What do you need your smartphone for? A semi-survey
What do you need your smartphone for? A semi-survey
Discussing smartphone use with various people recently, I quickly come back to the same question - what do you need it for? This is not a masked way of saying they don't need a smartphone, but a genuine question. I'm personally happy to accept that people use smartphones for a variety of reasons, from professional work, to having to pay for parking, and from medical technology to not having access to laptops or computers.
So maybe a stepping stone to better co-design of smartphone use is to be more open about what we need to use our phones for, and why we carry them around with us. This post, then, is a bit of an experiment to start surfacing thoughts. The question is applicable to all devices, but I figure a) better to start somewhere specific, and b) smartphones are a particularly "invasive" device. So...
Which functions on your smartphone do you feel you NEED it for, and why?
To start, I'd say there are some things I like to have my phone on me for - camera, photo editing, note-taking. But the things I probably need it for on the go are:
- Necessary contact from family and friends via phone call, text and (specific) group chats
- Parking apps, as paying by machine often isn't available here
- Finding directions in strange places
- Access to passwords and one-time codes
- Transferring emergency funds to kids' bank cards
- Checking my calendar
I guess there will be a lot of overlap, but that's good to know. And it would also be interesting to know what less common cases exist: I think a mindful tech movement risks coming from a privileged position, and so awareness of these less common needs is all an essential part of the discussion.
There are no right or wrong answers here, just the opportunity to open up and find out from others :)
I'd add public transport to the list. Searching connections, booking tickets, navigating through large train stations etc.
I struggle to agree in the strict sense of need. But it’s a boiling frog scenario.
Public transport managers have mostly quit offering printed schedules and maps. IMO that’s borderline a violation of human rights (all people are entitled to equal access to public services, and I would consider providing info about public transport to be an indispensible part of that public service). Although in terms of smartphones, you can typically use a PC instead. And inside the stations you often have schedules and maps on the walls. But the bus infrastructure is dicier.
In Germany there are ticket sales with online exclusive pricing. Offline people must pay more for the same trip, or even lose access to some tickets entirely. Although a PC may still be an option there.
Yes, the question of how we define "need" is absolutely a key point here, and I guess I deliberately left it open to interpretation as I think it's subjective, but also that how we define it can change as we think about it and question it too.
The online/offline benefits always irks me - I mean I get the economics behind pushing people to be more "convenient" (on behalf of the company, usually) but it avoids the entire conversation about digital exclusion and accessibility. Strangely, I often see parking rates cost more when you use the app, as you get charged for paying with their card service. Ho hum.
GPS, music. That's the necessities for me.
Now, I would want a physical keyboard like my old pre-smart lg reflex had, if I had to give up the smart phone. fuck texting on a regular phone keyboard.
When the iphone6+ came out and was bending, I was so sure the market was gonna pivot back to thick phones. And to me the obvious next step was bringing back slide out keyboards.
I can probably type faster with swiping and learning predictive autocorrect, but I’ll never be able to do it blind :c
Word! Being able to rely on touch and memory didn't even cause many more errors than swiping on screen does for me.
https://www.tindie.com/products/zitaotech/blackberry-bb9900-bleusb-keyboard/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnA4d6uEKS0&t=5s&ab_channel=JoeLiTrenta
there are a few other versions from the same shop. tindie is dangerous
That's sick. And out of stock :(
There's nothing I can think of that is totally impossible without a smartphone. Just less convenient to varying degrees. Some of that is because of the fact that you'd need to carry several devices and/ or paper alternatives like we did in the dark ages. But some of it's just because people expect everyone to be carrying a smartphone these days.
For Amazon returns I need to scan the QR code in the Amazon app at the post office. That could potentially be avoided by printing the QR code, but there's no mechanism I know of at the moment to download the code.
I do check my email and online calendar when I'm out sometimes for details if I'm heading somewhere or checking when something is. This could be avoided by using a paper diary and printing out relevant emails.
For watching videos, listening to podcasts and checking Lemmy I'd either need to use a tablet, a laptop (which I generally use at home rather than my smartphone) or a dedicated audio player for the podcasts for portability.
Banking can be done via my laptop, phone call or in person at my local branch (for now).
Obviously phone calls and texts could be handled by a "dumb" phone.
Some restaurants ask you to order via their website or app but I'm sure if you kicked up enough of a fuss they'd find another way of handling that.
I rarely take photos or video but carrying a digital camera could replace the need of a smartphone for that. There are a lot of small, high quality options out there these days.
A smartphone is very useful for navigation but that could be taken care of with a handheld satnav device.
- Messaging/calling
- Public transportation
- Maps
- Calendar
- 2FA identification
You’re really asking “how much convenience do you need?” Some people are entirely enslaved to what Tim Wu describes as the Tyranny of Convenience.
I am not one of those people. I have ditched Google Playstore which greatly limits what I can do with the phone (and I’m fine with that -- fuck suppliers demanding that I patronise Google). And since I am always around a PC I only use a smartphone for:
- offline navigation with OSMand (hard to give up)
- notes (could give that up easily)
- camera -- to take a pic of store hours posted on a door, occasional QR codes, to capture evidence when a store advertises a different price than they charge at the register, and because there are actually hardware stores that have no posted prices and you need to give the cashier the item number of (e.g.) a pipe fitting so they can ring it up. Also to capture rejection messages from ATM screens because ATMs are not designed well enough to print faults with the receipt printer.
- some (stupidly) high-tech restaurants have no paper menu. Although I prefer to ask staff to borrow their phone to highlight to them the foolishness of their operation. My hardened defensive phone does not even work with most websites and i need to do this anyway.
It's assumed you have a phone on you at all times, so you get things like "contact us to check in", "scan QR for time table" and digital locks that you open by phone. Of course banking is practically impossible without a phone.
I need my alarm and Google Maps and would be OK with my 10 year old phone that still works if it wasn't for banks and such. Stuff like browsing and watching videos are better on a computer anyway.
Of course banking is practically impossible without a phone.
I’m a bit disgusted by the state of affairs that has inspired your comment. But I notice you say “phone” and not “smartphone”.
IMO, just about all banks require being reachable at a phone number (VOIP or mobile). Some banks have taken the extra shitty step of obligating customers to have a mobile phone number provably registered in their name which is then used for SMS 2fa verifications. Some even nastier banks have taken the abusive step of closing down their website and forcing customers to always have an up-to-date smartphone running their closed-source phone app which is exclusively available from Google or Apple.
All banks are shitty but at least today we still have the ability to reject the worst of the worst and go without a smartphone, AFAICT. Though this would vary from one country to another.
being ADHD, i use my phone as a personal assistant. EVERYTHING goes into my calendar. i have staggered alarms/reminders for everything going on day to day. i also have my notes as well as a couple little games to help pass time when I'm waiting for something/on my break.
at this point i don't think I could function in life without my phone. it's the only way to keep track of my shit. lol
edit: MAPS. i am useless without it 💀
Aside from the usual stuff, my phone has a 22000mAh battery I can use to charge devices while in the boondocks. The speaker is no slouch either, so it's my main BT speaker. It's also as tough as a tank.
That phone looks really cool. My main question would be about the refresh rate and custom ROM support.
Wifi/usb hotspot
mostly communicating over protocols I'd rather use XMPP instead of
TBF I only browse Lemmy on my phone, it's still mostly Reddit on the desktop
This a really great question. I honestly can't think of a single thing that I could not do if I didn't have a smartphone. This is interesting because this is how it used to be, and it seems like that changed, but maybe it didn't. I might do an experiment for a week where I don't use my smartphone and see how it goes.
I miss the short period of time between when WiFi came out and before smart phones. You had to pull out your laptop and find free public WiFi in order to go online to make plans and search (or use an Internet cafe), and then you would have to leave the WiFi to actually go do things. This made it so we had IRL, and we could still share memories and socialize online, but those were separate. This was the last era where we had a proper separation between "going online" and being offline. After that, we are always online, mindlessly pulling out our phones to "socialize" or doom scroll.
Yeah that was kind of a "strange" limbo time - I remember going traveling and having to find internet cafes or hotel computers to use to send messages back home. Feels like ripe material and a lens for thinking about these things again...
Everything related to my job is on my phone, shifts, pay, contact- everything
- Where I live taxis are not safe, neither is public transport for someone that looks like me, uber/car is the safest option to get around unfortunately.
- Taking photos of family and events
- 2FA
- Google maps - don't think I could get around without it.
I only really need it to manage my travel, which I could do elsewhere I suppose. Flights and Ubers. I guess I could call a taxi instead though, so really just flights.
I use it to call the old lady when I'm away, but, again, isn't a necessary thing.
Managing my expenses are really a big thing I do, because who doesn't do online banking these days.
But if I had to, pencil and paper would work, as annoying as it is.
So yeah. Really just flights.
The only thing I /need/ it for is convenience. I really really want it for: Contact (calls and texts) Maintaining relationships easily (group chats for fun chatting and organizing meet ups) Lots of apps I could use pen and paper for (keeping track of my baby's eating and sleep schedule, checking in on the elderly family member via camera versus actually going home and into her room, tracking my period, keeping track of everyone's phone numbers)
And then I could read a newspaper or find somewhere with cable and watch the news, but instead I keep track of news and weather with my phone. I live somewhere with dangerous weather, so it's nice to get those alerts
The only thing my phone has honest to goodness replaced for me is an mp3 player. Music streaming is a luxury I regularly take for granted. I enjoy the phone part, I can just talk or text whoever, whenever. I only need it for stuff like solo walks and hikes through, and a prepaid flip phone would work just as well for that. I use GPS, but a bespoke unit would be more reliable anyway!
This is something I think about a lot actually! I reckon it may be a net positive on my life if I just go back to a dumb phone and an ipod classic. Lemmy is my only social media presence, folks on facebook and whatnot probably get a lot more use out of their expensive rectangles than I do lmao
Oh shit, 2fa too. I guess I’d have to have something for that.
Thanks for all the comments, everyone. I'm busy preparing for a holiday and then will be on holiday (obviously...) so don't quite have time to respond to everyone, but keep the discussion going and I'm hoping to collate things into a summary document elsewhere when I get back.
These days, basically everything I can. With few exceptions, such as long form reading or writing (code or otherwise) I use my phone. There are certainly better experiences for some things on a computer with a traditional keyboard and mouse, but so much of the world has come around to the fact that most people use mobile devices that many of services are just as good, if not better experiences with a touch screen.
When I’m not at work or writing code for pleasure I’m on my tablet or phone, that’s it’s really.