Smartphones...

Avis · Post by **Avis** » Wed, 4. Oct 17, 20:33

Last 'upgrade' I went from stupid large screen phone that didn't fit in my pocket anyway to a Sony Xperia Z3 compact (because it was a reasonable size, but most importantly waterproof,, doing quite a bit fishing/boating the waterproof bit sold it to me) I won't be 'upgrading' again, I'm happy with my current phone and I certainly won't be going for a mini tablet phone again.

Ezarkal · Post by **Ezarkal** » Wed, 4. Oct 17, 21:52

I personally don't have much use of my phone, outside the obvious usages of calling and texting.
I personally don't see the need of using any form of internet access when I have computers with better interface and capacities both at home and at work, and I certainly don't see the need to carry an internet access with me when I'm outside of any of these two places. If I could, I'd put a screwdriver through the internet chip of my phone.

I get the handiness of it. It can be an incredible work tool. It can be pretty convenient in many king of recreational activities, too. Business, marketing, politics, customer services and many other professional fields can't really go without it any more and I get that. But on the other hand, I think people end up relying too much upon it in day to day life.

GPS? Ok, I get that some people are bad at orienting. But some don't even try. I have a friend who needed his GPS every time he wanted to get to my place, 10 minutes of driving away. Plan a route, dammit. Worst case, get lost and find your way back. That's how you learn.

Music? Why the hell does everyone need to have their music all the time? I see people doing mountain hiking with their phone blasting rap for everyone to not enjoy. If you're to go out camping in a remote national park in Canada, why not enjoy the peace and quite it provides. My GF and I went to France last summer for our vacations. It was hard to have a moment of silence from the crap that she listen to everyday of the year, a quarter of the world away from home... Talk about getting a change of air.

Games? Do we really need to occupy our every single moments of awareness? Do people fear the void of their own thoughts so much as they can't stand a 10 minute bus transit? Ok, I'm getting a bit dramatic here, but still... Getting bored here and then is a part of maturing, and I see very little appeal of filling these moments where I can either think about stuff or just watch the clouds roll by with candy crush on a 2"x4" screen. In Sweden a few years ago, I saw a mother and her two kids boarding a train with a backpack. They sat down, the mother took a laptop out for her son, a second one for her daughter, and the opened up her smartphone for herself. They didn't make a sound or bat an eyelid for the 2 hours of the train ride. No talking, or playing card, or drawing, or anything. 3 automatons on 3 computers. That kind of scene is common. You see it everywhere, all the time.

That's minor stuff, though. My own choices and values don't have to apply to others and I'm fine with that.

I do have 2 major problems with the smartphone rush, though.
1- If people are willing to pay 800$ every 2 years for a phone that will be consirered obsolete 2 years later so they can buy another one, well it's their choice. But these phones are not made out of thin air. They need a frigging lot of resources to be built, and some are acquired through pretty unethical ways. Modern slavery and child labor are pretty common in many of the countries where the rare metals required for electronic components are located. Workers that aren't slaves still have far from enviable working conditions. Yet people still want to change their goddamn phone as soon as "teh new thing" comes out. (Or until the newest "patch" screws your phone up so badly it becomes dysfunctional.) People need to realize that they are paying pretty good sums to keep human exploitation going on.
2- More of a personal banter here: What the hell is wrong with softwares or various institutions always asking you to link your account to your frigging phone for "additional safety"??? I mean, come one: If I'm to ever lose something/get something stolen from me in a public place, it's going to be my frigging phone. My personal computer is not portable. (Not easily in any case.) My memory can't get hijacked. But nooooo, every time I log on steam of on facebook I get a nice reminder that my account is not secure until I link it to my phone.
On a similar line of thought, we have a new taxi company around here that is quite trendy, since it's using a fleet made entirely of electric vehicles. But it turns out they don't even have a call center. It means, if I don't have their app, I can't even get a ride with them. I find this hilarious.

In a sense, I don't mind phones being smarter and smarter, but I do mind both users and usages getting dumber and dumber.

Edit: Typos

berth · Post by **berth** » Wed, 4. Oct 17, 22:47

Avis wrote:Last 'upgrade' I went from stupid large screen phone that didn't fit in my pocket anyway to a Sony Xperia Z3 compact (because it was a reasonable size, but most importantly waterproof,, doing quite a bit fishing/boating the waterproof bit sold it to me) I won't be 'upgrading' again, I'm happy with my current phone and I certainly won't be going for a mini tablet phone again.

At the risk of sounding evangelical...

Seconded. I have had this same phone for 2 and a half years now and, aside from the camera being crap (more specifically the lens covering being made of E-Z Scratch™) it's absolutely fine - decent hardware spec means it's a pleasure to use and still going strong.
Mine cost £350 iirc and was a special birthday gift to myself but you could probably pick one up for a lot less now.

Here endeth the lesson

Chips · Post by **Chips** » Thu, 5. Oct 17, 00:49

You tried living without a smart phone? It's remarkably easy, just that when its with us we find it an easy "filler" - and by extension it suddenly becomes indispensable to many. It really isn't.

I only read the papers, communicate via whatsapp and... erm, well, that's it. Perhaps I'm lucky that no phones in the workplace means I live half my life without it anyway. Yay me, and yay productivity!

So I don't understand why people are willing to spend such huge sums of money on the next round of phones; it's obscene - at least to me anyway

However, doesn't bother me too much - I have accepted that I don't get the next generation and mobiles at all. I saw a video on youtube of a popular "vlogger"; basically they were videoing their days doing... stuff. They don't have a remarkable life, they don't do anything interesting at all in fact. Their life IS vlogging. Literally just shopping, having a coffee, lunch, meeting friends; there is no insight, no philosophical ponderings or anything - it is *that* shallow. Millions like to watch this "entertainment" and I've no idea why... but if they enjoy it, then enjoy it. Same with whatever they get out of owning the latest greatest phone - yay for them.

So I gave up caring what others do. They want to buy the latest phone? Knock yourselves out! Hope it makes you happy, yay you. I'm not going to critique their decisions as long as they can afford to do it

And while people are willing to spend more, buy bigger, then a market will exist; while the market exists...

red assassin · Post by **red assassin** » Thu, 5. Oct 17, 00:58

I'm just bitter Google killed off the Nexus line. Reasonably priced, reasonable features, vanilla Android and OS updates. Sigh.

Stars_InTheirEyes · Post by **Stars_InTheirEyes** » Thu, 5. Oct 17, 01:31

They're smart, so you don't have to be.

Good for giving your mind a rest

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Thu, 5. Oct 17, 10:30

red assassin wrote:I'm just bitter Google killed off the Nexus line. Reasonably priced, reasonable features, vanilla Android and OS updates. Sigh.

I think the hardware quality was an embarrassment. It was never good. I was given by my department (oh wait, 'School' we are now) to play with and possibly write exercises using it, and found so unreliable I gave it back.

There was just no way I'd have trusted running an exercise in a class of students to such an unstable device.

I don't doubt for individuals they would be ok, you could learn to get around the quirks, but for me they were awful.

I really was surprised that Google allowed their flagship products hardware to be so bad. There was no reason for it

Jericho · Post by **Jericho** » Thu, 5. Oct 17, 11:09

I bought an IPhone 3 when they were brand spanking new.

I was blown away by the features and the Appstore, for almost a day. Then I discovered that 99.99% of the AppStore is utter crap, and the iphone is very limiting. Bought a cheap android which was fine, then my wife bought me an Iphone 4 for my birthday, and I wished she hadn't...

Since then I've just gone with whatever android freebie is bundled with my contract when I renew. I've got quite a nice vodafone giant thing. It is coated in the smoothest substance known to man, so it slide off every single surface onto the floor, unless it is perfectly flat... And I mean PERFECTLY flat... You really start to appreciate physics when you own this phone, and understand how badly your house is built...

Considering how ubiquitous phones and tablets are these days, there are still an unfathomable number of websites that support mobile devices very poorly.

red assassin · Post by **red assassin** » Thu, 5. Oct 17, 11:15

mrbadger wrote:I think the hardware quality was an embarrassment. It was never good. I was given by my department (oh wait, 'School' we are now) to play with and possibly write exercises using it, and found so unreliable I gave it back.

There was just no way I'd have trusted running an exercise in a class of students to such an unstable device.

I don't doubt for individuals they would be ok, you could learn to get around the quirks, but for me they were awful.

I really was surprised that Google allowed their flagship products hardware to be so bad. There was no reason for it

Really? I've literally never had any problems[1], and none of my friends and family who use them have either. (This message brought to you from a Nexus device.)

[1] Other than self inflicted, anyway - I broke the screen on my last one by accidentally causing it to be flung across the room onto a tiled floor, but I replaced it myself without too much difficulty.

mrbadger · Post by **mrbadger** » Thu, 5. Oct 17, 21:23

red assassin wrote:
mrbadger wrote:I think the hardware quality was an embarrassment. It was never good. I was given by my department (oh wait, 'School' we are now) to play with and possibly write exercises using it, and found so unreliable I gave it back.

There was just no way I'd have trusted running an exercise in a class of students to such an unstable device.

I don't doubt for individuals they would be ok, you could learn to get around the quirks, but for me they were awful.

I really was surprised that Google allowed their flagship products hardware to be so bad. There was no reason for it
Really? I've literally never had any problems[1], and none of my friends and family who use them have either. (This message brought to you from a Nexus device.)

It just occurred to me that I never said I was talking about my experience with Nexus *tablets*, not phones.

Then, we were dealing with hundreds, and the failure rate was appalling.

Mine just didn't work very well either, but I'm used to a higher quality computing experience then the Nexus tablet provided. I was still very surprised that Google would put their name on such shoddy hardware.

Also, it's ridiculous that you can't get the latest Google OS on every Android device that can run it. They really need to sort that out.

Everyone was so critical of Apple for insisting on keeping OS control in their hands when the iPhone launched. But no-ones complaining now, are they...

berth · Post by **berth** » Thu, 5. Oct 17, 23:39

mrbadger wrote:
red assassin wrote:
mrbadger wrote:I think the hardware quality was an embarrassment. It was never good. I was given by my department (oh wait, 'School' we are now) to play with and possibly write exercises using it, and found so unreliable I gave it back.

There was just no way I'd have trusted running an exercise in a class of students to such an unstable device.

I don't doubt for individuals they would be ok, you could learn to get around the quirks, but for me they were awful.

I really was surprised that Google allowed their flagship products hardware to be so bad. There was no reason for it
Really? I've literally never had any problems[1], and none of my friends and family who use them have either. (This message brought to you from a Nexus device.)
It just occurred to me that I never said I was talking about my experience with Nexus *tablets*, not phones.

Then, we were dealing with hundreds, and the failure rate was appalling.

Mine just didn't work very well either, but I'm used to a higher quality computing experience then the Nexus tablet provided. I was still very surprised that Google would put their name on such shoddy hardware.

Also, it's ridiculous that you can't get the latest Google OS on every Android device that can run it. They really need to sort that out.

Everyone was so critical of Apple for insisting on keeping OS control in their hands when the iPhone launched. But no-ones complaining now, are they...

Yeah, I had the original Nexus 7 and ended up rooting it and rolling back the OS to something it could (just) run. An infuriating piece of kit which, as it happens, I gave to a charity shop today

My replacement? The Sony Xperia Z3 tablet, which I got off Ebay for £130. Result! Same as my beloved aforementioned phone, just in a bigger case.

Honestly not a Sony fanboi, honest.

red assassin · Post by **red assassin** » Thu, 5. Oct 17, 23:43

mrbadger wrote:It just occurred to me that I never said I was talking about my experience with Nexus *tablets*, not phones.

Oh, that I can believe, I heard there were a bunch of problems with some of the tablets. The Android tablet market has pretty much universally struggled to get decent hardware for some reason.

clakclak · Post by **clakclak** » Fri, 6. Oct 17, 13:01

I only had two smartphones in my life. The first one was a Samsung Galaxy S1, worked for a few years and than I switched to a Huawei Ascend G7, with which I am really happy so far. Had it for a few years now and I really like the big screen because I watch a lot of videos on it or use it to read. It comes with the added perk of never feeling alone, because you know that the chinese government always has an open ear for you.

Jericho · Post by **Jericho** » Fri, 6. Oct 17, 14:36

clakclak wrote: It comes with the added perk of never feeling alone, because you know that the chinese government always has an open ear for you.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Smartphones...