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What other value? About the only actual benefit I can think of using a smartphone for is the ability to look up maps/directions. Fortunately, I can easily sol

What other value? About the only actual benefit I can think of using a smartphone for is the ability to look up maps/directions. Fortunately, I can easily solve the map/direction problem by: 1) looking up directions ahead of time (which I'd do with or without a smartphone) and 2) using a GPS which I already own that costs me $0/month

sofuture 16y ago
That's an honest question! Answer me instead of downvoting!
- neild 16y ago
  I am typing this response on my iPhone. I'm sitting in the living room of my mother's house in backwoods Connecticut. There is no network access here, aside from my phone. So there you go: a use case that doesn't involve maps or directions.
- kjksf 16y ago
  I'm not the one who downwoted, but here's a few things I do with my iPhone: * even though I lived in San Francisco few years, I still find maps great and use them frequently * public transport directions within the city * reading books on kindle while on bart * listening to my vast music collection while on bart * yelp to check if an unknown restaurant is good and find nearby places * check twitter * make photos and save them instantly with instagram
- evilduck 16y ago
  I think you're minimizing the value or attractiveness of a smartphone to justify your choice (or you're just unimaginative). It's also a robust PDA, MP3 player, syncs with my Kindle, a [weak] game system, a decent enough camera for quick and dirty snapshots and a great source of information on the go. I also use it for dozens of other things you can't do with a dumbphone which may or may not apply to you (scientific calculator, lookup tables, brewing calculator, recipe management, backup USB stick, etc). It has supplanted my need to carry a laptop in many situations too, and when it hasn't, it has provided tethered internet access. It may not outperform dedicated devices for each task, but to carry all of those devices you'd need a backpack of gadgetry with you at all times. The extra cost per month for me is easily outweighed by the convenience of having all those options in my pocket at all times, and cancelling my home phone basically negated the extra cost (although cost isn't really a factor, it's about the same as a decent meal in a restaurant).
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    The process of going through my house, finding all the objects that my iPhone has replaced and putting them all on eBay, is actually getting to be a little tragic. It starts with the phone, the iPod, the watch, the point-and-shoot camera, the Flip video camera, the GPS unit, the compass, the pocket LED flashlight, the universal remote, an entire drawer full of city maps, the deluxe HP scientific calculator that I've had since grad school, the wireless communications unit for my laptop, the pedometer, the metronome, the tuner, and the pitchpipe. To say nothing of the pocket paper notebook. Now, thanks to the Kindle app, my library is shrinking. My portable audio recorder's days are numbered. (The stumbling block: when you're recording audio you really want to be able to do it for an hour or two at a time, without stopping for anything, so you don't really want to do it with your smartphone. What if you have to take a call, or tune an instrument, or do a calcuation on your H-P calculator simulator in the middle of recording? But these things are getting so cheap that soon I'll just be able to buy a dedicated one for audio recording. Or maybe it'll just multitask well enough to record audio in the background, with the mics attached by a cord.) The cost of the smartphone is still too high, and the durability too low, for it to quite replace every single one of my paper field guides for birds and animals -- you want to be able to use the thing in the rain, while standing in the mud, with one hand, without flinching -- but that's almost there too.
    - hexley 16y ago
      >Or maybe it'll just multitask well enough to record audio in the background, with the mics attached by a cord. Probably does already, have you tried?
steveklabnik 16y ago
> About the only actual benefit I can think of using a smartphone for is the ability to look up maps/directions. I'd suspect this is why you're being downvoted. Smartphones have many more uses than 'looking up directions.'

sofuture 16y ago

That's an honest question! Answer me instead of downvoting!

neild 16y ago
I am typing this response on my iPhone. I'm sitting in the living room of my mother's house in backwoods Connecticut. There is no network access here, aside from my phone. So there you go: a use case that doesn't involve maps or directions.
kjksf 16y ago
I'm not the one who downwoted, but here's a few things I do with my iPhone: * even though I lived in San Francisco few years, I still find maps great and use them frequently * public transport directions within the city * reading books on kindle while on bart * listening to my vast music collection while on bart * yelp to check if an unknown restaurant is good and find nearby places * check twitter * make photos and save them instantly with instagram
evilduck 16y ago
I think you're minimizing the value or attractiveness of a smartphone to justify your choice (or you're just unimaginative). It's also a robust PDA, MP3 player, syncs with my Kindle, a [weak] game system, a decent enough camera for quick and dirty snapshots and a great source of information on the go. I also use it for dozens of other things you can't do with a dumbphone which may or may not apply to you (scientific calculator, lookup tables, brewing calculator, recipe management, backup USB stick, etc). It has supplanted my need to carry a laptop in many situations too, and when it hasn't, it has provided tethered internet access. It may not outperform dedicated devices for each task, but to carry all of those devices you'd need a backpack of gadgetry with you at all times. The extra cost per month for me is easily outweighed by the convenience of having all those options in my pocket at all times, and cancelling my home phone basically negated the extra cost (although cost isn't really a factor, it's about the same as a decent meal in a restaurant).
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  The process of going through my house, finding all the objects that my iPhone has replaced and putting them all on eBay, is actually getting to be a little tragic. It starts with the phone, the iPod, the watch, the point-and-shoot camera, the Flip video camera, the GPS unit, the compass, the pocket LED flashlight, the universal remote, an entire drawer full of city maps, the deluxe HP scientific calculator that I've had since grad school, the wireless communications unit for my laptop, the pedometer, the metronome, the tuner, and the pitchpipe. To say nothing of the pocket paper notebook. Now, thanks to the Kindle app, my library is shrinking. My portable audio recorder's days are numbered. (The stumbling block: when you're recording audio you really want to be able to do it for an hour or two at a time, without stopping for anything, so you don't really want to do it with your smartphone. What if you have to take a call, or tune an instrument, or do a calcuation on your H-P calculator simulator in the middle of recording? But these things are getting so cheap that soon I'll just be able to buy a dedicated one for audio recording. Or maybe it'll just multitask well enough to record audio in the background, with the mics attached by a cord.) The cost of the smartphone is still too high, and the durability too low, for it to quite replace every single one of my paper field guides for birds and animals -- you want to be able to use the thing in the rain, while standing in the mud, with one hand, without flinching -- but that's almost there too.
  - hexley 16y ago
    >Or maybe it'll just multitask well enough to record audio in the background, with the mics attached by a cord. Probably does already, have you tried?

steveklabnik 16y ago

> About the only actual benefit I can think of using a smartphone for is the ability to look up maps/directions. I'd suspect this is why you're being downvoted. Smartphones have many more uses than 'looking up directions.'