Are our phones becoming too smart to do dumb stuff?
I have noticed that a lot of simple tasks are becoming more difficult to do with smartphones. For example in Android, it's basically impossible to set a countdown timer if the phone is locked without using a voice assistant. Apple might have implemented this specific feature better by allowing users to access the timer through the Control Center. However, iOS's calculator is just too cumbersome to use due its lack of features and sadly, there aren't a lot of decent alternatives in the App Store. Moreover, you couldn't delete all of your alarms at once without using Siri. What are your thoughts?
Edit: typo & additional examples
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But anyway, AFAICS answering[1] a phone call and silencing[2] an alarm are about the only functions you should be able to do on a locked phone, be it "dumb" or "smart".
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[1]: ObPedantry: Or dismissing. And hanging up when you're done talking.
[2]: ---- " ----: Or snoozing.
As for the albums thing, my mother in law loves that so much. As an elderly lady she loves creating videos of photos taken based on time periods and the like so for her that's a killer feature. I'd be willing to bet that they have this feature on by default because it would require an index to be built if it was re-enabled and showing a blurb about it needing to build up an index is something they didn't want.
Why the hell did Android switch to a gesture system though. It's so bad. I've been unable to change the volume on a video when volume controls on a web page are too far to the left because the swipe motion triggers the "back" gesture in the browser. Never once have a had isues with the old Android bottom bar or iOS gestures.
More info here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208076
On FaceID phones that means holding both the Lock and Volume Up buttons.
Take the iPhone for example. This handheld Unix computer, after a decade and a half, STILL doesn't audibly notify you of missed calls. It's mind-boggling. This was a routine feature on "dumb phones," not to mention answering machines dating back decades.
I mean... for 30 years or more, microwaves have periodically beeped to remind you that you left food in them. But Apple is too dumb to notify you of missed calls.
But what DID they add? Repeatable audible notification of missed TEXTS, on a screen that's otherwise essentially identical to the phone-options screen.
Idiotic.
The problem with optimizing for idiots is that it prevents those idiots from ever learning. Back in the day, idiots might fumble around with power-user features but will eventually become proficient at them if they use them frequently enough - I know many people that I would consider IT "idiots" but they still are very proficient at specific features they use regularly (more than me in fact). If you remove power-user features however, there's no chance for anyone to learn them anymore, so people have no choice but to remain idiots.
As soon as I open my phone, I see a count of missed calls and I can check if any were real. I would not want my phone to make noises to try to attract attention until then.
Perhaps that feature is becoming less useful to people?
If my 80-year-old parents have an emergency, they're going to CALL ME, not text me. Why the fuck don't I want to know about it?
Let's not excuse straight-up stupidity. And remember, this glaring defect has existed FOR 15 YEARS.
Yeah, good. That's what locking it is for.
Honestly, WTF are you talking about???