The personal computer was our first portal to cyberspace, but the smartphone is the yoke that made us denizens of an extended reality, and regardless of how involved we become, our connection to that reality requires upkeep, trade-ups and trade-offs.
My first mobile phone, bought in 2000, was bought for under £100, was topped up with pre-paid cards, and replaced my using public phone boxes. Phone number thirteen, also my ninth smartphone and sixth iPhone, is a portable computer plied with cameras, sensors and antennas and, fitting for its having replaced the local branch of my bank, it is financed through a two-year contract with a credit agreement and monthly payments, rolling the trade-in payment for my previous phone into paying off the next contract, all for a device that needs to be continuously on the verge of being replaced for the business model that drives their ownership to continue.
Fortunately for Apple, and my service provider, I wanted to replace my phone: both it and its contract were three years old, and I had become thoroughly sick with both through overfamiliarity and a depleted battery. I am sure most owners of the iPhone 17, me included, did not pay £/$/€799 for one upfront, or ever contemplated doing so - the objective is squaring monthly costs with noticeable improvement over the previous phone.
It’s almost like becoming tethered to your smartphone, if not becoming addicted to using it, is required to justify the expense, and more reasons for that tethering need to be created to make such a device indispensable, from managing home heating and electrical items through to unlocking doors and starting cars - generative A.I. features are one more symptom of the need to progress.
Fortunately for me, and despite increases in processing power, storage capacity and camera ability becoming more incremental with each model, but the lavender-coloured iPhone 17 I now own is more enticingly tactile than ever. The device’s edges are more rounded than the iPhone 14 Pro it replaces, making it easier to hold for longer, while the extra “Camera Control” finally gives me a proper shutter button. I have selected the “Action Button” to seek out titles of songs amongst ambient noise via Shazam, prioritising a feature I often use that was buried in an app or menu.
But this is Apple’s problem: in their eyes, I have downgraded, from a Pro-level iPhone to a regular one, but the improvements they made across all their phones in three years, from screen resolution and refresh speed to camera sensors and battery capacity, means enough of a difference is still being made to my experience of using the device - but seriously, one-touch Shazam is the game-changer for me here, with everything else working that bit more quickly and snappily.
Most importantly for me, the three-year contract I saddled myself with to use a Pro-level phone - trading in at the end of the contract makes it hard to say I truly owned it - was less preferable to only needing a two- year contract for something just as good. Perhaps this defines my monetary limits, but also those of the phone I need - I am not missing anything, even after turning off all A.I. features, and doing that may have extended the life of the battery even further.
I have no remedy for anything I have talked about - it is the framework we have collectively agreed on to provide a creeping necessity in our lives, and so long as it has something to offer us, we will keep it going.
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