

My smartphone is no longer working for me - mooreds
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2012/12/my-smart-phone-is-no-longer-working-for-me.html

======
kafkaesque
A very personal opinion coming up.

I agree with his conclusion that there has to be a 'better way' than the smart
phone, but my situation is slightly different. The author still embraces
technology as the best way to handle our day-to-day problems. Mine have turned
somewhat away from that.

A year ago I owned an iPhone 3GS. It was more than enough. I got the iPhone
4S, however, because some apps required a faster processor, so the simplest of
tasks slowed down my 3GS. It just seemed like iOS was bulkier.

Fast forward to the present day, and I find myself only using my smart phone
(iPhone 4S) to listen to music and use its GPS/map function. Sometimes I use
it to check for venue reviews. I send a couple messages a day, be it SMS or a
messasing app, and probably talk on the phone an average of a few times a week
for a few minutes. I use Twitter as an RSS feed, too. For all its prowess, I
don't seem to be doing much on it. I would sell it and get a cheap $10 phone,
except I already bought it and as an ex-musician, I cannot stand listening to
the radio, so I plug it in to my car stereo for that reason.

Basically, I feel like my smart phone was an expensive, over-rated, hyped
piece of technology and machinery. Either we are not using it for the right
reasons or it truly is a futile piece of metal that can be replaceable.

Again, this is my situation. I don't have a calendar and meetings I need to
keep tabs on, so it may very well be that I am not part of smart phone makers'
target audience, oddly enough.

Just another overstated opinion, I guess.

~~~
coob
You use:

* Integrated GPS * Maps * An RSS reader * Twitter * Messaging apps * SMS * Phone calls * Music player * Other apps that got slow on the older iOS (?)

And yet you think your smart phone was "an expensive, over-rated, hyped piece
of technology and machinery".

You ARE a smart phone makers target audience. Just because you're not running
a moon mission on thing doesn't mean it's not performing its intended
function. Show me a device that does all that for $10.

~~~
kafkaesque
Ultimately, I think you are misreading what I've said.

My priority on my phone is my music.

As far as the rest:

Integrated GPS/Maps: I used GPS because I recently moved to a city in which I
did not know where things were. As I have become more accustomed to my
surroundings, I use the GPS less and less. I can replace this with an
actual/physical map, which is what I used to do and do on road trips (I don't
rely on GPS on road trips). I like getting lost and exploring my surroundings,
actually.

RSS reader: I mostly use this on my PC. I don't need a phone for this. I don't
need to be updated on world/breaking news when I'm not on my computer. It's
like, why do you need to carry a newspaper all the time? Same deal. If there
is an emergency, SMS should suffice. All phones offer SMS.

Phone calls: regular mobile phones do this. I'm not sure why you bring this up
and tie it to a smart phone.

The apps that got slow were the messaging apps (Kik, Beluga which got bought
off and another which I don't recall the name anymore). They were especially
slow-loading. I can do without these if I/everyone had unlimited SMS. I don't
play games on it. I don't watch/stream any videos because Verizon 3G sucks.

------
anyfoo
It seems that every 6 hours, some other blogger witnesses the great epiphany
that when you greatly reduce your daily distractions, you are greatly less
distracted.

Insightful.

~~~
mooreds
I found the article interesting because he was talking about how mobile
distractions could be better managed:

"Now, I’d love for there to be a way for me to know about high priority
interrupts – things that actually are urgent. But my iPhone doesn’t do this at
all in any discernable way. There are too many different channels to reach me
and they aren’t effectively conditioned – I either have to open them up to
everyone (e.g. txtmsg via my phone number) or convince people to use a
specific piece of software – many, such as Glassboard – which are very good,
but do require intentional behavior on both sides."

Again, not rocket science, but considering on the production side there are
many folks jockeying for attention on your mobile device (download my app, use
my app) it is interesting to hear from someone who funds some of those
companies that a break is needed.

I for one will be interested to follow along as he tries other methods to
increase effectiveness of the immediacy of his smartphone "interrupts".

~~~
gte910h
Both apple and android (modern versions) have methods to allow most noise to
be blocked, but "emergencies" to get through.

[http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how-to-set-and-use-
do...](http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how-to-set-and-use-do-not-
disturb-in-ios-6)

I don't know the specific android thing, but do know people who use it.

------
georgemcbay
My smartphone is working for me, but what I realized about two years ago is
that I do not need the latest and greatest one.

Basically what I want from my smartphone is: phone, turn-by-turn directions,
music player, emergency web browser, emergency email, wifi tether.

Essentially _any_ Android phone will fit my needs, so I moved over to using
much cheaper devices on off-contract plans. My first was an LG Optimus V
($150) on Virgin Mobile ($25/month for 300 minutes and unlimited data, since I
use Google Voice and Groove IP that turns into nearly infinite minutes) which
I recently replaced with a HTC One V (also $150 usually, but was recently on a
one-day sale for $50... $50, no contract!). Sadly moving to the One V bumped
my monthly rate up to $35/mo (Virgin Mobile grandfathered in older phones into
their old $25/mo rate despite the lack of contract, which was nice) but that's
still super cheap compared to most people I know with $80+ plans.

This route isn't for everyone, if you're one of those people that is really
married to your phone and you actually use it for things like video streaming
and such, use the latest and greatest, but for me it is working out great.

~~~
pasbesoin
I want to thank you. I just looked up the HTC One V, and what I saw leads me
to think I will switch to this.

If I may impose and if you or another reader have anything you would care to
add, may I pick your brain as to any other observations / trade-offs you made
in your decision to go with the HTC and/or to stay with Virgin Mobile? As
opposed to, as a primary example, another pre-paid plan or phone.

(If not, hope I haven't annoyed by asking. Just in case a specific interest /
use would inspire further comment.)

\--

I've also considered the T-Mobile based plans, but I'm afraid that coverage on
the far city-fringe and beyond might just be too spotty. Although I'm not sure
Virgin would be better -- the last I recall, though, it ran on Sprint, which
actually did ok around here, at least for voice.

~~~
georgemcbay
It was the Optimus V that first convinced me to do this, the HTC One V was
kind of the next logical choice given the price and was a nice
speed/screen/camera bump over the Optimus V.

The HTC One V is a great phone for the price, the only real negative to it is
HTC's Sense skin over Android isn't that great (IMO, YMMV) but you can reflash
it with alternate community ROMs to get standard Android look and feel.

If the Nexus 4 were readily available there's a very good chance I would have
tried that on one of T-Mobile's prepaid plans, but since that was sold out
with no clear information on future availability I'm going to go with the One
V for now.

~~~
pasbesoin
Thanks.

For $50 (sale price) -- and the $10/month bump, I guess -- the One V seems a
very low cost trial, while waiting to see how things develop with the Nexus 4
availability.

The One V price I found was $99. Of course, who knows what it will be,
tomorrow.

I've been looking at / waiting on the Nexus 4, as well. But for $99, I may
well just do the One V for now, and wait to learn how people in the area do or
do not like their Nexus 4 / T-Mobile experience.

------
R_Edward
What we need is a virtual secretary: someone who will triage all our calls,
and only ping us if something urgent comes through. Maybe two levels of pings,
one for urgent, the other for important. Everything else just gets silently
noted for later attention. Simple concept, but the implementation has a number
of sticky wickets. How, for example, can software evaluate the importance of a
phone call from my wife, who may be calling to tell me that our child is
headed to the hospital, or that her mom called to thank us for a lovely
Christmas gift?

------
Roboprog
I've only had my Android phone for about a month, but I _love_ it. I do NOT
check it often during the day, but it is a great combination of phone,
portable entertainment center, quick-check (and delete) of email, nano-
utility-computer, good-enough camera (finally, in a phone), and hot spot.

Yeah, for actual work I still use a full size computer, but the hot spot
feature comes in handy when I'm out of the house or office.

------
blcArmadillo
He finds his phone distracts him with too many notifications and his solution
is wearing glasses that can clutter up his vision with data? It seems to me
that having notifications flashing in my periphera would be way more
distracting than a blinking light on my phone which I can place out of sight
whenever I want.

------
kapnobatairza
Mirror as page was down for me:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.fel...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.feld.com%2Fwp%2Farchives%2F2012%2F12%2Fmy-
smart-phone-is-no-longer-working-for-me.html)

------
Revisor
A luddite talking:

Just today I looked for a new phone to replace my 11 year old Samsung C35. I'm
only replacing it because I swapped the battery 4 times already and
unfortunately the battery doesn't last more 3 days anymore.

My requirements were: No touchscreen, classic phone keyboard, no camera and no
3G/4G/Wifi.

Samsung E1200 for 20$, here I come. The reviews are great, it runs nearly 3
weeks without recharging and weighs 65g. It can do exactly the three things I
need: Call, SMS, Alarm.

Now to get rid of the iPad.

------
hollerith
A mobile-software developer claims Blackberry is better at not needlessly
distracting the user than the other mobile platforms are:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4453104>

------
jewlsmcnabb
looks like your website isn't either: "Error establishing a database
connection"

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drivebyacct2
Yawn, this again?

Who gets a tweet notification on their phone (who gets tweet notifications on
their phone, that would be a starting point) and stares at it o n their tiny
phone screen instead of just pulling up twitter.com on the screen in front of
you? (the premise he was describing...) Everything else aside, this makes no
sense to me.

I get so few notifications that I will only get my phone out if it dings and
it wasn't Gmail or Twitter (DMs only) or Google Voice, all of which are always
instantly available via Chrome pinned tabs or extensions. They're minimal,
they don't make noise, I only notice to check them when I'm in a lull and
looking for something to do while GitHub takes ages to compress my Git repo.

Do the people that write these articles think that the rest of us have the
same ADD they do? I guess I forget how many people will still be midsentence
and check their phone and zone out. No, it's cool, I'll just sit here and
stare at you and wait.

~~~
shawn-butler
It's about trying too hard to be a hipster technologist. It's _sooo_ in now to
pretend you don't rely on your phone like everyone else does.

I think it's resonating in the bubble chamber with that extremely, poignant
statement made by the KC Chiefs quarterback regarding paying attention to
people rather than our phones commenting on the murder-suicide committed by
his teammate: <http://youtu.be/vc-e-T39Z80?t=21s>

Oh, and people are dumb for sharing their photos on instagram. Somehow that
also got pretty lame in the last couple of weeks when I wasn't paying
attention.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Well... my point wasn't that you can't use your phone, just that it's silly to
be a slave to it. I don't care if people want to use Instagram and I didn't
see the Chiefs video.

I guess I don't really see it as "hipster technologist" because it seems
rather obvious to me. I think it does to a lot of people whose phones are
primarily a utility and only a toy when they _want_ a distraction (waiting at
the DMV).

I guess it's good that people are waking up to the fact that they need not let
technology be more in charge of ones life than themselves.

~~~
shawn-butler
Sorry, my comments were not really directed at your points only motivated by
them and were a response to those of the orginal blog post.

I'm curious though, did you ever evaluate wp7/wp8? Microsoft was pushing in
its marketing message that it was designed to solve this very problem, live
tile updates, at-a-glance utility rather than deep distraction, etc.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I've never found Android, the OS, to be distracting. I'm a swipe and a tap
away from any notification. I prefer it, no doubt because I'm used to it, but
all the same. With the new lock screen widgets, I'm pretty sure it's
faster/directer access than any other mobile OS.

I never really got those ads, you get what you put into your phone. I think
the people that spend a bunch of time on their phone are spending the time
because they're choosing to be on it. It's not like my brother stares at his
iPhone all the time because he's looking for his bosses email... it's because
he's texting, or playing a game or lazily streaming music via youtube, etc.

