[codetrotter]

I tried going back to a basic phone again for a few months some years ago.

Tbh the only two positives were:

- Battery would last several days on a single charge. I had totally forgotten that that used to be the case.

- Less time wasted on social media etc.

But the drawback was immense!

For one, it was not until I put my smart phone away that I realised just how valuable Google Maps is to me.

And of course, a lot of my communications with other people are in various apps these days. SMS is just not very useful at all now.

So the lesson learned was that it is better to have a smart phone.

[daneel_w]

> "- Battery would last several days on a single charge. I had totally forgotten that that used to be the case."

Several days? Surely you meant weeks? Unless you spent an hour or two calling on the phone every day, of course.

I get 5-10 days out of my iPhone depending on desire for leisure. In the "dumb" era the number was about 2-3 weeks, even when I was young and always texting throughout the day.

[codetrotter]

> I get 5-10 days out of my iPhone depending on desire for leisure

I probably use the phone a lot more than you. My iPhone has to be charged at least twice a day, and it’s not even that old. My current iPhone is an iPhone 14 Pro.

[daneel_w]

Yeah that definitely sounds like you're constantly on the phone - or at the very least keep everything and then some running in the background with app refresh and location services etc. enabled.

[codetrotter]

Guilty as charged :p

[seized]

Don't you mean discharged?

[smoldesu]

> Unless you spent an hour or two calling on the phone every day, of course.

That's what people are using iPhones for these days?

[daneel_w]

Talking on the phone, like some sort of psychopath...

[the_pwner224]

Any modern smartphone will have several days of battery life, if not more, if you use it as a dumb phone (WiFi & mobile data turned off, only using it for calls & SMS). My Galaxy S5 (~8 years old now?) passively discharged at 1% per day with WiFi & data disabled.

[hsudvsish]

isn't an regular offline gps device an option?

[sethherr]

No traffic updates, no transit directions, no bike directions.

It’s very much worse

[daneel_w]

Not to mention that map application availability was equal to zero unless using the very latest breed of pre-smart phones from the late 2000s, and even then it was so-so.

[codetrotter]

Many of my searches in Google maps are also for things like grocery stores etc. With a regular offline gps device I would not have that