Sydney, Oct 8 (IANS): Is the smartphone your new partner? A survey says so, suggesting that most people check their mobile phones on an average of 1,500 times a week, that too even before the sun rises.

After analysing the smartphone habits of 2,000 Britons, digital marketing agency Tecmark found that smartphone users were picking up their phones early in the morning and staying up with them till 11.21 p.m. on an average.

While 40 percent checked their personal emails as their first task of the day, 31 percent made their first task checking Facebook.

Nearly 70 percent said they used their phone in public to make themselves "look" busy.

"While 11 percent of users picked up their phone for the first time before 6 a.m., up to 13 percent said they stopped using their phones only after midnight," the results showed.

Sixteen percent checked the news on their phones as their first task but 39 percent looked at personal emails first, a report in Sydney Morning Herald said.

"Women checked work emails once a day and men a bit more than twice a day. Personal email-checking occurred about four times a day for both genders," researchers noted.

Men played games more often than women - three times a day - while women played twice a day on average.

Women sent an average of six text messages a day and men sent five, the findings showed.