I cannot tell you a way my life has genuinely gotten better since the advent of "smart" phones.

dadarobot

I just got a fairphone, and so far i have no complaints.

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I use the Realcalc scientific calculator app at least 5 times a week. As others have mentioned GPS functionality for driving is great. I also use my phone's GPS to get waypoints for the location of fixtures for my job as a telecommunications facilities designer.

Having a high quality camera is also handy for work and personal stuff.

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Yeah you’re full of crap dude. You’re telling me you’ve never used the GPS on your phone at the VERY least? Even for walking in the city or something?

AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet

You've obviously never had to read a shampoo bottle to keep you entertained while taking a dump before.

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These badboys exist - tempted to get the hotspot and navigation version.

Flip phone

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There are a lot of good things that a smartphone provides that has made my life better.

Weather they apply to you I don't know.

Here are some great features of my smartphone that had improved my life.

GPS navigation - being able to quickly and easily find your way is amazing. Though I will never have my GPS running with sound, I use it to have a map up when driving where I can glance to see the general idea of the way to my destination, this sometimes mean I miss a turn, but it's fine the system quickly calculates the route again and I don't get yelled at to follow directions when it might be impossible, reducing stress.
Smart lighting, my phone can turn on my lights at home before I get home making me able to open my front door into a cozy lit up home rather than a black void.
Translation on the go, being able to get translations of just about anything you need at any point is amazing, sure the translations are not perfect, but they are good enough.
Entertainment is probably to biggest win for me, being able watch a movie, listen to music, read a book where ever you are on a small device you have with you is truly amazing.

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It's been going on 20 years since smart phones arrived. You go figure it out.

OpenStars

Wow and even those have touch screens (most of them:-).

OpenStars

That somewhat sounds like perfection actually:-).

Is the touchscreen experience less smooth than a traditional smartphone?

dadarobot

Touchscreen is fine

I switched from a pixel 6, and i haven't really noticed anything tangibly worse. Read a lot of complaints about the camera, and i have noticed it is slightly worse, but nothing really bad at all.

The circle to select is disabled. It doesn't have wireless charging. There's probably something else im forgetting...

All in all, very minor complaints, and i'm overall very happy with it.

thermal_shock

yeah, shit post.

OpenStars

Oh that's awesome! I barely use my camera as it is, so that is perfectly fine for me:-). Everything I hear about it sounds so good:-).

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I barely use any these days.

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I had those. They were much worse.

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Seriously. Much much worse.

First you had to pay a fortune for a device, with which you may or may not get very limited map updates. Then after that you had to pay quite a bit to update. Even then it could take a year for permanent road changes to make it to the map updates, and temporary changes were never shown. Road construction, wrecks, and temporary closures were your problem. And God forbid your route took you through a closed area because there was no way to route around it. You had to find a place to park so you could look over the tiny little map to figure out your own way around the blockage, or else you could pick a direction and then yolo your route until you were far enough away from the problem area that the gps would finally choose a route that didn't go through the problem area.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For instance, all the above assumes that it accepted the address you were going to as a valid address. There was nothing like the joy of typing in an address and having the device tell you that it doesn't exist.

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So far I have managed to avoid getting a smartphone and am still using a flip phone. Every time I look into getting one it gives me a yucky feeling. Of course I have a computer, a laptop, and also a tablet that I have some apps and games on for amusement. But for a phone to carry around, all I care about is having a way to make a call if needed and send/receive texts, so I have no need for a smartphone. I have taken my tablet to a cafe and used their Wifi to access the internet a few times, but I rarely want to do that.

Things that I can see a smartphone being useful for:

GPS/maps, but I don't really need that since I rarely travel that far away and I know my way around my city and nearby cities. However I can always download static maps of other cities to my tablet if I'm going to an unfamiliar place and/or look it up online ahead of time--like when I had to go to a funeral, I printed off a couple maps--one close up on the location area and one zoomed further out to see the route to the area.
Signal app, which I'm not sure I'd use, but I think it would be nice to have in case I need secure messaging as we move into 2025.
ummmm, can't think of anything else

Things I'm glad I don't have to worry about by not having one:

Tracking, data harvesting, surveillance. Including via the phone's mic.
going around like a zombie everywhere constantly staring a screen, unable to sit or stand quietly for more than 15 seconds without whipping it out (the phone! you knew what I meant). This is really not healthy. Maybe I wouldn't do that, but who knows, maybe I would start doing that, as it seems everyone else does, and (sorry, but) it looks pathetic.
the constant beeping, dinging, vibrating, or whatever it's set to do for notifications, from dozens of apps demanding attention. That would drive me nuts. My phone only makes a sound if I get a phone call or text, which is not often. If I ever started getting texts too often I might turn off sound for them.

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Don't let downvotes from smartphone addicts get you down. You're being thoughtful about it and that's a good thing.

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I rented a car at some point where you had to input the address letter by letter using a little scrollwheel kinda thing.

Smartphones have issues, but the map thing is a killer feature in itself.

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Holy sweet baby Jesus! You need to put a trigger warning on your post. The traumatic memories that you brought to the surface are enough to send me back to therapy all over again.

Rayquetzalcoatl

To be totally fair, with my older phone the GPS never worked properly (it was very cheap), so I'd usually look up the directions to a place beforehand and text them to myself for use later. Did get lost a lot but you can usually just ask somebody where to go