The dumbphone boom is real

Yes, I will slowly have to adapt and move to larger and larger phones once my 13 mini dies (hope this will still take a looong time).

This wont stop me from complaining how ridiculous these phones have become, even foldables are just a crude hack from my POV.

No they're the opposite. I want a small screen that I can reach the entire thing with one thumb. Not a screen that folds out to be twice as big as I want

Isn't this a damning condemnation for the tech world? Can anyone think of another product that was so popular and then people started abandoning it for their own mental health? This sounds like drugs!

We created the most influential hardware device in the past 30 years (smartphone) and within 5 years it was used to weaponize human vulnerabilities (high jacking dopamine, porn, propaganda, etc...) and has had a huge negative impact on our young people so much so that social media* is now being compared to smoking. I think the takeaway is "Don't trust anything this industry makes because eventually they'll use it to extract profits and harm you in some sneaky way". Kinda like how most people rolled their eyes when tobacco companies push vapes as "safer".

Most of my non tech friends are starting to look at the tech industry like the oil industry. Greedy, hurting society for profits, and delusional. This is sad because most people I work with are amazing and great people who build fantastic products.

* I think social media would be a fraction of what it is today without the smartphone

Depends a lot on what she does with it, doesn't it?

My friend with a 12 mini complains it's still too large and basically always needs to have a purse with her since it won't fit any of her pockets. Never complained about battery life and doesn't cart any external power source, either.

Different friend had one of those cases with integrated battery packs around her iphone pros. She spends her days on the phone, though...

As another data point, my iphone 7 had basically enough battery to last me through the day until last year. I changed it because the battery was bulging, and at the end the screen was hanging on to the body by next to nothing.

To recharge my EV on the go, unfortunately, I need a macrospy device, aka smartphone [1] but I normally do not use it as a phone, and I answer calls from it only on the go, my phone numbers for 99% of my contacts are on my home pbx and calls get redirected only when I'm on the go. Only very few in my family know my "mobile" phone number. For me it's essentially:

- a GPS device for car navigation

- a portable hotspot when needed

- rarely a quick browser looking for basic information (like a phone number of a shop)

- rarely a MUA if I need to see, not compose, my mails on the go.

That's is. I've tried a KaiOS phone but it's just a bad hybrid, so I quit it.

[1] macrospy as opposed to classic micro-spy (bugs) that was bought and deployed with significant costs, potentially aleatory reliability and potentially short lifespan by those who want to spy a target. These days PR are able to do the inverse: an expensive and very visible device, bought and kept up by the spied target to enjoy being profiled...