A large amount of the interviews I conducted and listened to referred to effectiveness of mobile applications to waste time. Gaming and social networking applications were at the top of the list of popular apps. A report published earlier this year even noted that gaming apps were by far the most downloaded apps, the report also comments that the Facebook app was the most downloaded application for Blackberry owners. The majority of smartphone users that I know use their device (other than call and text) for checking weather, social networking, and gaming.
This does not seem very productive, but one person put it best, "it depends upon the person." A student who is driven to use their smartphone for productivity will more than likely find applications that will attend to their needs. One interview mentioned some educational apps that have helped increase her productivity: Responseware, an app to replace those annoying clickers; UMinfo, offering UM maps, diamondback articles, and the university directory; and ELMS mobile, which offers access to UM students elms accounts. These were good apps, but there have been many complaints on educational/productivity apps. The ELMS mobile app, for instance, only grants access to certain tabs in a class's ELMS page. The page for this class only shows the Announcements, Discussion, Documents, and Grades sections. We cannot even view our assignments. These problems will be fixed within time, but I believe the current state of mobile apps is driven toward gaming and social networking, not productivity.
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