Cellulographics is a term developed for behavioral classification of smartphone users based on diverse characteristics such as smartphone experience (SE), smartphone use skill (SUS), smartphone internet experience (SIE), smartphone use periods (SUP), smartphone screen time (SST), smartphone use frequency (SUF), smartphone use activities (SUA), and smartphone use location (SUL). These terms are explained below (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

Conceptual model.

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It is the total number of years an individual has been using a smartphone. This criterion is crucial because the length of usage, familiarity, compatibility of the innovation with past experiences, existing values, needs, expertise, background, and prior knowledge can either inhibit or promote smartphone use (Al-Ghaith et al., 2010; Dey et al., 2013;Maes et al., 2006; Taylor & Levin, 2014).

It is an individual's self-assessment of the ability and proficiency to use the smartphone. Due to the differences in culture, social environment, personal characteristics, technological context, etc., information communication and technology (ICT) skills may vary among users (Haenssgen, 2018; Vimalkumar et al., 2020). Researchers have revealed that mobile phone efficacy, skills, and competence can affect the extent of technology use, perception, motivation, and impact (Campbell & Kwak, 2010; Dey et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2014). For example, specific smartphone skills are essential to access mobile financial services (Kiconco et al., 2020).

It is an individual's internet experience through a smartphone. Marketers consistently attempt to provide a seamless mobile internet experience to the users (Asunmaa et al., 2002). Several advantages including mobility, lightweight, long battery life, instant-on capability, high-definition touch screen, and interactivity are leading to higher smartphone dependency and gratifications (Leung & Zhang, 2016). Uninterrupted internet access through smartphones encourages mobile lifestyle to receive directions while navigating unfamiliar locations, fill dead time by paying a bill or messaging while waiting for public transport, perform time-critical tasks like online meetings or using the internet for entertainment, or playing games (Gilbert & Han, 2005). The user engagement has reached a level where researchers have warned that pedestrian and driver behavior can be described as risky due to their mobile internet use (Byington & Schwebel, 2013; Maier et al., 2020). However, the type of smartphone internet experience is dependent on the efficiency and skill of the user (Liu et al., 2014; Turgut & Kursun, 2020).

It is the time of the day when the user indulges in smartphone use, like in the morning (6:01–12:00 h), afternoon (12:01–18:00 h), evening (18:01– 0:00 h), and night (01:00 –6:00 h) (MAEN). Throughout the day, the use of mobile touch screen devices is interspersed within our daily activities (Toh et al., 2019), but researchers believe that differences may exist in total daily duration, a number of uses, and usage length across the day. Past studies revealed that the number of phone uses in the afternoon and evening differs from both in the morning and at night (Andrews et al., 2015) or least phone use was observed from midnight to early morning (Deng et al., 2019). Individuals indulged in excessive use to fill “empty moments” while commuting, lectures, and mornings/evenings at home (Oulasvirta et al., 2012). Some authors classified users based on their usage pattern and activities at different use periods like “night communicators”, “evening learners”, etc. (Zhao et al., 2016).

It is the time measured in hours or minutes per day, spent by an individual on smartphone. Researchers believe that screen time is one of the effective methods for determining the degree of technology usage (Rosen et al., 2013). These days, even preschool children have screen time of more than an hour per day and mobile phones contribute to more than 90% (Susilowati et al., 2021). Digital-screen time exposure is now an important criterion (Kaur et al., 2021) and researchers link it with health (Wang et al., 2020), problematic smartphone use (Horwood et al., 2021), mobile stickiness (Hsu & Tang, 2020) working memory abilities (Toh et al., 2021), customer experience (McLean et al., 2018), etc.

It is the number of user sessions in a specific period or the number of times an individual checks his or her smartphone. SUF is also one of the important criteria to access technology usage (Rosen et al., 2013) and previous studies indicate that SUF is closely associated with problematic smartphone use (Elhai et al., 2018), smartphone addiction (Andrade et al., 2020), rumination and boredom proneness (Wang et al., 2020), poor common executive function (EF) but enhanced shifting-specific abilities (Toh et al., 2021), etc. Recent studies have recommended examining SUF under their future research directions (Gentina & Rowe, 2020). Some researchers calculated frequency, duration, and occurrence of smartphone use sessions and found that on average participants had 24 sessions of 7 minutes each per day and the occurrences of sessions were more on weekdays than weekends (Deng et al., 2019).

It is the location from which an individual uses the smartphone or accesses the internet through it, such as home, office, leisure place, etc. The biggest advantage of a smartphone is mobility (Cilliers et al., 2018), but social context and location influence users' interaction with their phones (Do et al., 2011). It is quite logical that individuals will use smartphones more when they are idle or waiting in a queue at a bus stop or a food shop or for coordination while traveling than in cinema or library. Further, phone engagement sessions are longer in the comfort of home than at work (Heitmayer & Lahlou, 2021). In this context, different researchers have tried to propose a locational taxonomy, but they lack business context (Zheng et al., 2010) or are too raw about private contexts (Liao et al., 2007). However, locational categories (shopping, movie and shows, work and education, recreation and amusement, food and drink, and sports and exercise) proposed by Exler et al. (2016) are quite balanced.

A smartphone is a versatile device, it can be used for a variety of work or leisure activities (Leung & Zhang, 2016). Based on typical daily media and technology usage, researchers have enlisted various types of smartphone activities (Cheever et al., 2014; Rosen et al., 2013), however, the one proposed by Elhai et al. (2016) is quite comprehensive and includes a total of 11 activities, which include voice/video calls, email, texting/instant messaging, internet/websites, social networking sites, games, music/podcasts/radio, watching video/tv/movies, taking pictures or videos, maps/navigation and reading books/magazines.