Owning a smartphone may not be as smart as you think.

They may let you surf the internet, listen to music and snap photos wherever you are...but they also turn you into a workaholic, it seems.

A study suggests that, by giving you access to emails at all times, the all-singing, all-dancing mobile phone adds as much as two hours to your working day.

Researchers found that Britons work an additional 460 hours a year on average as they are able to respond to emails on their mobiles.

The study by technology retailer Pixmania, reveals the average UK working day is between nine and 10 hours, but a further two hours is spent responding to or sending work emails, or making work calls.

More than 90 percent of office workers have an email-enabled phone, with a third accessing them more than 20 times a day.

Almost one in ten admits spending up to three hours outside their normal working day checking work emails, and even those without a smartphone check emails on their home computer.

Some workers confess they are on call almost 24 hours a day, with nine out of ten saying they take work emails and calls outside their normal working hours.

Nearly two-thirds say they often check work emails just before they go to bed and as soon as they wake up, while over a third have replied to one in the middle of the night.

The average time for first checking emails is between 6am and 7am, with more than a third checking their first email in this period, and a quarter checking them between 11pm and midnight.

Ghadi Hobeika, marketing director of Pixmania, said: ‘The ability to access literally millions of apps, keep in contact via social networks and take photos and video as well as text and call has made smartphones invaluable for many people.

‘However, there are drawbacks. Many companies expect their employees to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and smartphones mean that people literally cannot get away from work.

‘The more constantly in contact we become, the more is expected of us in a work capacity.’

(Read by Brian Salter. Brian Salter is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)