[com2kid]

> Everybody generally wants a few core services from their smartphone: send and receive brief messages, directions, ride hailing, listen to a podcast or some streaming service, mobile payments, take photos (perhaps most importantly).

Complete access to a large % of Western civilization's collective knowledge is also kind of nice.

Mostly used for restaurant open hours and random Wikipedia articles. But still.

Knowing where nearby gas stations are, checking when a store closes, comparison price shopping, checking nutrition facts, there are many uses for a smart phone outside of the ones you listed. And, as always, the long tail is long.

[erikpukinskis]

Why only Western Civilization? Why not the collected knowledge of all of humanity?

[com2kid]

Wikipedia has a Western bias.

Linguistic barriers prevent lots of information from East Asia from being accessible to westeners.

Large portions of the world don't yet have super organized repositories of knowledge.