If anybody had told me five years ago that I would be using a mobile phone as often as I do, I would never have believed them. In truth, the amount of times I need to call people hasn’t changed that much but we now use our phones for so much more than actually making calls. It looks as though I’m not the only one, as an O2 UK report of smartphone usage shows that web browsing is now the most popular activity.

In fact making phone calls only comes fifth in a list of rankings of what we most use our smartphones for. The O2 “All About You” report was commissioned to tie in with the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S3 (S III), a prime example of the modern smartphone now designed for multiple uses. The total amount of time that smartphone owners now use their phones averages out at more than 2 hours per day and if you think that’s far more than your own usage you might want to stop and really think about how often you whip your phone out during a day.

In a list of various activities and how much time the average smartphone user spends each day with that activity it was found that browsing the Internet was top with an average daily use of 24 minutes and 81 seconds. Second was checking social networks on 17 minutes and 49 seconds, third was playing games while fourth most frequent use was listening to music. Actually making calls only made it to fifth place with a daily average use lasting 12 minutes and 13 seconds. Other activities were checking and writing emails, text messaging, watching TV and films, reading books and then taking photos in that order, making the total daily usage time 128 minutes.

The increasing usage of our smartphones and range of things we can do with them, also means they are replacing other devices. For example 54% say they now use their smartphones rather than an alarm clock while 46% say they no longer wear a watch and use their smartphone instead. 39% of those involved in the report say they no longer use a separate camera and over a quarter of people, 28%, say they now use their phones rather than a laptop while 11% don’t use a games console any more.

Where the survey differs from my own personal smartphone use is that I still can’t get used to watching TV or reading books on my smartphone and can’t imagine ever replacing a physical book or my TV. However it seems that could be the way of the future as 6% now say they use their smartphones to view TV and 6% say they read books on their phones rather than the physical variety. It’s certainly an intriguing report and we’re interested to find out our readers reactions to the survey results. Do these findings widely reflect your own smartphone usage? Maybe you find some of the statistics particularly surprising? Let us know with your comments.