The ultimate convergence gizmo might just be dumbing you down. Smartphones have you heroically multi-tasking 24×7, shunting between a 100 e-mails and global time zones. The upshot is that attention spans nowadays are reduced to a nanosecond, and frantic networking all day might in the long run make you the cretin who does everything, but does it all botched.

Besides short-term memory loss hazards, scrambling all day with F1 paced super tasking affects cognitive abilities significantly. BlackBerrying at the steering-wheel is a strict no-no on the official manual, but reports say 60% people confess to doing it despite being aware of the crash possibilities. Twitter-age lit means anything beyond 140 characters is bunkum, is no wondering ‘2 B or not 2B’, just stream that inane video adaptation of a classic on your smartphone.

Gadget aficionados might see this as a Luddite rant, but experts say that the home office on the go might actually spike stress levels, leading to a 20 hour workday. Those smartphone apps that have a glowing candle to soothe you are simply useless. Some might react with horror to the idea of switching off, but it is the way to go to counter breakneck distraction.

T-mobile has now entered the smartphone fray, with biggies and have-beens like Microsoft scrambling to outdo BlackBerry, and carve out their slice of the cloud communication pie. To end the idiot’s guide to smartphones: the verdict is to mix work with play on your smartphone, and give the deadline sprint a break every now and then.