Freestyle Friday: Smart Phones

Neil over at Yorkshire Pudding ranted recently about businesses expecting everyone has a smartphone. I agree with him that relying on apps only is wrong, and I have had a smartphone almost since smartphones first came on the market.  I was already carrying Blackberrys when Apple came out with the first glass faced "smartphone." I bought an android phone within a couple of years of the first smartphone. 

I bought the blackberrys for a couple of reasons, they had great international phone and data service and we were starting to travel a bit, the thing that tipped the scales for me, was maps on the phone.  The novelty of maps on my phone, rapidly wore off, one car has in-dash GPS, I have a portable Garmin unit to use in the other car and when we rent cars. I find maps on my phone to be annoying most of the time, and I think using a phone to navigate while driving is very dangerous, it should be outlawed. 

What kept me using smart phones is email. I check email on my phone several times a day. I solve Wordle on my phone everyday. I exchange morning text messages with three people on my phone. I seldom use it as a phone.  Honestly, smartphones make lousy phones, they are hard to hold, hard to hear. The flip phones of 25 years ago were better phones. I take photos with my phone. It takes good photos, and when I am away from home it is always in my pocket. The best camera is the one you have within reach. I check the news, looking for a particular obituary every day on my phone. 

I dislike the app world. I find it cumbersome to unlock my phone, find the app, then half of the time the app wants me to log in, enter a password, while the world is waiting behind me. I can, but I never have used my phone to tap and pay. I prefer paper boarding passes to electronic ones, I hate struggling to get the boarding pass to display. The battery never runs down on paper, it can on my phone. 

Five years ago, when I bought a new phone, my old phone was so short on memory that the phone store couldn't download the app to transfer my data to a new phone without deleting something. The guy asked if he could delete Facebook and Instagram from my phone. I agreed, and then I never put them back on. I freed myself from Meta on my phone. Try it, you will like it. 

So why do I carry a smartphone? I like having a phone with me for my use when I want to use it. I like having email and a camera in my pocket. I like being able to do a quick web search. When needed the maps come in handy (I used maps to find a restaurant in San Antonio, including walking directions.) I check the temperature outside on my phone. But I try to avoid being bullied into using it as my only means of doing anything.