Without our smartphones, where would we be in 2025?

[Burma Bill]

1 hour ago, KannikaP said:

 

 

1 hour ago, KannikaP said:

Come on, tell us all why please.

 

If you must know, I have mobility problems with my fingers and thumbs. Some are arthritic and others injured after many years associated with football (soccer). The small touch screens are almost impossible for me to use. A computer keyboard with a mouse is ideal FOR ME. I do not use QR codes, other than TDAC which I print off my computer and present the paper copy with my passport. All my digital and internet business I complete on my computer. My Cambodian bank offers Personal Internet Banking for home and laptop computers. When shopping I use cash or my Visa Debit card.  I have a Canon digital camera for taking photos. 

My choice - no further comment from me.

[Purdey]

On 5/26/2025 at 8:32 AM, blaze master said:

 

What has it done to peoples brainwaves and attention span.

 

Goldfish comes to mind.

 

 

. 

People thought goldfish's memories lasted 3 seconds, but it more recently found to last months and years. People think now that the smartphone reduces memory but it just means there is a secondary method of saving memories. 🙂 

[KannikaP]

45 minutes ago, Burma Bill said:

 

 

If you must know, I have mobility problems with my fingers and thumbs. Some are arthritic and others injured after many years associated with football (soccer). The small touch screens are almost impossible for me to use. A computer keyboard with a mouse is ideal FOR ME. I do not use QR codes, other than TDAC which I print off my computer and present the paper copy with my passport. All my digital and internet business I complete on my computer. My Cambodian bank offers Personal Internet Banking for home and laptop computers. When shopping I use cash or my Visa Debit card.  I have a Canon digital camera for taking photos. 

My choice - no further comment from me.

Then why did you not mention that in your previous reply instead of 'I will never have a Smart phone' ?

[blaze master]

40 minutes ago, Purdey said:

People thought goldfish's memories lasted 3 seconds, but it more recently found to last months and years. People think now that the smartphone reduces memory but it just means there is a secondary method of saving memories. 🙂 

 

Nice assumption. You have the science for thay right ?

[mikebike]

8 minutes ago, blaze master said:

 

Nice assumption. You have the science for thay right ?

Don't think we will get a definitive answer for a couple of more decades. Human brains are incredibly flexible.

[Kinok Farang]

On 5/26/2025 at 9:24 AM, Ralf001 said:

if there was no smart phones I'd be walking round with a tablet in my pocket !

 

Aspirin?

[blaze master]

1 minute ago, mikebike said:

Don't think we will get a definitive answer for a couple of more decades. Human brains are incredibly flexible.

 

Exactly.

[JamesPhuket10]

Before reading the replies I thought to myself I bet there will be lots of negative comments about smart phones just as there seems to be mostly negative and moaning comments about all the other topics replied to on this forum, it is full of miseries it seems.

 

Smart phone. Let me see ....

 

No, I don't think I will bother with the extensive positive list of things as that would be a waste of time.

 

Right that is my fifteen minutes break over, I will go back to the design/programming/testing of my latest iPhone app.

 

Oh, one good thing I will mention, I can work in Thailand and any other place in the word, all I need is a computer and an iPhone, I can work as many or as few hours I like while making lots of money from the sale of the apps, that is good enough for me as a single positive. 

[Ralf001]

22 minutes ago, Kinok Farang said:

Aspirin?

It would be something Chinese, love Chinese electronics.

[johng]

3 minutes ago, JamesPhuket10 said:

I can work as many or as few hours I like while making lots of money from the sale of the apps

Well good for you but better make a fortune quick because AI is about to steal your livelihood.

[ujayujay]

In the Year 2025 maybe

[jas007]

On 5/26/2025 at 8:13 AM, hankypankee said:

Well, we might be lost, literally. Without digital micro-maps in our pockets, travel would suddenly require more planning. Good, or bad? Personal finance would also slow down. No more instant digital payments or transferring money in seconds. Access to information would feel like going from the Autobahn to a traffic packed soi. We’d need to think, ask, remember, and not know things right away. How novel. 

 

And what about the form of our lives? We wouldn’t be glued to curated feeds and algorithmic chosen drivel. Social media would still exist, but only on computers, not a 24-hour drip. The need for some people to perform constantly, feed the machine, to compare, to doom scroll for validation or outrage, that would be gone. Lovely idea. Conversations might return to being natural, unshared, and unfiltered. Friendships could grow again in the absence of likes and shares, measured again by time spent together rather than digital pings.

 

And what about news? The world would still be on fire, but maybe we wouldn’t be forced to watch it burn in real time. The doom cycle, the fear economy of headlines and push notifications, could lose some of its grip. Brilliant! We might read the paper again, watch the news occasionally, and then go about our lives, instead of being caught in an endless scroll of outrage, anxiety, and distraction. Would we feel less informed, or simply less bombarded?

 

And the final question: what would we do with all that free time? Without the quick dopamine squirts and constant mental clutter, would we write more, talk more, think more? We could suddenly meet up with people more often again and maybe we’d get bored enough to become more interesting people ourselves. Yeah, we’d lose a few things. But maybe we’d find a few things too. A different kind of connection to the world. A slower rhythm. A real version of ourselves with a little more space to breathe.

Once upon a time, I went for a few years with no kind of phone at all.  Back in the 70s.  I didn't want to pay for a phone, so I didn't have one.  Anyone who wanted to talk to me could write me a letter or come over, or see me at work or at school.  I don't remember feeling particularly deprived.  I had a TV and a stereo and a Walkman, and life was good.   I'd go back in a nanosecond. 

 

I got my first computer in the early 80s. Back then, we had dial up modems and internet services that charged by the hour.  I think I got my first cell phone in the mid 90s. A Motorola flip phone.  Blackberry's came next, and then the I-Phone sometime in the 90s.  

 

Today's phones have everything and make life simple, but if your life is already simple, mostly what you're doing on all the social media platforms is wasting time.   

[Asean Tiger]

3 hours ago, jas007 said:

Once upon a time, I went for a few years with no kind of phone at all.  Back in the 70s.  I didn't want to pay for a phone, so I didn't have one.  Anyone who wanted to talk to me could write me a letter or come over, or see me at work or at school.  I don't remember feeling particularly deprived.  I had a TV and a stereo and a Walkman, and life was good.   I'd go back in a nanosecond. 

 

I got my first computer in the early 80s. Back then, we had dial up modems and internet services that charged by the hour.  I think I got my first cell phone in the mid 90s. A Motorola flip phone.  Blackberry's came next, and then the I-Phone sometime in the 90s.  

 

Today's phones have everything and make life simple, but if your life is already simple, mostly what you're doing on all the social media platforms is wasting time.   

 

if you had a Walkman in the 1970s you were one of the first and had it about 6 months. The first product release 1979.

 

A Managing engineer for an aerospace defense contractor I knew brought one back from Tokyo gifted from President of a Japanese trading company that imported this kind of "hardware" Below  is a YouTube video demo disc it came with. I was impressed with the sound in such a small package of course there were portable battery powered tape decks already, with alot of wow/flutter and tape hiss

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oTDHsdQlp8

[JamesPhuket10]

4 hours ago, johng said:

Well good for you but better make a fortune quick because AI is about to steal your livelihood.

 

Whhaaaaa, yet another uninformed person who thinks AI actually exists or will any time soon, some of us know by using ChatGPT for example it is 99% hype, I use it on a daily basis, it is a very good tool, I have to keep on correcting its mediocre results though.

 

I tell you what, download it to your computer and tell it to design in detail, right down to the code,  tell it to design you a banking app, let me know how you get on. 🤣

 

To give you an insight why I can say such things with some confidence, 35 years plus as a freelance software engineer and a masters degree from Oxford in software engineering.

 

But as far as livelihood goes, I have already made my money, designing apps and such things are just to keep my brain in gear.

 

In fact ask ChatGPT if it has or it is AI and it will tell you it does not.

 

[jas007]

8 hours ago, Asean Tiger said:

 

if you had a Walkman in the 1970s you were one of the first and had it about 6 months. The first product release 1979.

 

A Managing engineer for an aerospace defense contractor I knew brought one back from Tokyo gifted from President of a Japanese trading company that imported this kind of "hardware" Below  is a YouTube video demo disc it came with. I was impressed with the sound in such a small package of course there were portable battery powered tape decks already, with alot of wow/flutter and tape hiss

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oTDHsdQlp8

Well, I'm sure I had one, but it may have been 1980.  At the time I was living at the beach in Southern California and had been since 1977, and I used to run every morning and then sometimes later in the day I'd take a walk on the boardwalk.  A trendy neighborhood, and if there was a new product to be had, you'd see it there first. 

 

Anyone remember the "Bone Phone"?  

[jas007]

7 hours ago, JamesPhuket10 said:

 

Whhaaaaa, yet another uninformed person who thinks AI actually exists or will any time soon, some of us know by using ChatGPT for example it is 99% hype, I use it on a daily basis, it is a very good tool, I have to keep on correcting its mediocre results though.

 

I tell you what, download it to your computer and tell it to design in detail, right down to the code,  tell it to design you a banking app, let me know how you get on. 🤣

 

To give you an insight why I can say such things with some confidence, 35 years plus as a freelance software engineer and a masters degree from Oxford in software engineering.

 

But as far as livelihood goes, I have already made my money, designing apps and such things are just to keep my brain in gear.

 

In fact ask ChatGPT if it has or it is AI and it will tell you it does not.

 

Despite your impressive sounding credentials, I think you're misinformed or just don't understand how quickly the world of AI is progressing.  

 

Everybody should know by now that in its current iteration, ChatGPT is a toy, of sorts. And large Language Models have their limitations, depending on context.  So it can be garbage in garbage out, and in such situations the only intelligence at work is the intelligence of the user asking the questions. 

 

But don't think for a minute that true AI isn't coming soon.  Apparently sooner than you seem to think.

 

To believe otherwise, you'd have to believe that many of the world's most important corporations are now engaged in constructing massive AI complexes around the world, simply to create better "toys"? Trillions of dollars invested, just so people can play with a toy?  Hardly.

 

The potential is real and it's coming soon. Very soon. The progress is exponential. 

 

And don't forget what quantum computers can now do. Have you followed that?  

 

 

[Asean Tiger]

21 minutes ago, jas007 said:

Well, I'm sure I had one, but it may have been 1980.  At the time I was living at the beach in Southern California and had been since 1977, and I used to run every morning and then sometimes later in the day I'd take a walk on the boardwalk.  A trendy neighborhood, and if there was a new product to be had, you'd see it there first. 

 

Anyone remember the "Bone Phone"?  

No but I remember Astraltunes

 

https://www.skitalk.com/threads/history-of-the-astraltune.32670/

[jas007]

19 minutes ago, Asean Tiger said:

No but I remember Astraltunes

 

https://www.skitalk.com/threads/history-of-the-astraltune.32670/

The Bone Phone:

 

 

[Felt 35]

Without our smartphones, where would we be......me for my part here. Those were times in Thailand. When the smile was still real. Sending a fax home for monthly money transfers. If (not often) it is necessary to call home, a trip to TOT and pay in cash or later for a card with a prepaid amount and into a phone booth. No waste or stressing life checking for SMS or missed calls, and the Internet hardly have been heard about. When the only coffee was O-liang and Kopi. The real times. Oh, I miss those times 

Felt

 

 

[simon43]

This is a photo of me (on the left) and one of my software engineers, as we worked on the design of software for one of the first smartphones for Ericcsson.  I was the CTO for the company who designed the operating software for some of the first mobile websites.  Amazing how mobile devices have progressed in just a few decades.

 

[Burma Bill]

5 hours ago, simon43 said:

This is a photo of me (on the left) and one of my software engineers, as we worked on the design of software for one of the first smartphones for Ericcsson.  I was the CTO for the company who designed the operating software for some of the first mobile websites.  Amazing how mobile devices have progressed in just a few decades.

 

 

Yes, very much so.

 

My first mobile phone was a UK British Telecom model with a base charging unit. It was quite heavy and had to be carried around - too large for most pockets (not unlike todays smartphones!)

 

 

[simon43]

52 minutes ago, Burma Bill said:

 

Yes, very much so.

 

My first mobile phone was a UK British Telecom model with a base charging unit. It was quite heavy and had to be carried around - too large for most pockets (not unlike todays smartphones!)

 

 

Yes!  In the 1980's I had 1 of these:

 

 

I was working in London and of course the mobile network was analogue. So it was very difficult to get a clear channel.  That didn't matter too much, because the batteries only lasted a few minutes!! 🙂

[Negita43]

Not sure because I wouldn't have location services☺️

[johng]

1 hour ago, Negita43 said:

Not sure because I wouldn't have location services☺️

LoL  yes  dust off the compass and ordinance survey maps..if nighttime you can tell were you are by the stars  but that tech is far beyond me and you can't see any stars anymore due to light pollution crop burning..global warming etc

maybe the thing that removed the phones (EMP) also removed the electric grid and it will be nice and dark at night again ? 😋