Living without a personal smartphone

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unregistered
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by unregistered »

Sry again. I DIDN’T ever work for Steve Jobs; rather, my dad did read his autobiography and I was just relaying info I heard.
Pokun
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Pokun »

This thread isn't really about Steve Jobs' business practices or even the iPhone as a product though. More about criticizing certain social behaviors, how society blindly enforces the way you have to do certain things in the wrong way.
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Fisher
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Fisher »

Here in Brazil an IPhone is considered an luxury item and a symbol of status.

I usually see people talking wonders about it and I think most of them are probably tue, but I simply don't see myself using that many features, since they have similarities with others that I just don't use anyway.

Man, I think I'm getting older and see a sort of "generation gap" here, because the worst punishment to my kids is to leave them "phoneless" for a few hours. :roll:
Drag
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Drag »

creaothceann wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 5:46 pm Physical buttons can also have different functions. For example the buttons on one of my monitors are used for navigating the on-screen menu, but when no menu is visible they act as shortcuts to specific sections of the menu.
Pokun wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 12:01 pm In almost any game the functions of the buttons on the controller changes with the mode, and of course with the game itself.
It's about confidence, like I said before. A user could be totally unaware of the shortcuts and still be confident in navigating the menu, because that's the main role of the buttons. Therefore, I wouldn't expect the dual-function nature of those buttons to be confusing.

With gamepads, the player should feel confident that when the game tells them to press <button>, they can press it without having to look at their hands. They should also feel confident in knowing what the game will do when they press a particular button.

For example, in Mario 64, you use the same button for punching and for talking, so if the game punished you for punching NPCs, you'd want "punch" and "talk" on separate buttons instead, right? Sunshine fixes this and gives you a giant (B) icon over the NPC when pressing B means you'll talk.
creaothceann wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 5:46 pm 1. Reach for smartphone, use fingerprint sensor to turn it on, tap calculator icon. Takes about 2 seconds.
2. Press Win+R on PC to bring up the Run dialog (which has "calc" already stored in the text edit box), press Enter. Takes about 1 second, and is actually a regression since as of Win10 the calculator is some kind of newer application and needs a few more milliseconds to render its UI than the previous Win32 calculator.
3. Rummage in bag for the calculator (assuming it's even in there), make sure its little solar cells are getting some light, turn it on. Takes 5 to 10 seconds.
If a physical calculator is within your reach, all you need to do is grab it and press the [ON] button. That's pretty fast and easy in terms of "zero to calculator" access. I make this observation as someone who does regularly open the Windows calculator (win, "calc", enter), juggled between different windows on screen, accidentally opened a second calculator after forgetting I had one already open (more funny than annoying :P), and finds a physical calculator easier.
Pokun wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 12:01 pm When I'm at my computer the Windows calculator is quicker to start up and it can do binary and hexadecimal stuff which my TI can't out of the box. I use the TI one mainly when I need to do larger calculations which it is very good at.
This bugs me about TI calcs too; I frequently need to flip flop between decimal and hexadecimal, and I really wish there were a button or switch or something I could flip to quickly switch between the two. Besides that, I really like being able to type out equations and pressing enter, versus how you do it on a normal 4-function calculator like the Windows one.

----------

Anyway, I brought up calculators because it's an example of something you can use a smartphone for, but you don't have to, and it's common to fall into the "why do I need one if my phone already does it?" trap, and you settle for a convenient but worse experience.
  • Tapping virtual buttons on glass is always a worse experience then pressing physical buttons; keyboards prove this.
  • It's hard to compress complex activities onto a handheld screen; I can compose music on my phone but I absolutely do not prefer doing it there, and I imagine the story is similar for photo and video editing.
  • Browsing the internet is an objectively worse experience on mobile compared to everywhere else because of the limitations of having a small screen and using your finger to poke things, plus everyone wants you to download their app instead.
  • I don't mind making this particular sweeping generalization: mobile games just suck, and we can't do anything about it at this point. The market is just too solidified into its niche of simplistic time-wasters and whale hunters, because you can't do much else here.
The "just use your phone for it" idea breaks down when you take it to its extreme: If I used my smartphone to do literally everything I could possibly want or need to do in any given day, I'd need to stop and recharge multiple times, which is very limiting, and imagine not even having a flashlight because your smartphone is at 5% battery. Worse still, every time I go to do something, there's all of my notifications and distractions right there that I'm staring at.

Even for something as silly sounding as "I need to use a calculator a lot", that's still a reason to consider getting a physical one that isn't your phone. When you're using a device that's specifically designed to do one thing, it does it well, because it doesn't have all the baggage of needing to optionally do 20 other things at once.

For example, an e-ink screen is great for reading books, drawing, note-taking, etc, but is really bad for watching videos or taking pictures, so smartphones don't usually have these.

Does this mean smartphones are just peepee poopoo across the board? Not at all, they're very useful devices, and can help you discover things that would be out of reach normally (like photography) but they've also given rise to some very bad habits, and they try to do too much and people forget you can use things that aren't them.
Garth
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Garth »

One can talk about convenience; but you still have to take into account the long-term health risks of using a cell phone.  These are a few of the articles and videos I've kept the URLs of.  I did not do a web search for them, but I keep coming across them because I study health a lot. Then there's the matter of constant surveillance.  That of a wired internet connection on a PC is a lot less, and if you want more protection, you can use a VPN.  Rob Braxman has a lot of information about this on his YouTube channel.  Here's an example video:
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
Joe
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Joe »

Garth wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 1:53 amI did not do a web search for them, but I keep coming across them because I study health a lot.
Be careful. Search algorithms tend to promote material that makes people angry, and claims of intentionally hidden dangers will make people angry even if no credible research has been able to identify any danger. There's also a lot of money behind promoting falsehoods in order to distract from or reduce the credibility of the truth.
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Garth »

Joe wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 11:18 am
Garth wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 1:53 amI did not do a web search for them, but I keep coming across them because I study health a lot.
Be careful. Search algorithms tend to promote material that makes people angry, and claims of intentionally hidden dangers will make people angry even if no credible research has been able to identify any danger. There's also a lot of money behind promoting falsehoods in order to distract from or reduce the credibility of the truth.
I get my news from doctors and researchers who are not selling anything and are not in bed with the extremely corrupt pharmaceutical industry (like Wikipedia is, which I should mention since you give a Wikipedia link to something health-related) and aren't afraid to speak the truth.  Google also started implementing an algorithm a half-dozen years ago to censor-out search results that run contrary to the profits of Big Pharma.  If you would read the articles and watch the videos I linked to (which I know takes a lot of time), you'd see from legitimate studies that the radiation is a problem, regardless of what the industry claims in its efforts to protect its profits and its grip on health dogma.  I have plenty of information here to lecture all week about these things.
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Drag »

Science uses peer-reviewed studies and not youtube videos nor noname news aggregators.
Joe
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Joe »

Garth wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 1:12 pmIf you would read the articles and watch the videos I linked to
Those aren't really any more trustworthy than Wikipedia. Can you direct me to peer-reviewed studies instead?
assemblyx69
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by assemblyx69 »

The drawbacks are just small compared to the advantages it will give you so living without smartphone is an inconvenience to many.

Emergency, instant communication is a must. If you're away from your house they can't call you what if it's about life and death situation or about work that if you ignore can cost you your job.

Internet surfing, you can get infomation instantly you don't need to wait booting the PC for 5 to 10 minutes just to surf the internet.

Camera, you don't need to bring camera anymore smartphone's camera can compete with a real camera. The image quality they produce are just the same.

Games, it's subjective like nes, gba, etc. games. There are people who play shitty type of games in their smartphone but that's not all. There are also good games in smartphone if they know about it like the offline games the sims, dota like games, prince of persia, gta, final fantasy, need for speed, resident evil, etc. Even the cheapest smartphone now can play these games.

Videos, you can watch tv series, movies, etc. here. You don't need to buy video players (like blu-ray) now. If you want a big screen you can also connect the smartphone to your home tv via mirroring feature. Video quality has no differences to an actual disc, you can choose what video quality you want.

Music, you don't need to buy audio players anymore. If you don't want wired earphones you can use the bluetooth one. No more tangled earphone wire problems.

Intrument tuners, yes all types of instruments that needs fine tuning can be tuned by smartphones. That's the job of the built-in microphone.

Emulators, you can install diffent types of emulators in just one smartphone. NES, GBA, Switch, 3DS, PSP, PS2, DOS, etc. apps. The cheapest smartphone can play PSP games without any slowdown. If you need a physical controller you can also buy one for your smartphone.

GPS and Maps, quite useful for drivers and travelers. There's an app that can guide you the directions through the AI voice. GPS doesn't consume internet data you can also download an offline maps so you don't need to turn on internet the next day just to load the maps anymore. Also useful for emergencies like if your children got kidnap you can easily trace the kidnappers and give the location to the policemen. If you don't need GPS because of privacy you can turn it off.

AI, you can ask simple questions or remind you later if you want to.

Other minor apps, notepad, alarm clock, timer, clock, calendar, offline dictionary, offline thesaurus, am/fm radio, broadcast tv (no internet needed), etc.

If the concern is privacy like apps have access through your internet data you can patch or crack the app that you want to install but it needs root or patching knowledge. If you're not a programmer or tech savvy, you can install apps that can block internet access for specified apps like lucky patcher.

The only problem of smartphones I see is its not easy to make programs for it, unlike PC you can make one using different types of programming languages. In smartphones you need a very specific one like SDKs and NDKs kinda limited to java, kotlin, etc. (I don't know what iphone uses though) you can't make a pure c/c++/asm programs for smartphones unlike PC.
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by creaothceann »

assemblyx69 wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 8:31 am you don't need to wait booting the PC for 5 to 10 minutes just to surf the internet
While I agree with your other points, this one seems a bit outdated imo, unless you use underpowered hardware (e.g. 4GB RAM PCs) and no modern features like hibernation.
My current setup:
Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-GPM-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
Drag
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Drag »

creaothceann wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:56 pm
assemblyx69 wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 8:31 am you don't need to wait booting the PC for 5 to 10 minutes just to surf the internet
While I agree with your other points, this one seems a bit outdated imo, unless you use underpowered hardware (e.g. 4GB RAM PCs) and no modern features like hibernation.
That's because it's otherwise difficult to argue that internet browsing on a phone is better than on a computer, when a computer has a dedicated tool for typing (keyboard), the capability for more compact UIs (mouse vs finger), and larger screens to show more content (two pages vs two paragraphs), which are all things smartphones have to compromise on.

It's cool that you can do it on a phone, and it's certainly convenient, but it's hard to believe that someone would be sitting in front of their computer with all their stuff on it, and still opt to use their phone instead, without some kind of a good reason like "I'm temporarily using <app> on my phone because the desktop version of <app> had a bad update and won't open right now".
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by tepples »

assemblyx69 wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 8:31 am The drawbacks are just small compared to the advantages it will give you so living without smartphone is an inconvenience to many.
Most of your list except "Emergency" and "AI" can be done with a Wi-Fi-only tablet or on a phone with no SIM. A landline can do "Emergency". Unless I'm an emergency first responder on call 16/7, job-related things can either go to my DMs (when I'll pick them up once my tablet connects to Wi-Fi) or wait until I return home and check my voice mail. "AI" is artificially locked down to require a valid SMS number "for security reasons"; hence this topic.
assemblyx69 wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 8:31 am Internet surfing, you can get infomation instantly you don't need to wait booting the PC for 5 to 10 minutes just to surf the internet.
PCs take 5 seconds to resume from standby, or even faster if they boot from an SSD.
assemblyx69 wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 8:31 am Games, it's subjective like nes, gba, etc. games. There are people who play shitty type of games in their smartphone but that's not all. There are also good games in smartphone if they know about it like the offline games the sims, dota like games, prince of persia, gta, final fantasy, need for speed, resident evil, etc. Even the cheapest smartphone now can play these games.
How do I determine before purchase whether a particular phone game that I plan to buy happens to be compatible with the brand of physical controller that I already own? Is there a standard, or must each game be coded to each of several controller brands the way a lot of Windows games are incompatible with non-Xbox controllers (DirectInput vs. XInput)?
Drag wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 2:32 pm it's hard to believe that someone would be sitting in front of their computer with all their stuff on it, and still opt to use their phone instead, without some kind of a good reason like "I'm temporarily using <app> on my phone because the desktop version of <app> had a bad update and won't open right now".
Or when the desktop or web application requires 2FA on a phone "for security reasons."
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Garth »

Science uses peer-reviewed studies and not youtube videos nor noname news aggregators.
Not necessarily.  You have to watch out for when science gets hijacked by politics or profit motives.  There are lots of situations where for example a team of scientists makes a discovery about what's causing something, but they can't get it published because it would result in loss of funding to either themselves or the "approved" journals.  Do the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet meet your criteria for legitimate "news aggregators"?  The editors-in-chief of both of these have come out and said that much of what is published in those two prestigious medical journals is not to be believed because it is so full of medical fraud.  So many doctors, scientists, and researchers today are using the internet to propagate the truth, taking advantage of the fact that corrupt industries and politicians don't have full control of the internet.

My mother-in-law is a retired nurse.  She doesn't like the fact that I, and others, are learning things that aren't controlled by the corrupt pharmaceutical industry; and she says, "You can't believe everything you see on the internet, you know!"  That's like saying, "You can't believe everything you read in books (including those you had in nurses' training or medical school)!"  But she would rather just believe the latter.  I replied that you have to take in information from many different sources, and kind of like "cross-examine" them, and you'll begin to figure out who's telling the truth and who's not, whether the reason they're not is because they're just parroting someone else who didn't know, or they're protecting industry profits, or whatever.

Joe wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 2:06 pm
Garth wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 1:12 pmIf you would read the articles and watch the videos I linked to
Those aren't really any more trustworthy than Wikipedia. Can you direct me to peer-reviewed studies instead?
The information on many of the ones in the articles and videos is there so you can look them up.  Don't just discount them all and trust the same medical industry that told us in 1953 that smoking was proven safe and has given us lots of other disasters too.

Addressing other things without quoting everything:  I'm 63 and have never had a situation where someone's emergency required getting hold of me while I was out.  My desktop PC takes only about 40 watts and I never even suspend it, let alone shut it down, so it's pretty much instant access.  I sometimes go months without needing a camera.  But every picture I take, I upload it to my PC to crop, scale, sharpen, adjust the contrast, etc., in the gimp software, before posting.  (It's kind of irritating when people on forums post pictures so big you have to do a lot of side-to-side or up-and-down scrolling because they couldn't be bothered to scale the picture down to a reasonable size that would still give all the resolution needed for what they're trying to show.)  I keep with my cello an electronic tuner I made before cell phones had that capability.  I've never used, or had any reason to use, a simulator, in any setting, except circuit simulators which I myself wrote.  When we go on vacation, my wife likes to use her phone to get directions that I would otherwise get from paper maps, even if I had printed them from the PC before leaving home.  That's only a few days a year.  I ride bicycle a lot though, including in our local mountains where there's no cell service.  I would recommend keeping paper maps anyway, for the possibility of the cell network going down.
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
assemblyx69
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by assemblyx69 »

tepples wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 7:00 pm Most of your list except "Emergency" and "AI" can be done with a Wi-Fi-only tablet or on a phone with no SIM.
Yes that's true, but you'll lose some portability and comfortability if you're using laptop, netbook or tablet. You need a separate bag for them. While a smartphone just need a pocket of your pants and jacket and you're good to go. Putting a bag with laptop from place to place is very prone to theft. If that happens you'll not only lose your laptop but also the important information you save there, password encryption is no hindrance for them.

Most of the things I also mention there are built-in not an expansion card or accessories something that you need to buy seperately to put in your PC like tv tuner card, bluetooth/wifi dongle, etc.
tepples wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 7:00 pm "AI" is artificially locked down to require a valid SMS number "for security reasons".
Nope, not all smartphone apps are like ChatGPT of OpenAI. Built-in smartphone AI doesn't have that kind of verification. No internet needed to a use a built-in one.
tepples wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 7:00 pm How do I determine before purchase whether a particular phone game that I plan to buy happens to be compatible with the brand of physical controller that I already own?
I guess it's the other way around just look at the controller box it tells that it's "smartphone compatible" but sometimes they didn't tell it to you so you need to test it yourself and learn how "mapping button" works. For example PS4 and XBOX wireless controllers they are compatible in smartphones but I don't know if they specified it in their manuals but I'm sure they work. You can connect physical controllers by USB, bluetooth and wifi. Switch JoyCon controller can also be connected.
tepples wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 7:00 pm Is there a standard, or must each game be coded to each of several controller brands the way a lot of Windows games are incompatible with non-Xbox controllers (DirectInput vs. XInput)?
No, button mappings are very specific so no need to adjust the buttons per game just look for smartphone compatible. I guess almost all wireless controllers now can be connected to a smartphone.
tepples wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 7:00 pm PCs take 5 seconds to resume from standby, or even faster if they boot from an SSD.
Yes that's true, I just assume most people prefer to shutdown their PC than to hibernate or sleep mode.

Anyway you can use a smartphone without a sim card if you're really desperate about "privacy" and just sideload all the apps you want to install. Browsing internet without logging in or any kind of verification is possible you can use a pocket broadband for that job, then disable the GPS for complete security.
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