For an increasing number of people their phone is becoming their primary computing device outside of perhaps a work computer. I have work computer(s) and a personal phone, a tablet, and laptop. While my work computer(s) by far get the most usage, from my personal computing devices my phone gets top spot as that is what I primarily use to consume media. This is increasingly true for many people, especially younger people in my generation (millenial) and gen z. If your phone is basically taking the place of 2 computing devices you might otherwise have had, is $1000 really such a crazy number to spend?
Also I find it somewhat hilarious that a bunch of pilots are surprised people are willing to spend so much money on their hobby and toys. Those in glass houses and all that...
I guess it's a generational thing to some extent.
To me, the idea of watching movies on a phone when perfectly-good devices with bigger screens are available makes absolutely zero sense. The same goes for pretty much any activity that involves a screen. I'll check email on my phone if I'm traveling, but if it requires more than a few words of reply, I'm more likely to fire up the tablet -- and even that's only if I don't have something with an even bigger screen available. Why squint at tiny screens when big screens are available? I've never understood that and I doubt I ever will.
For
very short trips (basically an hour or less), I take an Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet along. It has a Bluetooth keyboard and RDP, SSH, and email clients. I like the machine. It allows me to work remotely for a few minutes if I have to, so it's basically grab-and-go freedom for me. It also has a lot of other capabilities, but other than reading books and checking forums, I rarely use any of them. I might watch a Prime video if I encounter an unexpected wait somewhere, but that's about it.
For longer trips, I take a 17-inch laptop along. Why? Because they don't make them any bigger. If they did, I'd buy one. It's not that I can't see smaller screens. It's that I think it's ridiculous to squint and tap at tiny screens when bigger ones are available.
At a recent family get-together, my teen-aged nephew set up some sort of wireless connection that allowed him and my two teen-aged nieces to watch a movie streamed from either the cable box or the streaming box to their phones. They were huddled together in the corner, all watching the same movie, at the same time, on their phones, when there was a huge-screen 4K television in the room that no one was watching. And mind you, they had to go out of the way to cast the movie to their phones, so they were watching it on their phones preferentially. Why? It makes no sense.
I've also witnessed two people in the same room talking to each other over some video app. Seriously. What's the point? They could have just looked at each other and talked. Why do they need the app?
In all candor, younger peoples' obsession with their phones strikes me as borderline pathological. It's just a tool, and one that I consider inferior to most other tools that do the same things. So I don't get the obsession. What are they staring at all day that's so much better and more important than the world around them? And why do they prefer communicating through that screen when the people with whom they're communicating are sitting in the same room?
To me, a smartphone is a convenience. If I'm waiting for an email while I'm outside doing chores, it's easier to carry the phone than to schlep a computer around. But when the mail comes in, I'm probably going to go inside to reply to it using a computer. Why tap at a tiny screen when a big screen with a full keyboard is right through the door?
The only things my phone does better than any other devices I know of are navigation- and mapping-related -- and that's because of the specific software, not the device. And even in that case, I'm thinking about buying or building an Android device with a larger screen and dedicating it to running those apps.
For literally everything else the phone does, there are better alternatives. The phone is just more convenient, not better.
Rich
