I was the last of my circle to switch to a smartphone; I only made the leap about a year ago - the old dumb phone finally died, and when I looked online for a replacement all I could see was senior phones. I decided I wasn't ready for that yet - so marketing works I guess - so bought the smallest smart phone I could find (a Unihertz Jelly, fwiw).
I have to say, I'm not impressed.
* battery life down from two weeks to two days on standby. People assure me it's not just my choice of model, this is the new normal and I should just get into a habit of charging it every night.
* generating dial tones during a call, as call tree systems generally require, is super awkward: you have to slide an unlock slider, then tap an icon to bring up the keypad, then dial the digit you want - all while looking at the screen, because unlike a real dial pad you cannot do this by feel - before the call tree prompt times out. Makes you feel like James Bond trying to defuse a bomb.
* texting is awkward: instead of generating text with nine tactile buttons, you swipe around a drawing qwerty keyboard twice the size of your thumb in total.
* I can't run the blackberry apps for connectivity to work because the Android version is incompatible, so it's no use as a smartphone for software reasons
* The UI generally feels like an unfinished intern project: the phone takes ages to boot, apps are slow to open and crash often, some settings do not survive a power cycle, etc etc. Having worked with many Android devices in a previous job, I'm pretty convinced this is not actually down to my choice of phone model; they're all flaky and people are just used to it. iOS devices are noticeably better in this regard, but suffer from other problems (the worst of which is Apple's disregard for third party software - every OS update breaks something, and major ones break most things, so every year or two all the actually smart parts of the smartphone stop working, you lose whatever you had stored in them and have to switch to new ones).
* The device is too small to comfortably read or browse internet on except in an emergency
Some of that is on me for picking a tiny phone, but the bigger devices aren't really much better until they get too big for a jeans pocket, and fitting into my pocket really is a hard requirement for a device whose primary purpose is something I carry on me all the time to stay in touch with people. Like any self-respecting techie I have a tablet for reading/web browsing on a decent screen, and a laptop for when I want a real computer, so the flaky unreliable value-add does not seem to justify the broken core functionality of a mobile phone.
I have now settled down into a working relationship of mutual hatred with the device, but I do miss the old phone that was just a phone. Maybe it is time to declare myself a senior after all.