Realtime access to information on the move is ... highly attractive.
Navigating transit systems with and without some kind of wireless data-enabled device is an absolute game-changer, especially.
Without, you're planning all trips in advance, carrying timetables, and/or memorising the schedules and routes you use routinely.
With, you can check to see what the arrival time for a specific route is, use trip planners, or simply enter starting points and destinations and let the planner select routes for you. Whether making an incidental trip cross-town or as a tourist or business traveller to an unfamiliar location and making effective use of transit, it's simply a huge capability multiplier.
As someone who's made major road trips over a span of about 35 years, the capabilities afforded by mobile devices are also huge. My first trips predated the Internet and any use of mobile phones outside an exclusive elite. My first trips with a mobile phone, and with a smart phone, were both signifiant leaps, though the second more so.
That said, I've become radically disenchanted with the technology, and prefer splitting my comms, relying on either a tablet or laptop, and these days, an e-ink tablet.
For gross navigation, I still find maps and road atlases highly useful and largely sufficient. The principle limitation is in not having detailed maps of specific locations along a route, though the detail provided in atlases and state-level maps is sufficient for most purposes. What frustrates me with mainline mapping tools and sites is that they have very limited offline capabilities ... for no real good reason. I've just re-checked F-Droid to see if there are any viable offline mapping tools, and am not finding those.
Realtime traffic and weather information is useful, though often not critical.
Access to pricing and product information when shopping is another nice-to-have, but not essential.
Excluding Google+, I've never used mainstream social media platforms full stop, let alone smartphone apps. (I do have accounts on some federated and smaller services, including of course HN, also Reddit and Ello.)
As noted, the bloom is well off the rose:
- Attention stealing is absolutely rampant, and a real issue. notifications are the first thing I disable. "Do Not Disturb" is on for 23 hours, if not 24. "Mail break" is A Thing. See Neal Stephonson's essay on being a poor correspondent.
- Privacy. I've never been comfortable with this aspect of mobile devices. That level has translated from minimal reluctant use to the maximum level of avoidance possible.
- Both Web and App experience are increasingly user-hostile. "Progress" in apps serves the platform and/or advertisers / financiers, not the users and device owners. Worse, the same characteristics are increasingly affecting and afflicting both mobile and desktop websites. As an example of the latter, recent redesigns of both Reuters and the Financial Times websites to what's effectively not a "mobile first" but a "mobile only" design, and a massive decrease in functionality and utility of both. (There are numerous other examples, these two are fresh of mind, close at hand, and affect premiere websites.)
- The Web is increasingly trash, and again, anticipating the "just don't use those bits" response, the rot affects and touches everything, and is all but impossible to avoid, both online and off. Search engines hide useful and prioritise useless sites. (Google's long done this, DuckDuckGo/Bing are rapidly matching pace.)
- Even informational resources are continuously revised and given Schlimbessurung --- an improvement that worsens --- such that trying to get useful information is increasingly tedious. (The underlying problem: information monetises very poorly.)
- Interfaces and operating systems remain poor and limited (if it fits in your pocket, it's going to be a terrible interaction). Laptops aren't easy to use when mobile, but are vastly more useful once set up.
- Device updates, security, and the like.
Things I simply don't and won't do: payments, identity, subscription services, etc., etc., etc.
An e-ink tablet with downloaded static references (maps, texts, etc.), planning in advance, WiFi connectivity for specific updates (transit), addresses most of my needs. A dumbphone for emergency comms on the road, but even this is highly optional. For any substantive use, a laptop or desktop.
One of the most amazing uses of a smartphone for me transit-wise is when you miss your bus. You can find another route to your destination that you can walk to and arrive only a bit late instead of an entire bus increment late.
Navigating transit systems with and without some kind of wireless data-enabled device is an absolute game-changer, especially.
Without, you're planning all trips in advance, carrying timetables, and/or memorising the schedules and routes you use routinely.
With, you can check to see what the arrival time for a specific route is, use trip planners, or simply enter starting points and destinations and let the planner select routes for you. Whether making an incidental trip cross-town or as a tourist or business traveller to an unfamiliar location and making effective use of transit, it's simply a huge capability multiplier.
As someone who's made major road trips over a span of about 35 years, the capabilities afforded by mobile devices are also huge. My first trips predated the Internet and any use of mobile phones outside an exclusive elite. My first trips with a mobile phone, and with a smart phone, were both signifiant leaps, though the second more so.
That said, I've become radically disenchanted with the technology, and prefer splitting my comms, relying on either a tablet or laptop, and these days, an e-ink tablet.
For gross navigation, I still find maps and road atlases highly useful and largely sufficient. The principle limitation is in not having detailed maps of specific locations along a route, though the detail provided in atlases and state-level maps is sufficient for most purposes. What frustrates me with mainline mapping tools and sites is that they have very limited offline capabilities ... for no real good reason. I've just re-checked F-Droid to see if there are any viable offline mapping tools, and am not finding those.
Realtime traffic and weather information is useful, though often not critical.
Access to pricing and product information when shopping is another nice-to-have, but not essential.
Excluding Google+, I've never used mainstream social media platforms full stop, let alone smartphone apps. (I do have accounts on some federated and smaller services, including of course HN, also Reddit and Ello.)
As noted, the bloom is well off the rose:
- Attention stealing is absolutely rampant, and a real issue. notifications are the first thing I disable. "Do Not Disturb" is on for 23 hours, if not 24. "Mail break" is A Thing. See Neal Stephonson's essay on being a poor correspondent.
- Privacy. I've never been comfortable with this aspect of mobile devices. That level has translated from minimal reluctant use to the maximum level of avoidance possible.
- Both Web and App experience are increasingly user-hostile. "Progress" in apps serves the platform and/or advertisers / financiers, not the users and device owners. Worse, the same characteristics are increasingly affecting and afflicting both mobile and desktop websites. As an example of the latter, recent redesigns of both Reuters and the Financial Times websites to what's effectively not a "mobile first" but a "mobile only" design, and a massive decrease in functionality and utility of both. (There are numerous other examples, these two are fresh of mind, close at hand, and affect premiere websites.)
- The Web is increasingly trash, and again, anticipating the "just don't use those bits" response, the rot affects and touches everything, and is all but impossible to avoid, both online and off. Search engines hide useful and prioritise useless sites. (Google's long done this, DuckDuckGo/Bing are rapidly matching pace.)
- Even informational resources are continuously revised and given Schlimbessurung --- an improvement that worsens --- such that trying to get useful information is increasingly tedious. (The underlying problem: information monetises very poorly.)
- Interfaces and operating systems remain poor and limited (if it fits in your pocket, it's going to be a terrible interaction). Laptops aren't easy to use when mobile, but are vastly more useful once set up.
- Device updates, security, and the like.
Things I simply don't and won't do: payments, identity, subscription services, etc., etc., etc.
An e-ink tablet with downloaded static references (maps, texts, etc.), planning in advance, WiFi connectivity for specific updates (transit), addresses most of my needs. A dumbphone for emergency comms on the road, but even this is highly optional. For any substantive use, a laptop or desktop.