I’m not sure this counts as an unpopular opinion, but I don’t like smartphones. Or non-smart phones either. The hardware is okay, but the software is pretty bad… and they have largely become just another way to receive spam.
Here is what I use a smartphone for:
- Text messages (SMS)
- Voice calls (infrequently)
- Reading books
- As a clock when I’m not at home
- Measuring flashlight runtimes with zak.wilson’s “ceilingbounce” app
- Guitar tuner (infrequently)
- Navigating on roads (very infrequently)
- Alarm clock while travelling (very infrequently)
… and things I don’t use a smartphone for:
- Flashlight
- Music player
- Video player
- Social media
- Chat client
- Web browser
- Calendar
- Todo list
- Grocery list
- Taking notes
- Taking pictures
… because it’s bad at all of these things and I’d rather use something less-bad.
Many of these are things I would like to use it for, but smart phone OSes really hold back the potential of the hardware. My old Linux PDA from 2001 was a more capable device than an average smartphone, despite its primitive hardware, because the OS didn’t get in the way of what I wanted it to do.
I’ve been involved in portable device OS development several times, and can say from first-hand experience that many of the problems with smart phones are caused by corporate businessmen making high-level decisions which are not in the user’s interests. It’s (mostly) not bad for technological reasons; it’s for profit.
But in the case of phone flashlights, those are bad for tech reasons. It’s only there so people can take pictures indoors and at night. It’s not even trying to be good as a flashlight; it’s trying to be a camera flash.