IPhones: Instant IQ, instant irritant?

LOS ANGELES, March 22 (UPI) -- The Apple iPhone is turning people into instant argument settlers and sometimes instant aggravators, users say.

With the ability to research topics on the Internet virtually anywhere, anytime, people armed with the iPhone find themselves helpful and wise, but also obnoxious, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. The so-called smart phone has been around for nine months.

"It's turned me from a really annoying know-it-all into an incredibly annoying know-it-all, with the Internet to back me up," Erica Sadum, a technology writer in Denver, told the Times. "It's not a social advantage."

But Cliff Smith, a University of Southern California student, says his $400 iPhone gives him a helpful edge.

"I have the ability to clear up any confusion," said Smith, who is part of the 1 percent of the United States' 219 million cell phone users using an iPhone, as calculated by M: Metrics.