Smartphone Thoughts: On the Road, On the Go: What's Your Killer App?

I've had people ask me why I tend to carry my Smartphone more than I carry my Pocket PC, and it comes down to one simple answer: one-handed email is the "killer application" for me. I spent a weekend in Edmonton in June, and I took only my Smartphone. While walking around West Edmonton Mall with my wife and her friend, I was able to check my email in an inconspicuous manner, and of course have it automatically poll for new messages every 15 minutes. Checking email on a Pocket PC is a two-handed affair, which is vastly different than using a Smartphone. My first pass at email always consists of deleting spam - I can do that while walking or talking with others. My second pass at mail is when I respond to the messages - I'm still pretty slow at T9, so one of the features I really enjoy using is the voice recorder option.

Over that weekend, a deactivated review team email alias for Pocket PC Thoughts was turned on due to a miscommunication. This alias was shut down because it was getting a lot of spam, and now that it was back on, my review team was getting hammered with nasty spam. One of the review team members emailed me to ask what was going on, so rather than trying to type out a message explaining what happened, I made a voice recording while overlooking the indoor ice skating rink. I also send another voice message to someone on my server team, asking them to shut down the alias and explaining why. The entire process took perhaps three minutes, but it proved to be remarkably effective - everyone I've sent a voice message to thinks it's really cool. 8)

Now obviously we don't want to have 100 voice messages in our Inbox every day, so my approach may become shunned in the coming years, but for now it's a remarkably effective way to communicate large amounts of data very quickly (assuming you have flat-rate data services of course!). Our voice will always be more effective than our fingers when it comes to situations like this.

By the end of the weekend, I was able to return to my desktop computer, and I only had six emails waiting for me. Considering I'd normally have around 200, this was quite an improvement. The six emails were items that I needed to be at my desktop computer to respond to (mostly because I needed file attachments that were only on my desktop PC). My Smartphone allowed me to go away for the weekend and still be productive and effective with my time.

So this raises the question, what's your killer app? What's the one application that you find most useful on your Smartphone, above all the others?