The author went somewhere totally different than I thought they would here. Their argument boils down to “smartphones are shitty computers with too many limitations”. This is a fair point but arguably not the main one.<p>IMO the real reason smartphones suck is that they are attention sucking, dopamine delivery systems. A logical evolution of a slot machine. I hate mine yet here I am yelling into the internet on it...
I've gone through this thought exercise a lot myself, even considering replacing my iPhone with a flip phone. For me personally, the issue is the time-sucking nature of the apps and services that were on my phone.<p>To solve this, I deleted any apps with infinitely scrolling content, leaving my phone to include only utilitarian functionality, maps, and tools for music creation.<p>Because I know myself and my vices, I went so far as to add Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit to the "Restricted Content" list.<p>I bookmarked text.npr.org and mprnews.org and use those as my quick, bullshit-free gateway to local and national news.<p>With my phone in utility mode, I no longer experience false vibrations or that feeling of a phone burning a hole in my pocket.<p>Finally, I joined a meditation center and attend weekly.<p>My relationship with my phone is improved. It's great.<p>Always looking for more suggestions.
I would also add that from a UX perspective they utterly suck.
Many task that are possible with a mouse / keyboard setup are impossible on a smartphone, and what <i>is</i> possible is much much slower and less precise.<p>I think its clear they have been designed from the ground up to be merely shiny toys / gadgets, and not useful pocket computers.<p>The key fundamental flaw in their design is the touchscreen. Eg. Press a 'button' which is just an image on the screen and has 0 haptic feedback, so the only way to locate it is by looking at it, but your finger is obscuring it (as you are moving to press it with your finger) so you cant see it. It is oxymoronical design.
I don't like smartphones either, mostly for a reason he missed. They are <i>intrusive</i>. They are designed to suck your attention, and I feel peer pressure to be available all the time. I refuse to, and I'm often looked down for this reason.<p>I prefer extreme computing devices. Either big desktops, with great ergonomics and power, or tiny <i>non-intrusive</i> wearables.<p>I hope we get true autonomous watches soon, that can silently track some biomarkers and offer some smartphone-like capabilities for occasional use (maps, calls & IM) without apps nagging for your attention.
Smartphones rob users of the ability to communicate person-to-person.<p>Visit any restaurant and you'll find example after example of people worshiping at their private electronic altars despite the presence of friends and family.<p>Or try having a conversation with almost anyone with a smartphone. The minute a notification goes off, they're gone. Master calls, bye.<p>It's a vicious cycle. Greater isolation leads to greater dependence on the fake bullshit being spewed.<p>It's kind of comical to see geezers doing this. But to see it in young adults is terrifying. They're going to fight this addiction until the day they die. Most won't even know what's wrong with their lives because they've never seen anything else.
> They have ruined web design.<p>With regards to that: maybe we should switch away from responsive designs? Modern phones have big enough screens that it s often better to navigate a medium-desktop site by zooming rather than by collapsing everything to an endless scrolling stream. I find often that trying to compromise things to fit in responsive design is annoying for little benefit.<p>> They have led to massive centralization<p>I really wish someone comes up with a successful home router that includes preloaded optional decentralized services like ipfs. It's a pity that we don't take advantage of can't take advantage of that always-on computing power in the era of crappy-battery tablets and phones.
I like the idea of getting rid of my smart phone, and I don't really have the "addiction" a lot of people seem to have, but every time I think about getting rid of it, I'm stopped because:<p>1) Maps/GPS for driving<p>2) Ride Sharing apps<p>3) Web browser for quick googling when I'm out<p>I can live without access to phone games or the reddit app, but it would be enough of a burden for me to not have access to these three things that I don't see myself dropping a smart phone any time soon.
What a terrible article.<p>They are unequal devices. - This is not a design flaw. The screen is just small.<p>They are not real network clients. - This is not a design flaw. It's the best batteries can do.<p>They have led to massive centralization. - No, high bandwidth and big data requiring centralized processing is what led to centralization.<p>They have ruined web design. - This isn't even a critique of smartphones, it's about desktops.<p>There are no secure smartphones. - Are they really worse than other computers?<p>They are devices of unclear alignment, or of clear malevolence. - Wait, what? You claim that your phone is not secure, then you want to root it, install arbitrary software, and do your online banking on it? wtf?
> <i>They have ruined web design... Suffice to say however that I am very, very tired of the epidemic of (often massive) position: fixed headers on websites nowadays.</i><p>Well fixed headers are annoying, but I find that considering all sorts of screen sizes has actually <i>improved</i> web design in the most part.<p>Most sites are better in terms of accessibility and UX than they were 15 years ago, which could be attributed to more diversity in devices that developers need to deploy to.
I consider the main issue to be the first point: that they are purely consumption-oriented platforms. This might evolve for the better though with a little imagination(°).<p>However I disagree with the second point. Smartphones were optimized for power consumption, while PC were optimized for stability and functionality (depending on your operational flavor, the platform can be quite flexible, allowing such seemingly contradictory directions).<p>This "optimization for (reducing) power-consumption" is the only times it seems to have happened, and it is actually a good contribution to network design. We should actually embrace this process in general, not only mobility-based computers.<p>°: A future where your smartphone will be your transportable workstation, only docking on controls changing depending on your activity (screen + keyboard + mouse in general, screen / speakers for media consumption, joysticks for gaming). You'd arrive to work and dock your phone, start working, take it with you and being able to work from another office, another location, remotely (at home), etc.
Smartphones are great for communication. Better than anything we've had before. But past a point, they are distracting. Just use smartphones for communication and have the self control to avoid the pitfalls.
I've had this idea of starting a SaaS of sorts which delivers a bunch of functionality supplied by apps and web pages over SMS. Back in the early 2000's using my Blackberry 7290 I was able to access all kinds of information by texting to various short codes.<p>Does anyone here think there's a demand for this type of service anymore. It seems a lot of folks just want talk and text with access to some information like news headlines, weather reports, sports scores etc. All doable over SMS.
Instead of these hyper-thin smartphones, can't we have one that's relatively fat but where the battery lasts a few days, or even one whole day?
Discussed at the time of publication in 2016:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11097994" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11097994</a><p>(Shared for information purposes; not a dupe).
>Smartphones are unapologetically devices for consumption.<p>The only people who say this, as well as "Tablets are only for consumption" are those who lack creativity and imagination.<p>Movies have been shot on smartphones. Music has been produced on smartphones. Novels have been written on smartphones.<p>On a smartphone I have "created" or edited notes, videos, spreadsheets, photo slideshows, goofy songs for friends and family, and smartphones are a portal to a vast wealth of information that is infinitely more convenient and useful for my technical hobbies than a laptop or desktop PC.<p>Ham radio tools, astronomy tools, film photography light metering apps, the list goes on and on.<p>Using Star Walk to peruse the constellations at night while in your backyard "creates" knowledge and memories better than any astronomy program on a "computer".<p>If you're not using a smartphone (AND TABLET!) to "create", you are probably a very boring person.
I would pay a significant amount of money for a general computing device with the form factor and build quality of an iPhone.<p>Cell phones are amazing tech hamstrung by operating systems designed to drain wallets and collect data.<p>I do not have a phone number and I use a lower end Samsung basically as an ipod with wifi support. It constantly annoys me that apps that have no reason to require a phone number will not even let you register without one.
All the issues except for "ruined web design" and to some extent "there are no secure smartphones" seem to be solved by phones based on GNU/Linux rather than Google/Linux. I'm very much looking forward to my preorder of Librem 5 and being able to use it like a regular PC with any peripherals.
> With a PC, I don't have to perform some arcane operation to actually have control of the device.<p>I guess he does not have "user" accounts on his PC and runs everything under the Administrator account
OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD<p>Right off the bat the author has embarrassed themselves. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that the majority of content on the most popular platforms is created using smartphones (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat). Smartphones have actually democratized content creation and in a way that laptops and desktops never could. This should be obvious, not sure how this ever got upvoted.<p>Go take pictures with your laptop OP.