#oneaday Day 614: Can you hear us, sketching on your telephone

I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my smartphone recently. The USB-C port in my trusty Samsung Galaxy S-something was being rather unreliable, and I was getting fed up with it. I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about upgrading, though, because every single phone on offer appeared to be festooned with unwanted "AI" features.

I plumped for the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, because my provider had a good offer on it, and I thought I might as well take advantage of it. It's an absolute beast of a phone size and weight-wise, which I rather like — but one thing I didn't know about it before I got hold of it was the fact it comes with an "S-pen" stylus.

This makes me quite happy, because I have fond memories of using Palm personal organisers with a stylus and resistive touchscreen, and I've always felt using your sweaty, greasy fingers is suboptimal compared to the precision one can get from a stylus.

One mild annoyance I have discovered with the stylus is that MagSafe accessories interfere with it, so if you have something like a magnetic PopSocket on the back, it fucks with the stylus. This is irritating, but not an insurmountable obstacle; the thing with a MagSafe PopSocket is that it's a lot easier to remove and put back on again compared to an adhesive one, so it's relatively little hassle to just remove the PopSocket when I want to use the pen, then stick it back on afterwards. But I digress.

I thought today I'd experiment with using the pen to draw something using the mobile version of Clip Studio Paint. And the results are… well, a bit cack-handed, as you can see above, but I can definitely see potential there. I've learned something from this brief little doodle, which is that if you're sketching on a phone, for heaven's sake zoom in and do a little bit at a time rather than trying to do the whole thing at once.

Imprecisions aside, though, I was actually quite pleased with the S-pen's performance for doodling, and the mobile version of Clip Studio Paint seems quite good. It's an annoying subscription-based app, because of course it is, but you can use it for up to 30 hours a month for free without ads. I strongly suspect I won't hit that limit, but I guess we'll see! I will continue to experiment with both the S-pen and the tablet I got for Christmas, and see where things go from there.

The phone in general seems pretty good for the most part. The screen is lovely, the speakers are surprisingly good and the cameras are excellent. I just wish it didn't bug you to "do more with AI!" when attempting to do something simple like make a note. No, black rectangle of doom, I do not need you to "summarise" my notes. The very point of making notes is already a summary of what to think about later. Nor do I need you to turn a doodle into something that is not a doodle. Fuck off and leave me alone and we'll get along just fine.

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#oneaday Day 159: To upgrade... or downgrade?

I'm due an upgrade on my phone, and for the first time I'm holding off because I'm not sure I want one. All the new phones are rammed with AI bullshit and I don't want to encourage that crap in any way whatsoever, so the prospect of getting one makes me a tad uneasy.

The other thing that is causing me to hold off is a growing desire to break my attachment to smartphones. I don't like being dependent on a smartphone. I don't like having that stupid black rectangle follow me everywhere I go. I don't like feeling like I compulsively "have" to fiddle with it if I don't have anything to say or anything to do.

There are a few things stopping me from immediately ditching my smartphone and "downgrading" to a modern feature phone. I thought I'd ponder each of them in turn. I probably won't come to a conclusion, but it might help me sort some things out in my mind. And maybe it'll be helpful for you, too, I don't know.

I don't use WhatsApp as much as a lot of people, but I do have a few ongoing chats that are my sole means of connection with friends I haven't seen for a while. On top of that, the people from my job use WhatsApp for communication outside of work — for example, when we're having a group social trip together.

Giving up WhatsApp would mean giving up a connection to people I don't want to "disconnect" from entirely, and would also make life inconvenient for my work colleagues. That last one I'm not super concerned about, but I do like my job and my colleagues, so I don't really want to be a pain.

Beyond those maybe two group chats (both of which have declined in activity anyway) and my work colleagues, I'm not super attached to WhatsApp. I could probably live without it.

The camera

Phone cameras these days are pretty excellent. I shoot anything that isn't direct capture from gaming hardware on my phone. Upgrading my phone would mean I can get an even better camera.

However, two things: 1) I can still use the camera on my existing phone even if it doesn't have a SIM card in it (I think, anyway). And 2) I could just, y'know, buy a nice camera.

So while it's certainly convenient to be able to snap photos and take video with a device that is with me anyway, it's probably not actually a dealbreaker in this situation.

Music and podcasts

I am, I'm afraid, "part of the problem" with music, though not out of any belief that streaming is "better" than having your own collection of tunes. It's just a lot more convenient to be able to stream music (I use YouTube Music, because I have YouTube Premium and might as well use the additional benefit) and podcasts from, again, a device I have with me anyway. Plus my phone's Bluetooth connects to my car stereo with no difficulty, making it easy to queue up entertainment for long journeys, such as my monthly drive to the office.

I haven't looked at standalone MP3 (or equivalent) players for probably 20+ years at this point. I'm sure they exist. In fact, hold on.

It seems I can get a cheap Chinese shitbox for £20-£30, or I can spend three thousand pounds on a gold Sony thing (just £659.80 a month!) if I'm feeling particularly insane. What the actual fuck.

Uh… anyway. MP3 players do indeed still exist, and many of them have Bluetooth. Some of them even have WiFi, and some of them take the iPod touch approach where they're basically a phone without the "phone" bit. I will steer clear of those, at least, because that would just be replacing one problem with the same problem, but mildly less convenient.

So an MP3 player with a decent capacity is not expensive. That would require me to organise my MP3 library, though, which has been in a right state since Google Music (RIP) invited me to upload it all "to access anywhere", then promptly closed down and was replaced with the considerably inferior YouTube Music… and when I downloaded it all again the organisation was all fucked.

It wouldn't be the end of the world to have to do that, but I'd rather not have to. So I think we can consider the music player side of things covered.

Navigation

In-car navigation is easily solved: buy a satnav. But I also use Google Maps when I'm on foot to see what's nearby and figure out how to get to places. That is a problem that is a little trickier to solve. GPS devices for on-foot navigation certainly exist, but they're primarily geared towards hiking and cost more than I'd be willing to spend on something that I'd only use occasionally, particularly if I had already bought a satnav for the car.

I can't see an easy solution to this one. I believe some feature phones are able to access a Web-based form of Google Maps, but I don't know how useful or effective that is.

I mean, I guess I could kick it really old school and just buy an A to Z of wherever I happened to be going. I can't check what time Sainsbury's closes with one of those, though, unless they've considerably enhanced the level of detail they go into since I last used one.

Conclusion?

I could probably find solutions to all of the above problems, except WhatsApp. I believe there are some feature phones that are capable of using a text-only version of WhatsApp, but from a cursory glance around earlier today it seems a lot of them don't work in the UK for some reason.

I will continue to mull it over. The prospect of truly breaking free from the smartphone becomes increasingly appealing day by day… I'm just not quite sure I'm truly ready to pull the plug. My main concern is suddenly running into a use case that I haven't thought of while farting this blog post out of an evening, and then being kind of fucked when I'm stuck with a modern-day Nokia and no means of fulfilling the function I suddenly, urgently require.

But really, what might that even be? It can't be that important, or I would have thought of it by now, surely.

Anyway, I haven't reached a definitive conclusion. But I have definitely convinced myself that there are at least some of the features I use on my smartphone that I absolutely can live without. Is that enough, though?

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#oneaday Day 699: Apples to Apples

Inspired by my good buddy AJ's recent post on this very subject, I thought I, too, would share why I'm so loyal to my Apple devices, particularly in the smartphone sphere.

In simple terms, it comes down to "it got to me first, so I've stuck with it." It's as straightforward as that. The first bona fide "smartphone" I ever had was my original iPhone, and since acquiring that I've been through a 3G, a 4 and now a 4S. I have no desire whatsoever to switch to Android because my iOS devices have done everything I needed them to. And it's not as if I'm a "casual" user — I know my stuff about tech, and my iPhone is in almost constant use nearly every day. And yet in all that time, I have never once banged my head against the supposed restrictiveness of the platform which supporters of Android do so love to point out.

Now, this isn't an anti-Android rant. I'm very aware that Android works as a platform for those who have chosen to be loyal to it. But I have never used an Android phone. Perhaps I'd like it if I did. Perhaps I'd change my opinion on iOS if I did. But the thing is, I don't feel like I need to. Because to me, personally, Android sounds like a giant pain in the arse. Homescreen widgets? Battery life management? Flashing ROMs? Rooting? No thanks. For me, all I need is a phone which neatly displays my apps on my homescreen, allows me to access my personal data, email, the Web, Twitter, Facebook, G+, WordPress and all that gubbins, and occasionally play games. I'm not sure what benefit I'd get from the openness that Android offers. Customisability? Perhaps — but again, not something I feel is necessary for the way I use the phone. A fancy homescreen is all very well, but the neat and ordered rows that iOS' Springboard offers mean that I can always quickly find what I'm looking for. My time isn't so precious that I need to see the weather at all times on the home screen — I'm quite happy to open up the Weather app.

You see, perhaps partly as a result of my upbringing, constantly surrounded by computers and technology, I've grown to take the attitude that as a user, I'm the one that can adapt to new platforms and new combinations of features. If something comes along and has a new feature, I learn how to use it. If something else comes along and has a different feature set, including some absences from the first device, I adapt, and find alternative ways to do things — or, in some cases, consider whether I really needed that functionality in the first place. For just one example: MIDI ringtones on old Nokias? Fun for a little while, until I realised that any time I was in public I would typically mute the phone anyway, making them largely redundant. I haven't missed them since entering the iPhone age. Likewise, when the iPhone drew criticism for not offering copy and paste functionality, I couldn't see what the fuss was about. Past phones that I had used featured limited copy and paste capabilities, but I rarely, if ever, used it. As such, it was another feature I didn't miss on the iPhone. Now it's there, I do occasionally use it, but I could certainly live without it if necessary.

This isn't making excuses for Apple — it's explaining the way I think. For some people, features the iPhone doesn't have are deal-breakers. And that's fine — Android's out there to give you what you're looking for, as is BlackBerry and any number of feature phones. But for me? I'm comfortable with iOS, and happy to stay where I am. It does what I need, it adds new features at a regular enough rate to keep things interesting and exciting, and I'm never short of something new to experiment with thanks to the popularity of the App Store.