using Their Smartphone for?

Smartphone use has become popular and integrated into our daily life, such as mobile learning. However, while we would like to promote mobile learning, we have little knowledge on how users use their mobile phone. Therefore, this study aims to understand smartphone use. In data collection, this study contributes by developing an alternate data collection method. This tailor-made smartphone app enables data collection by a mass number of researchers who observe and record smartphone use of the public. Data collection could also take place at various times of the year to compare the changes or to search for any patterns of use. This study reported a recent data collection of 3780 data sets, of a time-frame of seven days between 21 and 27 January 2017, from Hong Kong. The results showed that significant relationships are found between smartphone use and gender, smartphone use and weekday, and smartphone use and use context. Three phenomena of smartphone use are discussed. The study suggests sharing the raw data for every researcher to analyze in their own way.