They're more reliable than any other affordable device capable of filling thr "Your whole life in a box, I've ever seen, at least subjectively.<p>Nearly no moving parts(The few remaining ones seem to be the #1 failure mode), a general purpose OS that's truly designed for what it does, etc.<p>On top of that, they have some built in safety features like the ability to remotely disable, wipe, and track them, plus, normal bank transactions can be reversed. I would much rather have a phone-linked account than go back to cash, and people used to carry that all the time.<p>Plus, for all the horror screen addiction causes, it does make losing your phone less likely, because you notice fast.<p>And on top of that, we used to (and still do) have MANY single points of failure ranging from debit card to notebook with meeting notes that could get you fired if you lose it to cash to house keys, any individual one of which could, if lost at the wrong time, cause a similar scale of damage to a lost phone, sometimes more.<p>Now, if you lose your credit card, you use your phone to disable it. If you lose your keys, you use your phone to uber. If you leave your wallet at home, you sign up for Kroger pay while standing in line, using the card number you stored in a notes file for exactly that kind of thing(true story).<p>It might slightly increase the risk of some pretty big disasters for some people, but for most of us, I think overall it removes a lot of common failure modes from life, so we accept the downsides.