Smartphones have been around for quite some time now, and they’ve managed to change our lives significantly. As it’s usually the case with technology and evolution, things change, smartphones are essentially small computers which we use for a ton of tasks these days, tasks that we used separate gadgets to accomplish. We’re here to talk more about that actually, in the following paragraphs, we’ll list a number of various items that have been highly used before, but are now obsolete thanks to / because of smartphones, whether we like it or not. Some people who used such items still think we’d be better off using them, of course, but that’s not how things work when it comes to technology. In any case, let’s kick things off, shall we.
The first item on this list is a calculator, which is probably a gadget that came to mind first for many of you, the moment you read the title of this article. Calculators were widely used gadgets for various purposes, and they still are in business environments, but for simpler uses, smartphones have managed to replace calculators. Students still use them, sure, the same goes for mathematicians, but the usage of regular calculators dropped significantly since smartphones came into play. Now, the second item on the list is an alarm clock. Chances are that many of you are using your smartphones instead of alarm clocks these days, there are still some people that have dedicated alarm clocks on their nightstand, probably, but smartphones pretty much took over in this department as well. Thanks to a ton of third-party alarm apps, you can customize alarms the way you want, not only do you get to pick a sound that will wake you up in the morning (for example), but you also have a ton of additional options along with it, not to mention that you can set as many alarms as you want.
Moving on, a phone book/address book is the next item on our list. Before, pretty much everyone owned a small booklet with a ton of numbers and addresses, well, that’s no longer the case for a lot of people, especially younger people. Smartphones hold such information without a problem, and thanks to sync, such information is always with you, it doesn’t matter how often you switch phones. Now, a camera is yet another item that comes to mind, as most people these days use smartphone cameras as their dedicated cameras no matter where they go. This is not true for professional photographers, of course, nor people who want to take amazing shots while they’re on vacation, considering dedicated cameras are still more powerful. That being said, smartphone cameras have come a long way, and are really excellent these days, some people don’t even see the difference between a regular point and shoot and a quality smartphone camera any longer, which is why they don’t feel the need to lug around a dedicated camera, which is understandable.
The calendar is yet another item that is worth mentioning, and even though some people still have a calendar up on the wall, many of them do not. Instead of writing down birthdays and appointments on calendars manually, your phone can hold that info for you, and you won’t have to write birthdays all over again next year in a new calendar, which is a plus, of course. Dedicated GPS systems are still in use, but not as much as before, as we do have great GPS applications on our smartphones, like Google Maps, Here We Go, Waze, and so on. Some people say that dedicated GPS systems still have an edge on smartphone apps, and that might be true, but the gap is closing and many of them don’t feel the need to own dedicated GPS gadgets any longer, which is understandable.
A landline telephone is yet another item that comes to mind. Back in 2014, around 45.4% of American households owned only wireless phones, which means that landline phones were not used as much back then, and three years later that percentage probably grew even more. Not every smartphone has a built-in level app, but there are a ton of third-party apps that you can download for this purpose. Thanks to your smartphone’s built-in gyroscope, you don’t need a separate level gadget, your smartphone can do the job just as well. Now, the last item on this list is an outdoor thermometer. If you own a smartphone, chances are you’re checking weather conditions using your phone on a daily basis, and that includes outdoor temperature, which means you’re probably not checking your outdoor thermometer that often anymore, if you own one, of course.