[Aerroon]

>Whereas my smartphone is always in my pocket, and therefore always useful.

Sure. Now how long does it take you? Take that phone out of your pocket, unlock it, open the lights app, skip past whatever update/ad/welcome screen, find the correct light button and press it. Anything on a smartphone takes substantially longer than a physical button.

Not to mention that the physical button tends to be more reliable at doing what it's supposed to. People still buy alarm clocks and then put their phone next to it at night.

[the_snooze]

>Not to mention that the physical button tends to be more reliable at doing what it's supposed to.

This is the big problem with "smart" devices. They take an existing reliable solution to a problem (e.g., flicking a switch to turn on a light), sprinkle on some nice-to-have whiz-bang features (e.g., doing it from afar), but compromising the initial reliable solution in the process.

If those extra features were strictly optional and additive, then it wouldn't be a problem. But that's not how it works in practice.

[MrJohz]

I completely agree, but like I said, I don't always have the physical button next to me. Having a device that can always do the same as that physical button (at the cost of being more complex to use and taking longer to do any individual action) is a worthwhile tradeoff in some situations.

It's not the right tradeoff for everyone or at all times (there's a good reason why physical switches are the default in most homes!) but it's a useful feature. It is by no means irrational, as the previous poster was suggesting: it was designed with a lot of rationality to suit a use-case that that poster may not have.

[kemayo]

> Now how long does it take you?

Rather less time than it takes you, apparently. My process is: pull phone from pocket, swipe down, tap button.

I don't need to unlock it as a discrete step because it did that automatically when it saw my face. I use the built-in smart-home management, so all the controls are available in the system-level control center widget -- which doesn't have any sort of junky updates / ads / welcomes.

It's certainly slower than pressing a physical button if I'm standing next to one. But it's genuinely faster than standing up and walking over to press said button.