I don’t like so called smartphones (flashy devices to mine your data and other reasons) but my regular no touchscreen phone’s microphone is no longer working as it should, making conversations difficult.
Enter a smartphone I received as a present, my phobia (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and my (misguided?) obsession with privacy: I don’t want to use this smartphone as my default phone because I’m scared the carrier, ISP or google are going to mine my data and trace my calls.
Which might be an overreaction, because each time I use my regular cell phone, the carrier knows when I’m calling from, who I’m calling and how long the call lasts.
So I ask you: how much more data would I be leaking if I use my new smartphone for calls only, compared to a regular, no touchscreen phone?
Lol, having separate devices is more convenient?
The smallest camera I can pocket weighs 5x my phone, is about 10x thicker.
GPS, same.
Mp3 player, about the same as my phone.
Computer/web browser? Well, nothing is as small as a phone.
I get all that in a single device with a phone weighing 8oz, measuring 6"x3"x3/8".
Separate devices is better if your use-cases for them have strong independence (e.g. Only use GPS in the car/on motorcycle, only use a camera when doing dedicated photo shoots, etc). If anything I’d say multiple devices is less convenient even then, it’s just that those devices work better for those use-cases, making the tradeoff of less convenient worthwhile. I’d much rather use a dedicated camera sometimes (and do), when I’m taking lots of pics and want to go faster.
But for most people, these activities are strongly related, and occur throughout their day. It would be far less convenient to carry multiple devices and have to pull them out and handle for these activities.
That depends on what you want out of them. If you want to minimize the amount of stuff you’re carrying around as your top priority, sure, phones are great. But if you want ease of use for a specific task without unwanted interference? They’re not always the best.
Like, if I were doing any sort of meaningful photography, I’d want my actual camera. It’s easier to shoot with, it allows for more control, and no notifications or phone calls are going to suddenly interrupt a shot.
When it comes to a music player, it’s mostly good, but what if I want to keep listening to music while doing other stuff on my phone, or while talking to someone? Phones are pretty bad at that sort of multitasking. There are certain websites I can’t read while listening to spotify, because something completely inaudible takes over the sound channel as soon as I load the page.
As to making phone calls? The number of dropped calls or calls with one-way audio is absolutely absurd, and not something I ever ran into on older dumb phones.
Convenience ultimately depends on use case. It is nice to always have some kind of camera on me, even if it’s kind of a half assed one. Ditto to a computer, a music player, and a phone. But they’re definitely not more convenient to use.
There’s a reason dials, macropads, tablets, midi devices, and things like that are popular. It’s usually a lot easier to control physical stuff sitting in front of you than it is to interface with some abstracted UI. Like, typing is so bad on phones that it spurred the creation of contemporary AI.