No! Modern smartphone combines many things in one and simplifies your life in that sense. I play music, use turn by turn GPS, read books, newspapers, and magazines (though mostly on tablet, to be honest), listen to music and Internet radio, watch videos and photos, use instant messaging, check calendar and todo list, write diary, keep my boarding passes, buy movie tickets, check weather forecast, set alarms and kitchen timers - all one small device sitting in my pocket. And oh, sometimes I use it as a phone too.

Smartphone made my life much, much easier.

No, it made your life more distracted, that is all. Most of these things are not necessary just like having a phone wherever you go was just about bringing in more interruptions in your daily life and work. There are things you see, and things you do not see.

I don't see why it couldn't be both. Yes, phones can be very distracting (information when you don't need it), but they can also provide very useful information exactly when you need it.

It can bring interruptions into your life, but it can also simplify and optimize other parts of your life.

You said it yourself: It made your life easier, not simpler.

I don't have a smartphone. I simply don't do most of the things on your list. I use a paper calendar and to-do list. I read paper books from the library. I had an iPhone and found that it made my life more complicated - more generally, its contribution to my life was a net negative - and I got rid of it.

Ok, this is not a well argument. Let's say you are CEO of Twitter, which in your terms is totally should be considered as a distraction. You are living your life with less items and in a less-cluttered way to focus on more important stuff. Then you create Twitter for a purpose. It could be making tons of money, it could be changing people's lives by providing them an advanced communication tool (and look around the world how Twitter can be used, how it changes the countries and governments). It also makes a distraction for most of the people. I used to read tweets during the classes, I still spend hell a lot of time in Twitter, but this is not an valid argument to accuse CEO of Twitter with being not minimalist. It has nothing to do with that. Steve Jobs took the "smart"phone idea a little bit further, of course he made rooms full of money, but he also changed the way we reach the knowledge and we connect each other, which are human needs.

Can we please stop pretending that Steve Job invented anything and had God-like powers? He did not change the way we "connect to each other" nor "how we reach knowledge". He did not invent the web or wikipedia as far as I know, nor did he invent portable computers with network connections. You can probably do better than that.

Now, coming back on your point, Steve Jobs was certainly not a Minimalist himself. He (partially) OWNED a huge company, and he was totally OWNED by his company, by the definition of the book of minimalism itself. Until the end of his life he spent most of his days working for Apple -> which is not a good example of someone detached from earthly possessions. Plus, he was passionate about the products he created, therefore he certainly used them a lot and was "owned" by them as well.

That's why, putting Steve Jobs in a "Buddhic" kind of stature is ridiculous. If you want to find examples of people who live Minimalism, there are much better ones out there.

Man, you should see his Yacht!

Maybe he brought a lot of devices into our lives, but with the goal of them being "bicycles for our minds." He realised people are tool-builders, and that's exactly what he was: a great tool-builder with the goal of simplifying our demanding lifestyles.