It’s no understatement that the rise of cell phones (Smartphones in particular) has spelled doom for the veritable legion of personal gadgets and gizmos. From the Walkman to watches, a host of once-trendy tech has fallen to the might of SMART! It’s digital evolution. However, even in this age of rapid tech development, some devices were considered to be somewhat… sacred? No more. The spread of progress knows no bounds, as we can now add the venerable landline to the list of tech killed off by the cell/smart revolution.
In the 90’s and early 2000’s, 9 out of every 10 houses in the US and every house in the UK had a landline. Follow Marty McFly into 2015, and data held by the Center of Disease Control and 
Prevention shows that the number of US households is down to every second occupied household. It’s a trend that’s only going up, riding on the back of the ever increasing number of Smart- device- only, households. Some predict that the majority of US households will be landline free by as early as 2016. That said, the landline will live on in offices due to a lack of any real alternative (for now), but even so, the poor old landline is living on borrowed time.
As with most things, money is playing a major part in kicking the landline out the door. Take the UK as an example: you could be looking at £15 to £20 monthly just for the line rental, on top of call costs – and whatever you’re paying for the smart device you also have. Hurray for overlapping redundant technology! It just doesn’t make sense to pay for something twice, especially when one of those services is nowhere near as useful as the other… it’s the same across the wide range of ‘stuff my phone has replaced’. Even somewhat modern tech is falling prey to the Smartphone’s Godzilla-like rampage through tech city.
Flash drives, remember those?
Maybe not – because Smartphones have HDDs that rival some older laptops. Ever find yourself without a Wi-Fi connection? Probably not, since modern smart devices can be tethered for all your connection needs. Remember when TV was a thing? No? Yeah, neither do I – and besides, TV seems a strange way to spell ‘Netflix’ anyway. Remember when people played games on mobile gaming systems that weren’t from Nintendo? Yeah, me neither I’m too busy playing Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, via the PlayStation2 emulator… on my phone. Now, as I’ve completely forgotten what I was talking about, I’m going to check on my virtual chickens.