Discussing smartphone use with various people recently, I quickly come back to the same question - what do you need it for? This is not a masked way of saying they don’t need a smartphone, but a genuine question. I’m personally happy to accept that people use smartphones for a variety of reasons, from professional work, to having to pay for parking, and from medical technology to not having access to laptops or computers.
So maybe a stepping stone to better co-design of smartphone use is to be more open about what we need to use our phones for, and why we carry them around with us. This post, then, is a bit of an experiment to start surfacing thoughts. The question is applicable to all devices, but I figure a) better to start somewhere specific, and b) smartphones are a particularly “invasive” device. So…
Which functions on your smartphone do you feel you NEED it for, and why?
To start, I’d say there are some things I like to have my phone on me for - camera, photo editing, note-taking. But the things I probably need it for on the go are:
- Necessary contact from family and friends via phone call, text and (specific) group chats
- Parking apps, as paying by machine often isn’t available here
- Finding directions in strange places
- Access to passwords and one-time codes
- Transferring emergency funds to kids’ bank cards
- Checking my calendar
I guess there will be a lot of overlap, but that’s good to know. And it would also be interesting to know what less common cases exist: I think a mindful tech movement risks coming from a privileged position, and so awareness of these less common needs is all an essential part of the discussion.
There are no right or wrong answers here, just the opportunity to open up and find out from others :)
I’d add public transport to the list. Searching connections, booking tickets, navigating through large train stations etc.
I struggle to agree in the strict sense of need. But it’s a boiling frog scenario.
Public transport managers have mostly quit offering printed schedules and maps. IMO that’s borderline a violation of human rights (all people are entitled to equal access to public services, and I would consider providing info about public transport to be an indispensible part of that public service). Although in terms of smartphones, you can typically use a PC instead. And inside the stations you often have schedules and maps on the walls. But the bus infrastructure is dicier.
In Germany there are ticket sales with online exclusive pricing. Offline people must pay more for the same trip, or even lose access to some tickets entirely. Although a PC may still be an option there.
Sure, you don’t need apps, but they can save you hours of waiting if you can change your plans quickly, for example when a train is delayed or cancelled and you need to find other alternatives.
Yeah I agree, I’ll easily file public transportation apps as a need. During delays it can be vital. And have fun when you find yourself in an area new to you late at night after being out with friends and you don’t even know where the closest bus stop/train or subway station is, without a way to look it up on the phone. You definitely need an app to look that up and to plan your route home.
I used the proprietary apps for public transport back in my pre-Google boycott days and indeed they were quite useful for last minute changes on unfamiliar routes. Then public transport started blocking Tor which broke their app. But I eventually realised public transport is not the way forward anyway.
I switched to a bicycle (more independance and autonomy, better for the environment, better for health [not just exercise but less viral exposure], much more privacy, and cheaper). So if your travel is in cycling range or you can make it so, it makes more sense to ditch public transport entirely.
Public transport is getting increasingly more privacy hostile. More and more networks refusing cash payments, transitions to SMS tickets, more surveillance & facial recognition, more tracking, and despite all that privacy compromise in the end you are still less safe than cycling due to viruses and the unavoidable possibility of attacks (though that’s city-dependant to some extent… some cities are rough cycling).
Cycling is great and I wish I could make it an option, but where I live commute times to most work places are about 1h using public transport. Biking is out of the question unless you have time to sit on a bike for a couple of hours every day. To me even 1h commutes are too much but I have no choice unless I want to pay at least double in rent, which in turn takes away a big part of my freedom.
I’m in a city where the furthest points of the city are reachable in less than 45 min on the bicycle. I took public transport for years. The commute time on public transport was about the same as cycling. This is because cycling is door-to-door. Public transport requires walking to/from the stations on both ends. That walk takes triple the time on foot than on bike. Then you have to wait, and possibly wait again at a transfer point. So that overhead time makes the door-to-door trip the same as cycling. Tram stops are also frequent enough that if I am cycling next to a tram, I pass the tram every time it stops at a stop. The trams average speed side-by-side seems to be only slightly faster than cycling. Also figure that cyclists get more direct routes, one-way streets are two-way to cyclists, and cyclists have traffic immunity and strike immunity.
A 1 hr public transport commute should not be a 2 hr cycle. I’m not sure what crazy circumstance would cause that. Unless you live next to a heavy-rail train with just ~2-3 stops.
If a city is as big as London, then I could see cycling losing the avg race against public transport because the overhead time becomes less significant over long hauls. But you can still control where you work and live to organise your situation to shrink the city, in effect.
Of course it depends on the circumstances. I’m talking about 25 minutes commuter train (~10 stops), changing to either subway, bus or tram. Waiting times are usually pretty short and the walking distance is rarely very long. I’ve ridden my bike three commuter rail stops away and that takes 30 minutes. Going all the way into the city would take way more than twice as long, and then there’s the rest of the way to go.
Yes, the question of how we define “need” is absolutely a key point here, and I guess I deliberately left it open to interpretation as I think it’s subjective, but also that how we define it can change as we think about it and question it too.
The online/offline benefits always irks me - I mean I get the economics behind pushing people to be more “convenient” (on behalf of the company, usually) but it avoids the entire conversation about digital exclusion and accessibility. Strangely, I often see parking rates cost more when you use the app, as you get charged for paying with their card service. Ho hum.
GPS, music. That’s the necessities for me.
Now, I would want a physical keyboard like my old pre-smart lg reflex had, if I had to give up the smart phone. fuck texting on a regular phone keyboard.
When the iphone6+ came out and was bending, I was so sure the market was gonna pivot back to thick phones. And to me the obvious next step was bringing back slide out keyboards.
I can probably type faster with swiping and learning predictive autocorrect, but I’ll never be able to do it blind :c
Word! Being able to rely on touch and memory didn’t even cause many more errors than swiping on screen does for me.
https://www.tindie.com/products/zitaotech/blackberry-bb9900-bleusb-keyboard/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnA4d6uEKS0&t=5s&ab_channel=JoeLiTrenta
there are a few other versions from the same shop. tindie is dangerous
That’s sick. And out of stock :(
There’s nothing I can think of that is totally impossible without a smartphone. Just less convenient to varying degrees. Some of that is because of the fact that you’d need to carry several devices and/ or paper alternatives like we did in the dark ages. But some of it’s just because people expect everyone to be carrying a smartphone these days.
For Amazon returns I need to scan the QR code in the Amazon app at the post office. That could potentially be avoided by printing the QR code, but there’s no mechanism I know of at the moment to download the code.
I do check my email and online calendar when I’m out sometimes for details if I’m heading somewhere or checking when something is. This could be avoided by using a paper diary and printing out relevant emails.
For watching videos, listening to podcasts and checking Lemmy I’d either need to use a tablet, a laptop (which I generally use at home rather than my smartphone) or a dedicated audio player for the podcasts for portability.
Banking can be done via my laptop, phone call or in person at my local branch (for now).
Obviously phone calls and texts could be handled by a “dumb” phone.
Some restaurants ask you to order via their website or app but I’m sure if you kicked up enough of a fuss they’d find another way of handling that.
I rarely take photos or video but carrying a digital camera could replace the need of a smartphone for that. There are a lot of small, high quality options out there these days.
A smartphone is very useful for navigation but that could be taken care of with a handheld satnav device.
You’re really asking “how much convenience do you need?” Some people are entirely enslaved to what Tim Wu describes as the Tyranny of Convenience.
I am not one of those people. I have ditched Google Playstore which greatly limits what I can do with the phone (and I’m fine with that – fuck suppliers demanding that I patronise Google). And since I am always around a PC I only use a smartphone for:
- offline navigation with OSMand (hard to give up)
- notes (could give that up easily)
- camera – to take a pic of store hours posted on a door, occasional QR codes, to capture evidence when a store advertises a different price than they charge at the register, and because there are actually hardware stores that have no posted prices and you need to give the cashier the item number of (e.g.) a pipe fitting so they can ring it up. Also to capture rejection messages from ATM screens because ATMs are not designed well enough to print faults with the receipt printer.
- some (stupidly) high-tech restaurants have no paper menu. Although I prefer to ask staff to borrow their phone to highlight to them the foolishness of their operation. My hardened defensive phone does not even work with most websites and i need to do this anyway.
- Messaging/calling
- Public transportation
- Maps
- Calendar
- 2FA identification
This a really great question. I honestly can’t think of a single thing that I could not do if I didn’t have a smartphone. This is interesting because this is how it used to be, and it seems like that changed, but maybe it didn’t. I might do an experiment for a week where I don’t use my smartphone and see how it goes.
I miss the short period of time between when WiFi came out and before smart phones. You had to pull out your laptop and find free public WiFi in order to go online to make plans and search (or use an Internet cafe), and then you would have to leave the WiFi to actually go do things. This made it so we had IRL, and we could still share memories and socialize online, but those were separate. This was the last era where we had a proper separation between “going online” and being offline. After that, we are always online, mindlessly pulling out our phones to “socialize” or doom scroll.
Yeah that was kind of a “strange” limbo time - I remember going traveling and having to find internet cafes or hotel computers to use to send messages back home. Feels like ripe material and a lens for thinking about these things again…
mostly communicating over protocols I’d rather use XMPP instead of
Aside from the usual stuff, my phone has a 22000mAh battery I can use to charge devices while in the boondocks. The speaker is no slouch either, so it’s my main BT speaker. It’s also as tough as a tank.
That phone looks really cool. My main question would be about the refresh rate and custom ROM support.
being ADHD, i use my phone as a personal assistant. EVERYTHING goes into my calendar. i have staggered alarms/reminders for everything going on day to day. i also have my notes as well as a couple little games to help pass time when I’m waiting for something/on my break.
at this point i don’t think I could function in life without my phone. it’s the only way to keep track of my shit. lol
edit: MAPS. i am useless without it 💀
It’s assumed you have a phone on you at all times, so you get things like “contact us to check in”, “scan QR for time table” and digital locks that you open by phone. Of course banking is practically impossible without a phone.
I need my alarm and Google Maps and would be OK with my 10 year old phone that still works if it wasn’t for banks and such. Stuff like browsing and watching videos are better on a computer anyway.
Of course banking is practically impossible without a phone.
I’m a bit disgusted by the state of affairs that has inspired your comment. But I notice you say “phone” and not “smartphone”.
IMO, just about all banks require being reachable at a phone number (VOIP or mobile). Some banks have taken the extra shitty step of obligating customers to have a mobile phone number provably registered in their name which is then used for SMS 2fa verifications. Some even nastier banks have taken the abusive step of closing down their website and forcing customers to always have an up-to-date smartphone running their closed-source phone app which is exclusively available from Google or Apple.
All banks are shitty but at least today we still have the ability to reject the worst of the worst and go without a smartphone, AFAICT. Though this would vary from one country to another.
I don’t know the last time my phone was required for banking.
For my first bank I do everything on the app. If I log in through a browser, it requires me to scan a QR.
My second bank also requires the app to log on, but SMS would be an option too (so still a phone is needed).
My third one is Revolut, which can only be used with an app.
Some other investment platforms I use, all require SMS for phone verification.
I think it’s hard to find a bank that doesn’t require a phone. Maybe some banks can still send printed codes for additional fees or something.
I think it’s hard to find a bank that doesn’t require a phone.
It really depends on where you are. The US has over 6000 banks to choose from, so the highly competitive region somewhat helps. You probably could find some small town rural banks in the US that will open an account without a phone number. In some parts of Europe they insist on having a mobile number. But what some people do not know is EU banks cannot refuse a request for a “basic” bank account. I don’t think all banks offer basic accounts, but when they do, the application form does not even have a field for a phone number. Just name, address, and date of birth.
The point is banks purposely make their browser versions terrible and still require an app or sms for 2FA. They may offer alternatives but discourage this by making it impractical or by charging fees.
There’s no point to getting a “basic” account to get around using a phone because you won’t have a savings account, no investing, no multiple currencies etc.
I refuse to do online banking entirely because the websites have become so shitty. And I will not touch non-FOSS smartphone apps. So I only bank offline. And yes, I get screwed because most banks charge a fee for paper statements. So my options are very limited.
If you are offline you can probably still invest and have savings (in the US, not sure about Europe) but I would expect that to be quite costly. I think manual trades with human involvement are like $20 per trade or so in the US. That’s really the most fucked up part of this. If offline consumers had equal rights in terms of pricing, it would be fair enough and the online options would have pressure to be less shitty.
TBF I only browse Lemmy on my phone, it’s still mostly Reddit on the desktop
Wifi/usb hotspot
- Where I live taxis are not safe, neither is public transport for someone that looks like me, uber/car is the safest option to get around unfortunately.
- Taking photos of family and events
- 2FA
- Google maps - don’t think I could get around without it.
Thanks for all the comments, everyone. I’m busy preparing for a holiday and then will be on holiday (obviously…) so don’t quite have time to respond to everyone, but keep the discussion going and I’m hoping to collate things into a summary document elsewhere when I get back.
I only really need it to manage my travel, which I could do elsewhere I suppose. Flights and Ubers. I guess I could call a taxi instead though, so really just flights.
I use it to call the old lady when I’m away, but, again, isn’t a necessary thing.
Managing my expenses are really a big thing I do, because who doesn’t do online banking these days.
But if I had to, pencil and paper would work, as annoying as it is.
So yeah. Really just flights.
