The View | Are smartphones making us smarter or more stupid?

Underwhelmed seems to be the most appropriate adjective for describing the response to the usually much-hyped Mobile World Congress which ended last week.

As a dedicated sceptic of all things joining the words smart and phone I cannot pretend to be experiencing much else besides schadenfreude. The pleasure intensified on learning that one of the stars of this lacklustre show was the Nokia 8110 Matrix phone, which is really little more than a revival of the old banana phones much derided by those who are infinitely more technology-savvy than myself.

Those on higher pay grades tell me that a budget phone offering a relatively small range of functions and little in the way of whizz bang is nothing to get excited about but I beg to differ and, yet again, wonder whether my lonely resistance to smartphones and all their works is in the process of being vindicated.

The Nokia 8110 remains a bit sophisticated for my humble telecommunications needs but I fully understand why many people at this event got the point of a cheap but useful device. It apparently now embraces something called 4G, which almost by definition is supposed to be better than 3G and other than that it seems to work pretty well handling phone calls (unlike the latest Apple iPhone), using apps (whatever they are) and getting online (I know what this is, in case you wondered).

But all this begs some bigger questions for the telecoms industry which, like all industries with a cutting edge self-image, seems to believe that greater sophistication and complexity is a good thing and indeed the next big thing.

However, the worm is turning and, thank goodness, people are beginning to ask whether they really need a more sophisticated smartphone and are looking more carefully at the consequences of these devices.