How Hard Is It to Understand Smart Phone Applications?

Apple, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry phones all have online "app stores" that a user can visit (through an app on the phone) to add a new function (or app) to his or her phone. That app might be a game, a sat-nav program for your country, a cookery recipe program, a personal fitness instructor, in fact almost anything. So how hard is it to get to grips with smart phone apps?App developers rarely produce instruction manuals for their applications. Even phone manufacturers rarely produce proper instruction manuals for their phones! Why? Because everyone is supposed to be able to use them "intuitively". That is, they are supposedly self-evident, easy to pick up and explore to gain understanding of how to use them. This isn't always the case. You are expected to teach yourself how to use each new app you load onto your smart phone.
Apple and Microsoft (Windows Phone) strongly encourage a standard design for their apps. Android apps are not so closely monitored, so developers have more of a free hand in how they look. Generally speaking, all apps are controlled by your fingers. So the menus, buttons and keyboards have to be large enough for you to use them easily. If there's no exit function on a menu or button, usually the phone Operating System has a way of stopping or leaving the app.
So, you visit an app store, search for an app that you are interested in, then immediately install it... Hold on! First of all, read the description of the app and check out any screen images to see if it suitable for what you want and it looks easy to use. Also, check out any reviews to see if other people like it or have any particular problems with using the app.
When you first install an app from an app store, you might have to register your identity with the developer. This is just to inform them who you are. There might also be some introductory information made available during the registration process that helps you work out how to use the app.
I have installed about 200 apps onto my Android phone in the past year, and over 100 of them were deleted shortly after I had installed them. Generally this was because the app didn't do what I expected or it simply wasn't very good. If I was keen to have a particular type of app, such as a pool-table game, I would just go and look in the app store and try another. If you pay for an app and then delete it fairly soon after installing it, the app store should give you a refund.
Magazines, such as Android Magazine, contain reviews of dozens of apps each issue which may give you a pointer to how easy it will be to learn how to use any particular app.
In conclusion: most apps on your phone should look and work similarly; you can easily download apps from the store, try them out and uninstall them if they aren't suitable for you; you may gain insight on how complicated an app is from the reviews left by other users on the app store; and, you need to make time to teach yourself how to use apps.