Smart Phone or iPad Which is better

It can be a tough choice deciding what to devices to use for business whether you want to have a smartphone or carry a regular cell phone and have an iPad is a common choice many business professionals are facing. For a business person the capabilities the iPad provide make it an overwhelming choice over a smart phone for most users, however there are reasons for wanting just a smart phone depending on your daily routine, so make sure to consider why you are purchasing an iPad or a smartphone. Both devices allow you to be more productive during the day and while the iPad is larger it is still a light weight device that fits in most medium sized bags.

Remember a smartphone will require the purchase of a data plan, while a iPad can be purchased without a cellular data plan. If you are constantly in areas with a wifi connection and do not anticipate needing internet connection in other areas than purchasing both may be a reality. The older generation iPhones and existing Android smartphones are all very reasonably priced and the iPad without a data plan is about $500.

Below are some pros and cons of an iPad and smartphones for business professionals.

A smart phone will be capable of doing most tasks that an iPad can do however others will be more difficult or not reasonable to accomplish on the smartphone just because of the size. This is only a review of non calling tasks as it is expected that you would have a regular phone otherwise if considering a iPhone or iPad.

Smart Phone is great for email, checking the news in a basic format, updating and reading facebook, etc. While for both Android and iPhone there are a host of business related apps that will allow you to open and edit documents like word and excel files it is not really the best document editing device due to the small size of the keyboard, making it difficult to edit and type.

An iPad will allow you to type and edit document easily. Writing emails is much easier with the pad. I also believe it is a far superior device for browsing the web and reading the news. While news apps like Flipboard are on both platforms it is a much better experience on the iPad than the phone version. I also find myself not having to log on to my computer to do basic tasks like checking my business accounting software, task / to do lists, and CRM databases because I have access to all of this information on the iPad. While it is possible to get to everything from my smartphone if I had to in a pinch it is just not a great working device for lots of activities.

If I could only choose one, I would get a iPad as you will still be able to facetime with other iOS device owners and can have a skype chat on the iPad regardless if you have a data plan in place, so it can still give you some communication upgrades. But for me I need both, so I just don't have a data plan on the iPad and have only encountered a few times when I really needed access and couldn't get it.