The Top 5 Annoying Things about Smartphones

The Top 5 Annoying Things about Smartphones

Having bought a smartphone, you get the access to a treasure trove of hi-tech-age entertainment. There are so many great things you can do with your precious gadget: you can browse the Web, check out new cool apps, write down notes, make snapshots or listen to your favorite music... What's maybe even more important, acquiring another hip smartphone, you get a status indicator and start emanating self-confidence and showing the world you're wealthy, you're modern, you're all about the third millennium and whatnot. To keep a long story short, owning a smartphone could stand next to owning a snug house in the suburbs of a large prosperous city or possessing an über-posh fuel-guzzling car... were it not for the Dark Side of the smartphones. The Dark Side, of course, being those annoying things that often make using our darling devices so frustrating. Or rather those things we annoy other people with when we use smartphones. Hereby we present to you the top 5 most annoying smartphone uses.

5. Using pointless apps

Pointless Apps Are Pointless

An app that simulates pimple popping; an app that simulates striking a match; an app simulating a glass of water; an app simulating an app... The overall sense all these apps make amounts to a big fat perfect naught. Nothing. Zero.

Okay, I understand that it's actually a personal business how people spend (or waste) their time and money, but there are lots of more fun ways to do it. They could have bought a bottle of some sweet unhealthy drink or discussed with their buddies which actress has the prettiest eyes in our planetary system, or even perhaps watched a movie by Woodie Allen (for tough ones only!). But no, they have squandered 2 bucks on something as pointless as these random-thing-simulating apps. There are few things as annoying as adult, [presumably] intelligent people indulging in an ape-like contemplation of a simulated matchstick. That's why we have brought them up here, on our condemnation list.

4. Traveling abroad

Broke Smarphone-Owners Are Broke

Using a smartphone when traveling can be a pitiful, pain-inducing experience, and the reason for this is that most of the time you buy your smartphone with a contract and stay chained to it for a couple of years. When the contract expires, there are already lots of new cool smartphones around, so you buy a new one and get another mobile carrier contract alongside and the vicious circle closes. In other words, the odds are you are on a contract all the way you own a smartphone.

As you leave you dear home country, your contract-bound device turns to a money-shredding machine, burning down your money balance in a flash. It will happen especially fast if you have forgotten to switch off the automatic Internet data exchange or if it can't be switched off at all (as is the case with iPhone). Surely, it's not very pleasant to find that your miraculous device has brought you to the insolvency just lying in your shirt pocket.

3. Taking photos

Bad Snapshots Are Bad

Opinion polls carried out right after the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook have shown that most people believe the hipster photo service was far overpriced. I don't know if the business reasoning behind the Instagram price tag has any point, but, really, that money was way too much for an amateur photo service.

Most photos taken with smartphones, no matter how many megapixels wide their cameras are, are nothing but miserable snapshots. 99% of the wannabe photographers have no idea about the composition, light balance and other technical things the real professionals always bear in mind. What it results in can be easily seen in the Facebook news feed of any more or less sociable person: in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of drab crude photos claiming to be a new art breakthrough. Well, some of the smartphone photos do really have some aesthetic value... The keyword being 'some'. Perhaps 0.01% of them. Deal with it.

2. Going out

Indeifferent Friends Are Indifferent

Why do people go out? To have some fun, basically. How can people have fun when going out? They can enjoy a nice meal, a great talk and a perfect atmosphere where they are hanging out. Now tell me: how on Earth can you enjoy going out if you're doing nothing but playing around with your smatphone? And more importantly, how can I enjoy going out when you are playing around with your smartphone? Honestly, dude, don't be such a wet blanket spoiling all the fun. Put the blasted thing somewhere away and just have a nice time. With me. Here. Offline.

1. Phoning

Cutting Board Large Smartphones Are Large

Yep. Phoning. Yep, you can phone with smartphones, too. Moreover, it's the most natural thing to do with them. Seemingly.

When it comes to real smartphones, everything gets a bit more complicated: a pretty huge bit though. To give you an example: remember that antenna issue with iPhone 4? You paid $US 199, signed a contract with a mobile carrier, and then your phone wouldn't call. Not because there was something wrong with it, no. Steve Jobs has put it over to us: we were to blame; it was us who didn't knew to handle the best device ever properly, it was us who ruined its perfection with our failed anatomy. In plain words, we gripped the phone wrong.

Another phoning issue is due to the current trend to produce smartphones with larger displays, slowly drifting more to the tablet league. Galaxy SII, Galaxy SIII, Galaxy Note... The wider the display the better. As a result, I can't help facepalming every time I run into people talking into a huge cutting board at their ear. 'Dear Universe, why? Why don't they buy a headset? Why don't they see how pathetic they look?'

The Universe keeps silent.