Paul's Internet Landfill/ 2024/ Smartphone Observations

Smartphone Observations

I was in a life situation where I was obligated to carry a smartphone. I did not particularly want a cellphone, never mind a smartphone. I was concerned that I would not have the self-control to handle a smartphone. Some part of me worried that I was not too much of an obsolete dinosaur to learn how to operate one.

The first few days I had the phone were difficult. I opted to use a passcode instead of biometrics, because I am an obsolete dinosaur who is paranoid about perfectly acceptable login methods. Even remembering that passcode was a chore. Learning to type on a smartphone keyboard was difficult. It took me months to learn that double space would make a period. Who knows what other shortcuts I missed?

I grew to hate autocorrect quickly, and disabled it. I did use word suggestions, but made a conscious effort to be the one in control -- I had a sentence in mind and typed in the words to complete it, rather than following whatever path the autosuggest wanted.

I used the phone for its specific purpose. Thus I did not install outside apps, or even use fun features like the voice assistant. I also avoided GPS. The features I used included:

Weirdly, I did not use the smartphone as a phone very much. Incoming phone calls were almost always spam. I rarely made outgoing calls, and almost never made personal calls. (There may have been one or two exceptions to this when I had COVID.)

I had a web browser on the phone but also did not use that much. Surfing the internet from a phone sucks.

I referred to the smartphone as "the tracking device" and I believe that characterization. There were some ways to lock down the phone to make it less attractive to attackers, and I took advantage of those. But I was under no illusions that others could not obtain all kinds of information from me if they wanted.

Using the device for intra-organization communication was useful but disruptive. Many times I was awakened in the early morning because others sent messages. That affected my sleep. On the other hand, being able to read and respond to organizational messages within seconds was useful, especially when I was not near a computer.

I was not happy about how the battery life of the device drained.

I did like how the phone updated itself. There are disadvantages to this but overall I think the security tradeoff of keeping things up to date without user intervention is good.

The phone wanted to store things in The Cloud, which I suppose is a design choice. When I learned it was doing this I disabled that too.

Now I do not have the smartphone. I still feel weirded out not feeling its weight in my pocket. I feel a little less secure on bike rides, because I no longer have a way to make emergency calls if I am caught on the road.

I worried a lot about damaging the phone but other than battery life I do not think I caused much damage. But I think it was only a matter of time before I dropped the thing or sat on it and cracked the screen.

I do not think I want to have a smartphone in the future. Having said that, I would like a digital camera, which might mean purchasing an old smartphone and repurposing it.