can somebody explain me the purpose of smartphones?
i've been using pdas for two decades, and while smartphones have allowed me to reduce the number of devices i carry, i utterly fail to see the point of modern smartphones. i want to sync data like contact/calender with (my own!) server, browse the internet a little, and then one or two functionalities that come with each and every phone already.
what is the purpose of a $1000+ phone (or even a $100+ phone)? is it just consumerism?
If you understand PDAs but don't understand the value you can get from the Galaxy Note8 with it's Spen. I can't help you.
are you asking us to sell you on smartphones so that you'll personally want one, or to explain to you why other people out in the world want smartphones? these are different goals, and i'm not especially invested in selling you on a smartphone personally (less so if i don't know what you care about or anything else like that, because i'll feel like you're moving the goalpost all the time).
Yes it's just mindless consumerism. I only ever owned one smartphone (galaxy note II) and I won't change it until it breaks or becomes unusable somehow.
>what is the purpose of a $1000+ phone (or even a $100+ phone)? is it just consumerism?
Yes, there is little difference between a $1000 phone and an old used smartphone. But people like new shit. People change phones every other year because they like to have the newest. If you JUST look at how they function then you don't need anything other than a 8 year old smartphone which can basically do the same things as a new one.
there's a pretty substantial difference between an 8-year-old phone and a new phone in how quickly you can accomplish a similar task. people aren't checking their emails and stuff on their phones just to experience checking their email. they'd like to be done with that task as quickly as possible so they can either move on to the next thing or stop using their phones.
you guys seem to gloss over this sort of factor so often that it's bonkers
apart from the fact that since palm i grew to appreciate blackberries for their keyboard (and still do), what's significantly different between all those notes?
>there's a pretty substantial difference between an 8-year-old phone and a new phone in how quickly you can accomplish a similar task.
quite frankly i hardly notice a difference between a 20 yo pda and a current smartphone.
>quite frankly i hardly notice a difference between a 20 yo pda and a current smartphone.
i don't know what you expect me to say to that. it's like telling me that you don't notice the difference between a DSLR's image quality and a polaroid's. i can't engage with your phenomenological experience of the two; if they're equivalent to you, then go have fun with a palm pilot. but i think it's safe to say that you're in the minority (possibly alone) in that.
i'd like to know what I (or others) are missing
>there's a pretty substantial difference between an 8-year-old phone and a new phone in how quickly you can accomplish a similar task.
Not really
>people aren't checking their emails and stuff on their phones just to experience checking their email. they'd like to be done with that task as quickly as possible so they can either move on to the next thing or stop using their phones.
The biggest bottleneck is the connection which is no difference. Other than that it's trivial the real difference because it's all about seconds. You would not notice a difference unless you had side by side comparison.
Let me tell you the real answer op, people buy new expensive smartphones because they think it will make their life better or cooler and sometimes they buy it because it will make their life easier.
>it's like telling me that you don't notice the difference between a DSLR's image quality and a polaroid'
More like not noticing the difference between two different DSLRs with different price points. It's basically the same and you would need to compare them side by side to notice a real difference.
it really is like saying that you don't see the difference between a polaroid and a DSLR. i don't know where to begin. everything about the experience should be noticeably different.
but if you're the OP, i direct you back to the earlier post i made. am i selling a smartphone to you, or explaining other people's demand for it? if it's the former, i'm not interested. i'm not a salesman and even if i was it would be stupid of me to try and find something you care about in this thread. you're giving me nothing to go on, and extracting details about you in this format is like pulling teeth. neither of us would want that.
if it's the latter, then we can talk, but you'd need to commit to being willing to accept a rationale exists and is persuasive without it persuading you. a lot of people reasonably struggle with that, because it's like asking you to accept deliberately losing a game of chess. it's just not how we tend to operate.
for an 8 year old smartphone? we're talking about the iPhone 3G or something here.
case in point: my now fairly old blackberry q5 still does things better and faster (thanks to the keyboard) than any new top of the line smartphone because of the finickyness of touch screens.
touch works well for certain things, but not all (probably why you have a mouse and keyboard attached to your desktop and integrated to your laptop). still people suffer through all touch interfaces and even spend upwards of $1000 on them. i really dont get that.
The fastest typing record on smartphone form factors has been set with touchscreens (and broken multiple times over with other touchscreen devices). If a hardware keyboard works for you, that's great, but if it's just about typing speed this sounds like a personal thing for you.
>my now fairly old blackberry q5 still does things better and faster (thanks to the keyboard) than any new top of the line smartphone because of the finickyness of touch screens
lol that's a personal problem my dude.
I can type FAR faster now with my Note8 than I could on any previous smartphone. Learn to use swype or other input methods.
the dubs speak
> My fingers are too fat to reliably use a touchscreen
Your problem fatty, not ours. And there is no fucking way a keyboard, physical or otherwise, is faster than swipe input.
>The fastest typing record
typing isnt the only kind of input you can do with a keyboard.
hotkeys are way faster than touch for navigation for instance.
>hotkeys are way faster than touch for navigation for instance.
The novel thing about touchscreen keyboards is that they can be reprogrammed to be a series of shortcut keys instead of literal alphabetic or alphanumeric characters.
The fastest way to interact with a phone is not with a hardware keyboard. You may prefer to stick with a hardware keyboard, and that personal preference is fine, but there's no external, objective metric that justifies it.
And again, that's fine. Use whatever you like. Just keep your rationale grounded.
Touchscreen lacks the feedback a keyboard can provide.
Just stop, you've obviously never used a phone with decent haptic feedback.
>but there's no external, objective metric that justifies it.
that only means we don't know which is better: touch or keys.
which comes back to my original point, seeing as all is touch now: is that just consumerism/fashion, or did we miss any actual research?
Lmao this thread is such typical Sup Forums contrarian nonsense, holy shit. Not even trying
I don't understand why you're telling me this. That's true, but
1) That's still a personal preference thing, and I'm about as interested in debating you on that as I am interested in debating whether you like vanilla ice cream more than chocolate.
2) Touchscreen devices have made enormous leaps and bounds in haptic feedback. It's not equivalent to physical keys, but the gap is closing quite rapidly.
But, really, I don't care about your personal preference. It's perfectly valid; it's just not an external justification except "because I like it better", and there's no discussion for us there.
its a serious question
even though ive lived with a modern smartphone for a while, i just didnt need its speed nor found touch to be an improvement. i wonder why the market so unanimously decided on those anyway, even though as here was noted, there no science to support inputs to be better over others
>that only means we don't know which is better: touch or keys.
No, it means that by the measures we can apply — like how quickly you can input text, how much screen space you get as a result of that keyboard space being reusable as screen space, etc... — you have no leg to stand on.
You can tell me that you prefer a physical keyboard, and as I've said several times, that's fine; but your personal preference is what's distinctly separate from logical reasoning.
And apparently I can't stress this enough, but again: that's okay. I don't want to have this discussion about personal preference with you.
yep... except iphones have updates to purposely make old hardware slower. but compare a new iphone to an 8 year old high end android and they perform similar
shill somewhere else
See are we were to sell you on smartphones? because you seem determined not to listen to us. if we're here to explain why other people like smartphones, then this conversation has already run its course.
what do you want from us?
>there no science to support inputs to be better over others
that you know of
We're talking about billion dollar corporations here, if you think all of this is being done with ZERO actual science behind it, you're retarded.
Shitposting at work/on the go/in bed
Tv/movie on lunch break
Shopping
Email
GPS
OCD package tracking
Looking things up. This is the best one, probably
>The biggest bottleneck is the connection
Often it's CPU speeds.
Loading websites can be challenging even for weak desktop CPUs, let alone phones, let alone old phones.
The difference is quite obvious. Although at some point you get into diminishing returns. I think the top phone CPUs became "good enough" somewhere around 2014, after that it's mostly about power efficiency.
And there are also other features that make phone interactions faster, like fingerprint readers.
>compare a new iphone to an 8 year old high end android and they perform similar
look, you can't just say that and not post a youtube video or some other link and expect us to think you're not retarded.
also
>shill
you should check out journals.sagepub.com
>we don’t know which is better
Yes we do, you simply have to pick a metric, or average X amount of/all metrics, and except in very select circumstances, touchscreen will win, so hence it is a personal preference, and the vast majority of users will choose the one that is superior in the majority of usage scenarios.
No it’s not, this thread is a joke thread.
Bet your PDA can't stream HDR content over wifi.
show me the science, or it does not exist.
id like to know what utility people get (apart from consuming (social) media) from these things. as an aside, it would be nice if we could have either science or some good theorizing about the various inputs.
He wants you to keep feeding him.
Stop.
>show me the science, or it does not exist.
Yeah, because ALL science is published publicly.
Seriously, you're retarded.
>hurrr if you can’t take me seriously for comparing a palm pilot 300 to an iPhone 7 then you’re a shill
I reiterate. This is a joke of a thread
>Price points
More like comparing a Olympus Trip 35 to a Canon 80D
>you simply have to pick a metric
as a scientist, i know all to well that this far too easily conflated with what the metric in more general terms is supposed to be telling us.
good example right here: typing was proposed as a metric while it says nothing more general about inputs, which was the question originally asked.
Yes.
A $60 smartphone can do exactly the same as a $600 or, hell, even $6000 ones. Only differences are a few seconds faster load times, pointless gimmicks and more RAM than my PC for some badly optimized Webwrappers
$60 ones mostly still have removable batteries and a decent battery life, missing from most current flagships
Don't want to bash too hard tho, it's still amazing to see how fast everything improves and develops (i.e. 8GB RAM)
i need you to be explicit: are you saying that you'd be satisfied by an explanation of why OTHER people prefer something, even though that explanation doesn't necessarily apply to you?
A $60 smartphone can't playback Hi10 1080p anime or similar high bitrate 10bit content.
What's the point of getting out of bed every morning?
Going to work?
Making a life?
What's the point?
>$6000 smartphone
what smartphone is $6000 that's not branded by Louis Vuitton or Ferrari or something?
Actually it can
You can get a used S4 or S5 for $60 that could theoretically play it just fine
Even new $60 ones with their rather crappy Mediatek SoC's can play 1080p fine
Maybe 8-bit 1080p.
Not 10-bit.
>theoretically
i'm sure the theory will be some consolation to people who find that in practice it's unwatchable
You’re saying literally nothing of consequence. If you want something “general about inputs” then stop being a retard and pick the metrics that define general input quality. Comfort? One handed use? Speed? Durability? Accuracy? Which are important to you, do any of these have more importance than the other, and what exactly are they being compared TO? You made no effort, you got no effort.
guys, just ignore this thread. or report it. it's obviously a troll or otherwise in bad faith.
I just assumed they existed while typing, but holy shit they actually exist
theverge.com
businessinsider.com
They aren't even high quality, or high quality enough to justify their price.
Yeah you're right 10bit could be difficult
Right. Sage report and hide it is. Same bullshit all the way down the thread.
>hurrrr but what about literally nothing? Or how about I repeat the same thing that means also nothing?
>You’re saying literally nothing of consequence
and you understand only that which you can measure.
perhaps this is why so many are alone here.
I can do just about everything I can do on my desktop with my smartphone, maybe even a little bit more. I was just recently without a laptop or desktop for 3 months and I was able to function well enough with a $400 phone I bought a year ago. If you don't see the value in having something with most of the functionality of a desktop computer in your pocket all day every day then that's a you problem and I can't help you with that.
So we're supposed to explain to you something that isn't measurable?
More like a poor user trying to make himself feel better and failing hard because he only have an ancient blackberry right now and can't have:
Wifi g/n/ac speeds
High quality HD+ screen
Fast internet browsing
Streaming video apps
Webm playback
Uber
Etc
yep. he's been deliberately vague so that we can't nail down any specifics. apply Alder's razor: if something can't be settled by experiment or observation then it's worth debating. a common troll approach is to avoid anything that can be tested or debated in concrete terms, so we can be baited around in circles.
maybe the mod should publicly ban this thread so trolls know we see through this sort of thing (and/or so people on Sup Forums are more aware of this relatively subtle kind of trolling).
I'd love to see the PDA that can do this
>portable internet access.
Thats it.
The only thing they are good for are cheking maps, getting info, figuring out where the fuck you are and where to go when you're not at home.
Everything else is bliat and garbage.
If you faggots insist on feeding this guy (you)s could you at least sage so the rest of us can, for the moment, forget about some of the dense cunts we share this board with?
K thx.
So it's ONLY good for access to 90% of the accumulated knowledge of our entire species?
Oh no, how terrible.
>underages getting triggered because someone fails to see the utility of an expensive smartphone
>the absolute state of Sup Forums
yes?
thats why we put all that text around graphs and tables in publication you know, we have to map our chosen quantities to reality somehow. it is understood the further away we get from basic physics, the more important this stage is.
but i digress. i have not seen any particularly relevant insight here and i shoudl really go babck to work.
Well theres also fuckloads of absolutely unnecessary shit and bloat in the device
Like every year it's Sup Forums after an iPhone reveal
Give it another weak and it should be fine again except Intel's CPU release
You sound like a 14 year old who just found out what a thesaurus is used for.
>can somebody explain me the purpose of smartphones?
it is self-funded surveillance and tracking, thats literally it. theres only a handful of features in modern smart phones that are worth a shit. and even less if you consider how intrusive and expensive the data plans and stuff like that are.
smartphones are a cancer pushed by intel agencies and tech companies.
It's all about the camera. That's all anyone cares about. Taking pictures to add to Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.
>can somebody explain me the purpose of smartphones?
Reduce your IQ and collect your data
thats what it seems to me, most of all. these smartphones should be free.
>connected to WiFi
>Bragging about speed on mobile
kys
The point is just a PDA phone that does more modern PDA shit (maps and navigation for instance), or to be on the imessage train to get in with the norm crowd.
>tfw I got a phone from another country to be cool and unique
>there are no accessories here to even protect it
>lesson learned: import all accessories too