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What's the point of buying the latest smartphone?

It is the time of year when new handsets are unveiled, but they may offer only small improvements.

Nova East leads the north and west London branch of the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign, which urges parents and schools to collaborate to delay the age at which children are given the devices. CCS Insight forecasts that around 400,000 feature phones are likely to be sold in the UK this year – nowhere near enough to knock the iPhone off the top of the list of the world’s most-sold handsets any time soon, but not a bad market space. “I think the thing we always forget is that there's a tremendous amount of benefits from using smartphones,” says Pete Etchells, professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa university, who has written extensively about the issue of screen time.

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