I Hate Smartphones

There. I’ve said it.

Droid Eris

I hate smartphones. Actually, I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with them, considering that I have one of the “hot” or “cool” smartphones of the moment – the Droid Eris by HTC. All on the nation’s number one wireless network. As smartphones go, the Eris and the Android operating system that runs on the Droid is pretty darned cool. For all of you that ran out and got an iPhone the moment they came out because you’re all hopeless Apple fanboys, in my not-so-humble opinion the Droid Eris and HTC’s sense UI blows the iPhone out of the water and you don’t have to deal with Steve Jobs. While I’m thinking of it, there’s that little concept called multitasking that Apple didn’t get quite right on the iPhone. Since Android is essentially a customized Linux operating system, it multitasks properly (go read up about preemptive multitasking if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

So anyways, back to my Droid Eris review. Like I said, as a smartphone it’s great. You can multitask up the wazoo, have something loading on a web browser while you’re talking on the phone at the same time that some thrash metal is playing in the background and you’re attempting to upload the latest porn onto some server via your phone while bouncing your connection through some Chinese proxy server that you’re using. All after installing i-Jetty so that you can turn your phone into a mobile web server. So, from a hacker’s perspective, it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Quite possibly even better, although slightly harder to eat.

But that’s about where the shit hits the fan.

As a phone, smartphones just suck. That’s probably because most of the designers spend all their time on the “smart” part, and almost no time whatsoever on the “phone” part. Hardly surprising, because your average smartphone designer is probably some zitfaced little pinhead that possesses the social skills of a newt and can’t imagine why anyone would, like, y’know, use a smartPHONE as a phone! I mean, WTF would you need to actually call someone when you can simply TXT them and be k3w1 using 133t?

Think back a little bit to the time before smartphones. What was the one fairly common thing that phones had? Apart from a color screen, that is. Well, phones had real numeric keypads that actually had a tactile feel to them. Furthermore, when you pressed those keys, the number displayed on the screen immediately.There was no random length of time that occurred while you were waiting for the stupid number to appear, and it was really easy to dial a number without looking at the actual screen or keypad because you could actually feel the keys.

So there I was blithely driving on the wrong side of the road, heading happily towards the lamppost on the sidewalk with a crazed expression on my face while trying to randomly poke at the screen to get it to respond to my input of voice mail password. Evidently some complete moron had decided that it would be a cool design feature to hide the keyboard after you hit the Send button on the phone, thus making it completely fucking impossible to drive in a straight line while calling someone on the phone . Fortunately the nice man in the oncoming car decided that he didn’t want to die this morning and used his horn to good effect. I can’t say similarly nice things about the little zitfaced wannabe assassin who put that little gem into the phone.

A minor flaw, you might say. And you really shouldn’t be trying to call someone when you’re driving anyway. Not to mention the fact that the coffee you spilled while avoiding the slightly traumatized pedestrians on the sidewalk should have been covered and not held in your other hand while steering with your knees. And what about using a bluetooth headset or handsfree kit, hmmm? I’ve got one of those, but let’s be honest – it also sucks. When attempting to use the phone with a handsfree kit on it, you generally do something like press a button on the headset, wait for a prompt and then say something like “Call John Doe Mobile”. The spiffy smartphone should then find the matching number, repeat it back to you and ask for a voice confirmation so that you can simply say “Yes” or “No” and then it will dial the number.

Oh noooo, not this one. It lets you say “Call xxx”. But that’s where the goodness stops and all sorts of shittiness ensues. You’re actually prompted on the screen with a list of possibilities, and you have to touch said screen to select the correct number. No voice prompts for you. And that’s only if you’re lucky enough to have turned the screen on before you tried the dialing, otherwise you’re presented with a list on a screen that is currently turned off and you have to push a button to turn the screen on again, slide the the hooziwhatsit thingie to unlock the screen and only then can you select the option mere milliseconds before you impact the lamp post on the sidewalk.

Minor details, you may say. Not if you’re trying to call someone while you’re driving it isn’t. Dialing a number on a cellphone while driving is somewhat safe. Trying to poke at numbers on a touchscreen while driving when those numbers only appear after a 500ms delay is basically like playing Russian roulette with the oncoming traffic. Will it be this number that causes me to veer into the traffic, or will it be the completely fucking stupid notion of blanking the screen as soon as you bring it to your ear and then taking upwards of 2 seconds for the screen to reappear WITHOUT ANY KEYBOARD once you remove it from your ear so that you can, oh, enter your voicemail password?

So essentially what those miserable little misanthropes in dark rooms have done is perfected the art of creating suicide car drivers. Along with the equally hated marketers, they’ve come up with the perfect killing tool – smartphones. By simply screwing with the interface of the phone, they’ve created a subtle death trap for drivers. At the same time, they’ve created a huge demand for these little instruments by allowing people to become addicted to social media web sites and other evil things like FaceBook. Because who doesn’t want to update their FaceBook status while they’re driving just so that they can say “W00t! Just avoided that 18 wheeler on the opposite side of the road because I slid out on the snow while I was updating my status. Damn truck drivers!” ?

And yet, the fun factor of sitting in meetings and browsing the web while you’re looking all businesslike is undeniable. As is the ability to randomly scan barcodes and look them up in an instant.

And that’s why I hate smartphones: they suck you in with pretty baubles and set you on an eventual collision course with a lamp post.