In today's high school, almost everyone has a cell phone. The cell phones are not simply phones that are used for communication, but are a reflection of one's personality. There are four major personality-defining categories of phones and the students who use them: the basic phone user, the average phone possessor, the smart phone obsessor, and the iPhone junkie.
The basic phone is usually an outdated flip phone with the standard 16-button keypad and is either silver, black, or white. This phone is most likely the phone that came free with the pay-as-you-go or limited cell phone service plan. There are typically two types of students who own these phones: the students who can't afford better phones, and the students that just don't care about having an attractive phone. The latter type are usually people who believe that phones are damaging to our society; they prefer handwritten letters and conversations over emails and texts. In the food chain of phone savvyness, this 10 percent of the student population is at the very bottom, being consumed by the average phone users.
The average phone is next up on the food chain, and over half of the student population carries this type of phone. The moderate phone is cooler than the basic phone because it has a much cooler design: sleeker, better colors, and more ergonomic. These phones are usually specialized for one purpose or another. For example, the Samsung Gravity from T-Mobile has a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, making it the perfect tool for the avid texter, and the LG Chocolate from Verizon Wireless bears a very strong resemblance to an mp3 player in order to showcase its exceptional music playing abilities that usually appeal to music aficionados around the country.
One step up the food chain is the smart phones. These phones are carried by the uber-organized students. Typically, these students are in Advanced Placement or honors classes, and have color-coded notes and perfectly neat binders and folders. The most common brand of smart phones is Blackberry, while others include Palm and Motorola. Students that have smart phones are most likely very fortunate, money wise, as smart phones cost a lot of money to maintain the cost of unlimited data, text, minutes, and Internet.
Alas, the iPhone. Although the iPhone is technically a smart phone, it is more like the king of the phone world. Not only does the iPhone make calls and send texts, but it also play music, surfs the Internet, and can hold an array of applications that can turn itself into anything from a flashlight, to a dog whistle, to even a fortune cookie. Having an iPhone says that a person likes to be on the cutting edge of technology and that they probably keep their phone in close proximity to their bodies at all times, except maybe in the shower.
Much like understanding that a person who wears black from head to toe and sports a mohawk and gauges probably likes to listen to screamo music, knowing what some one's cell phone says about them is a useful skill to have in one's repertoire of intuitive observations. This helps to prevent looking foolish among peers by asking an obvious question that could have otherwise been inferred without wasting your breath and others' time.