I've always been an advocator and new-adopter of technology, but one thing that drives me wild is mobile phone addiction, and specifically for this rant, the jack-of-all trades that modern mobile phones have come to be.
And that really is what they are, in the original meaning of the phrase. They are "master of none". Much like the Swiss Army Knife; while it's a handy item to carry as an all-in-one solution, you wouldn't choose to use any of its tools in preference to the dedicated version; that is to say, assuming you own a knife, saw, pair of scissors, screwdriver, toothpick or some tweezers, and they were to hand, you wouldn't sideline them in favour of using the scaled-down version on your Swiss Army Knife.
The same then goes for phones. They make a passable attempt at offering an all-in-one solution for taking photos, listening to music, navigation, web-browsing- even office functions- but they fall far short of the dedicated products they attempt to pass themselves off as. They're not even that good at being phones, compared to their non-smart predecessors. People of my generation will remember when mobile phone battery life was measured in weeks, not hours.
While out driving the other day, I decided to check the route of the in-car sat-nav against that on my phone, just to make sure it was sending us the same way. I couldn't get a satellite lock, and not for the first time. Fortunately I wasn't depending on it, but in times past I have been and the one thing you can rely on is when you really need to use it, it won't work. You can't beat a TomTom.
The mind boggles when it comes to people watching TV and films on their phone. I have a TV for that, a nice big 50" one. Why, when I have that, would I chose to watch a piddling little phone screen instead? "Ah, but what about when you're not at home Rob?" I hear you ask. Why the f*ck would I want to watch TV or a film or any other video when I'm out?!
If I'm out it's because I'm doing something- shopping, dining, sight-seeing. Not watching TV.
Or how about using a phone as your main sound-system? For a fraction of the price of one of these fancy bluetooth speakers you can buy a proper hi-fi that actually sounds good. In a world where everything visual has to be HD, or even 4k, it beggars belief that people are still choosing to listen to music on something that provides poorer sound quality than an old cassette player and less bass than a good fart.
The one that really tips me over the edge is using phones as a camera. Again, useful in some circumstances- getting a quick snap of something for reference later, or if you find yourself in an accident- but not as a replacement for a camera. Even the most basic of compact cameras is streets ahead of a phone camera. And worse still is the bell-end who uses an iPad as a camera. Just grow up.
Maybe I'm just old-school. Maybe it's because if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. But you can keep your £800 iPhone thank you very much. I'll spend £40 on a phone and the change can go on a TV, a hi-fi, a sat-nav, a laptop, an MP3 player and a camera, all of which will do their designated jobs infinitely better than any phone can.
And, for the record, people were using proper cameras- cameras that used film, no less- to take photos of themselves long before someone ever decided to stick a camera in a phone and some muppet coined the phrase "selfie".
