Smartphones are really terribly designed to be actually used as a telephone.
Personally, I say good riddance. Anything that can be communicated in text, whether email, SMS or other, ought to be. That leaves very little use for telephone, which has all of the disadvantages of synchronous, face-to-face voice communication, with none of the benefits.
Eh, telephone doesn't help that much either. Video you can at least get some indications of body language, but on the whole I'd be perfectly content if I never had to make another phone call. Bad connections, constant reverb from garbage mics, people forgetting they are on mute, incomprehensible accents. None of these are problems in text communication, and the signal-to-noise ratio is higher.
I use my smartphone almost entirely for texting and browsing. I think my monthly talk time averages 30-60 minutes. Observing my peers (20-40 something tech-savvy people) this seems to be the norm.
Yes, but I didn't just mention phone calls. On the browser you'd be getting video feeds, needing sons. Facebook is full on video these days, also needing sound.
However, if you look at the money and the plans that Telcos are providing, it's pretty evident that phone calls are still very much an important part of having a phone.
Viber, Facebook calling, Whatsapp phone calls, Skype and FaceTime are all extremely popular. Even sending Vines requires sound.
You might have meant sound in other apps, but the original comment that spawned this thread was "phone calls wouldn't even be top 5". I don't do any voice in fb or whatsapp. Hangouts would be about it and that's mostly from my laptop.
I'm not defending the 3.5mm port removal or anything, I think it sucks. But voice chat in any form is not top 5 and probably isn't top 10 for me either. I suspect many others are similar.
I'm sure others use the iPhone for things other than voice calls, but with 1 billion iPhones sold even a million people who don't make voice calls is still a tiny fraction of the market.
Most people are still using their phone to make phone calls, even if you and others are not.
Fully 97% of smartphone owners used text messaging at least once over the course of the study period, making it the most widely-used basic feature or app; it is also the feature that is used most frequently, as the smartphone owners in this study reported having used text messaging in the past hour in an average of seven surveys (out of a maximum total of 14 across the one-week study period). Younger smartphone owners are especially avid users of text messaging, but this group has by no means abandoned voice calls — 93% of smartphone owners ages 18-29 used voice or video calling on at least one occasion during the study period, and reported doing so in an average of 3.9 surveys.
I fear this thread is getting a little long already, but let me point you to the graph in your own link (looking at 18-29 year olds).
SMS: 100%
Internet: 97%
Voice Calls: 93%
Looking at those numbers, from an article you provided, could you imagine a fairly large portion of those users using 5 apps on their phone more than they use the phone app? That's the only argument being made here.
We must be looking at different graphs. It shows that text messaging, voice/video calls and email rank amongst the most popular smartphone features.
And sure, if you want to restrict yourself to 18-29 year olds, possibly there is a dropoff on phone calls (though I'm still doubtful). But the market is pretty much larger than that now.
I can't speak for the others but let me list some things I think we usually find in the top 5: Facebook, email, Messenger/WhatsApp/equivalent, Instagram, Snapchat, games, browser etc. The study lumps all those together which is not relevant to this discussion. The point is that people are mainly using their devices as computers, not phones.
I do disagree. The study might lump all the Internet apps together, but it still shows that 92% of all users used voice/video calling at least once in the survey period, whilst it shows that 89% of all users used the Internet at least once. Hence placing voice and video calls in the top 5 most used features.
The 30-49 year olds have 1% greater use of phone over internet, but I'm (totally) guessing that would skew closer to the 49 side of the band rather than the 30 year old side of the band. Since we were considering 20-40 year olds, and your own quote spoke about 18-29 year olds, I think that distinction was fair.
Anyway, since you haven't answered my question, and instead want to restate the question differently over and over, I'm done speaking with you. For what it's worth I haven't downvoted you, but I can guess some likely reasons. Mainly, that you keep shifting the argument and avoiding direct questions.
Since when did I mention only 20-40 year olds? That graph shows the percentage of each age group who used a particular feature once, the graph I showed provides the data in aggregate across all age ranges.
No need to get so annoyed, and no need to call me obtuse.
> phone calls are still very much an important part of having a phone
According to the telephone company. SoftBank in Japan kept lowering data caps without lowering the price. (Unlimited > 7GB > 5GB). They made voice calling "free" in exchange. How generous.
Most of my calls consist of a) "please send me 2 bottles of whatever tomorrow ... thanks", b) listening to "your call is important to us, stay on line ... what is your passphrase, please wait while I'm getting information ... thanks for five-minute waiting, your xxx is yyy, can I zzz?"
I wish I could do everything in text and not use people's ears and fingers as middle layer between my intents and their databases.
I didn't downvote, but I suspect he's getting downvoted because what he said is not rational, but actually a pretty bad rationalization.
The Gameboy Advanced SP is used to play video games, and I don't know of a single game on it that doesn't include music and sound-effects. In other words, 99% of the GBA SP's use case involves sound, in contrast to the iPhone, where there are plenty of apps that don't require sound, such as texting, browsing the web, looking at maps, etc.
Better to just accept that the SP not having a headphone jack was bad, but it sold anyway, and that the iPhone not having a headphone jack will be bad, but it'll probably sell anyway, instead of coming up with illogical post-hoc justifications for why it's okay for the SP but not the iPhone.
near-0% of the Gameboy's use-cases are audio-centric. I almost always played my Gameboy(s) with the volume down, so as not to annoy parents/siblings/whoever-else-was-around, and the games I played were all perfectly playable. In fact, some of them I enjoyed better that way, given that some sound was annoying, but that's purely subjective.
When I go to the gym, 95% to 100% of what I want to do with my phone is put it in my pocket and listen to music. This is a use-case that requires audio, and so removing the headphone jack would make this entire very-common use-case painful.
When I'm in my car, I want to plug my phone into the aux input (or the "aux cord" as kids call it nowadays) and listen to a podcast or audiobook. My 2006 car does not have bluetooth audio. This use-case is (if I'm being safe and legal while driving!) 100% audio-centric. Removal of the headphone jack would make this painful.
When I'm at work, I have two primary usages for my phone: testing a native app I develop, and playing my music through my headphones. I play music far more often than I test the native app on my phone (I don't usually work on the native app). Removal of the headphone jack would make that primary usage of my phone much much more painful.
I've just described ~65-70% of what I use my phone for. ~65-70% of my phone's entire usage would be made more painful and expensive if I bought a phone that for no real reason omitted a jack that is cheap, ubiquitous, and simple-to-use (compare the 3.5mm jack to HDMI in terms of reliability and simplicity), my phone would lose ~65-70% of its usefulness to me.
Meanwhile, the Gameboy, since its purpose is to play games (which have sound and music that is optional to the experience of playing games), loses near-0% of its usefulness without having a headphone jack, because even if it had no audio output whatsoever (not even speakers), I can still play games without sound.
I don't tend to make many phone/FaceTime calls that lack sound. I also tend to enjoy listening to music and videos with sound. Could be just my illogical post-hoc rationalisation kicking in though.
"Why Nintendo, why why why why why? The speaker is just as tinny and pathetic as the GBA, and thus if you have any intention of playing a game with the sound on while in the presence of human beings around, you'll know that you'll get that glare. Try the same thing on a train or a plane (or better still, in a library) and your life won't be worth living. Headphone socket. Where the hell is it?"
I don't know if you've ever played a handheld in public, or been around somebody doing it, but you do not want to be that jerk who forces everybody on the bus to listen to Mario stomp red turtles.
On the other hand, the GBA SP existed before Bluetooth headphones were a relatively cheap and widespread alternative to the wired standard. And Apple includes both Lightning headphones and a Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter in the box with the iPhone, which ought to ease the transition for many.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z_wImaGRkNY