Well I’ve had a smartphone since 2012, just to try it. Honestly I don’t feel it has added quality to my life. Having specialized devices such as a camera, GPS, mp3 player and so on is actually more convenient and not more expensive. For example a GPS has a longer and more reliable battery life.
Truth be told I have a Motorola Droid running Android 1 and if all you need is a phone with some email and sms texting it works fantastic. Even has a physical keyboard.
No at some point they become uselessly slow or won’t receive necessary updates. Like even some dumb chat app requires a ton of resources. And I’ve also had an iPhone that worked just fine until there was an update. After that it wasn’t practical to use any more and I switched back to android.
I’ve had 4. And I’ve used each one until it was completely useless.
I bought 2 of those 4 for my work. I do vr/ar and some clients require ar on the phone or tablet. And I needed one of them when I had an Airbnb, because you need the app for that. The again you can replace that with android running on a pi or sum.
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.
My 2 cents: I have a similar relation with smartphones as yours.
In my case, what I fear the most is some app getting my contact list and using it to send some kind of “XXX has joined YYY service” notification to all of them. Also, I didn’t like that Google had all the data they wanted, so I ended with 2 smartphones:
One de-googled (LineageOS without Google Apps) that I use for calls and trusted apps. This one has my contacts list.
One default Android-Google without simcard for those apps that require oficial-Android (mainly banks apps) and any app I’m afraid could mess with the contact list.
AFAIK I’ve only had one incident because I trusted Telegram too much. There is always non-zero risk, but this works for me.
Similar setup here, for same reasons. But I go further: my contact list is empty. Not a problem if your contacts are all on Signal or Telegram rather than SMS or Whatsapp. IMO contact lists are privacy scourge #1. They allow everyone to grass on their friends with zero consent.
I know the EU is still kicking around the concept of making itself a root CA and each country an intermediate in that chain, then legally mandating the installation of that CA on all devices. This is dangerous as hell as it effectively defeats the purpose of TLS and gives the government(s) a way to decrypt all HTTPS traffic using those bogus cert chains.
Good thing I have frigate nvr setup and don’t need their app at all. This is super sad since these are my go to cameras. I will still buy them since I put them on a vlan and block all internet access. This is sad though 😕
Thanks for the reminder! I just replaced the gallery. I still have Simple Draw, it appears that there’s no replacement, but I’m not tied to it. What do others use for a drawing/photo editing app?
Looks like another govt relying on majority that has no idea about how internet works. It won’t stop kids, but pr0n sites and their partners will certainly get richer.
Thanks for the heads up. Just today I noticed the new fossify apps in fdroid… didn’t realize it was forked from simple mobile tools. I will be downloading and replacing my notes app when it becomes available.
It’s an Unpopular opinion but free speech as it gets translated in modern society can suck a dick.
Shit only applies to the left anyway, the right can call for violence against their enemies and be fine but if you say you’ll defend yourself it’s a ban on Le socials
If you’re really only making phone calls, the built in location tracking is probably the biggest issue? AFAIK, you can only use an off the shelf iPhone with an Apple account, and a similar Android phone with a Google account, so your location will be tied to and referenced with those.
Apple have branded themselves as guardians of their users’ data, so many consider that a safe assurance. YMMV but it may be slightly better than Google’s Dodgier approach. When in doubt, go to settings and turn everything off you don’t use, location services foremost.
You may want to disable other apps that come with your phone as well. Basically anything you don’t use. I don’t know how much data can be harvested from background services of an app that doesn’t have a user signed in, but at this point I’d err on the side of caution. Plus, as you say, your position can always be approximated by your mobile carrier through the cell towers you’re connected to, but that goes for dumb phones as well.
Personally, I only use Android smartphones with custom ROMs like LineageOS without installing the Google apps or services framework because I Just Don’t Use Google. Instead I install microG to spoof the GSF to apps that require it. That’s a privacy compromise I can live with because I use my phone as an internet device as well. Needless to say I take privacy precautions on an app level as well.
Yup. And again, millions of iOS users take that as assurance of Apple’s trustworthiness. In this game, we all need to choose who we trust with our data 🤷
You can setup Android without a user account. I’m not sure about iPhone, I don’t believe that’s an option in the setup process (but it’s been a while, since I set mine up).
privacy
Active
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.