Things I Wish a Smartphone Could Do

For anyone wanting to get technical about it the smartphone's origins trace back to the 1990's, but for me and many people the smartphone was born in 2007 when Apple introduced the first iPhone. From that beginning I never had any interest in smartphones and still don't. I don't want to peck away on a tiny screen, track my friends' Facebook status, follow Twitterers, play meaningless games, or charge my phone every day.Before smartphones I led what was, at least to me, a very interesting and busy life, and I still do. There was no time for additional diversions, and there still isn't. No smartphone features interest me. Even some of the unintended features of smartphones don't interest me, such as thumbing your nose at everyone else around the table by erecting a "smartphone zone of immersion" around yourself. This is the modern equivalent of the "loudmouth on a cellphone in a restaurant." They're both bores, but interestingly I find the former much more irritating, even though they're far less distracting.I've written before about smartphone features that would interest me, but only when they happened to occur to me while writing a message in a thread about something else, but where describing the feature still made sense. Now a potential smartphone feature has occurred to when I wasn't writing a message, so I'm opening this thread. I may redescribe those other features in future posts, but for now I'll just mention this one.By way of example: Using my smartphone, I call my insurance company about an auto accident. Much information is exchanged. I tell them about the accident and give them the other driver's information, and they give me a claim number, maybe another number to call for existing claims, maybe a URL, whatever.I'd like the smartphone to digest the conversation and put all the relevant information in a useful place for later easy recall. If there were action items for me they should be put on lists or calendars or both.--Percy

I don't hate the devices, but I can't think of much positive to say about them, either. At the heart of our cellphone madness and fixation is the part of our brain that seeks novelty, newness and change. Satisfying this urge causes a surge of pleasure, and so we are driven to seek it out. Giving up a smartphone is like giving up an addiction.It's only a minor problem that the smartphone label is a significant exaggeration, but it's an easy weakness to pick on. If it had instead been named a "miniature internet browser/apptool/gameboy" then I would be less motivated to keep pointing out how dumb they are. They *are* more capable than a regular cell phone, but not of most laptops or home computers, and they're certainly not smart. In fact, it's too kind to say they're not smart. The reality is that they're dumb, just as dumb as the most powerful computer in the world.Maybe I keep pointing out how dumb these things are because of the blissful unawareness of nearly everyone around me of how dumb these things are. Walking around with noses buried in smartphones checking their email and text messages and Facebook updates and Twitter feeds and news feeds and on and on is just senseless "gerbil on a treadmill" activity. It is not the case that people have found a new hobby or pastime that is replacing some other hobby or pastime. Incessantly checking your smartphone is not a hobby or pastime. It's a waste of time that leaves people with less time for the things that are truly meaningful.If more people demanded that these so-called smart devices actually be smart, then maybe companies like Apple and Google and Samsung would put more effort into making them smart, instead of just making them better game/text/browser/app machines.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.Edited by Percy, : Improve first para.

Of course, but it doesn't take a smart device to do that. My dumbphone can already do that with text messages just like a smartphone.Smart is when it breaks it all down for you, puts it on lists and on your calendar, automatically provides reminders. That won't be happening anytime soon. Even after all the decades that email has been available, computers still aren't close to understanding their content. The progress made by IBM's Watson is encouraging, though. I think the current state of voice recognition is amazing, and also that it has a long way to go. Here's my wife dictating a text message to her smartphone: "I'll be there at 4 period. Tomorrow we can pick it up period." It doesn't take a genius, not even someone who is smart, to recognize the end of a sentence.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

No, not an indictment. In fact, I was attempting to make the same point when I said, "The reality is that they're dumb, just as dumb as the most powerful computer in the world." My example in Message 1 of something I wish smartphones could do wasn't meant to be taken as support for my response to Caffeine in Message 8 explaining that I don't hate smartphones. I wasn't arguing that there's insufficient justification for the existence of smartphones. I just don't think they're smart, and I lament the ubiquitous distraction that they've become.--Percy

Well, we may just have to disagree about adjectives. The way I see it is that if your phone is smart then my laptop must be smart, and my desktop must be smart, and a server farm must be really smart. But for me none of these are smart.I do agree that smartphones are amazing devices.--Percy

Lists. You need to be able to both add and remove items from a list. For example, take a grocery list. Say you shop for groceries once a week. During the week you want to add items to your grocery list, and as you stroll through the grocery stores you want to remove items.Adding items to the list should be simple, just a verbal, "Add oranges to the grocery list." Even better would be if it could understand, "We need oranges," or "Remember oranges," or "Get oranges." I think current smart phones come pretty close to this, maybe something like, "Open grocery list. Add oranges." Can anyone fill in the specifics?As you stroll through the grocery store filling your cart, it should know where you are and what's in that isle, reciting each item as you approach its location. You could just respond, "Check," as you place the item in your cart, and it would remove the item from the list. If the smartphone had recited several items (perhaps the grocery store had rearranged their shelves and not updated the database) then you might have to say, "Corn, check; peas, check" or even better, "Corn and peas, check". Again, can anyone fill in the specifics of removing items from a list? I should mention that in another thread I was informed that some grocery stores already have their item locations on-line for apps to take advantage of. True?If there are items that are usually on your list but aren't this week, the smartphone should inquire about them: "No wine this week?"So that your hands can be free, the smartphone should be able to understand you even if it's in your pocket or purse. Or carts should have a little smartphone holder.As you approach the checkout station the smartphone should remind you of forgotten items.It's not uncommon for people to use more than one grocery store. Perhaps the fruit is better in one store, the meat better in another, and the prices on dairy products better in yet another. The smartphone should learn what items you tend to buy in which store. If you're price conscious then the smartphone should know the prices and tell you, "Don't buy the milk here this week, it's cheaper at Kroger's." And you should be able to give the smartphone additional information, such as, "I'm never going to buy milk at Kroger's because their sell-by dates are too soon."I hope these examples of what I wish smartphones could do are beginning to shape a more accurate impression in people's minds of how I really feel about smartphones. Before smartphones I had no particular desire to peck away on a tiny screen or send text messages or check the Internet or my email or be available to anyone who wanted to call, email or text me anytime or anywhere. Now that smartphones exist and are amazing and extremely capable, I still have no desire to do these things.But helping me arrive home with my groceries and not going, "Doh! I forgot the green peppers," now that would be something I could really use.My current system is to keep a written list. I add items to the list during the week, then check off items in the grocery store. This is a very simple and very efficient system, but it does have drawbacks. Sometimes I forget the list. Sometimes I forget a pen and can't check off items. Sometimes I stop looking at the list because I think I've got the remaining items firmly in mind, but I don't. Sometimes my eyes just roll by an unchecked item and it doesn't make it into the cart.But still, a written list is an excellent system. For a smartphone to replace my written grocery list, the smartphone would have to make the task easier and simpler. Written lists are incredibly easy and simple, so replacing them is a significant challenge.AbE: Just thought of another important item. One side of a cell phone conversation: "Honey, I can't get to the grocery store today, can you do the grocery shopping? You can? Great? Phone, send my grocery list to my wife. Okay, thanks, love you!"In other words, you need to be able to easily and quickly transfer lists between smartphones.--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE.Edited by Percy, : Typo.

{ sigh }InkPad sounds great, and maybe it *is* great, but I just went to their website (Inkpad Notepad - The easy, elegant notes app for Android, iOS, and the web) and found almost no information at all. What's more the links at the top of the page are really bad. This kind of thing is rampant. What is happening to websites today?The "Sign in" link and the "Create account" link both take you to the same page: Google Login. Once you're logged in these same links instead send you to a blank notes page. If both links take you to the same place, why are there two links? And if links are going to take you to a notes page, why don't they say so?The "Download" link takes you to a Google Play page with a little (very little) information about InkPad and an "Install" link. When I click "Install" it tells me, "You haven't accessed the Google Play Store app (the white shopping bag icon) on your device with this email account." I'm on my computer - I see no "white shopping bag icon". I go to the Google Play app store and try to install Facebook. I get the same message. I think this wants me to be on an IOS or Android device. Does that sound right?The "Go Premium" link has a small amount of other information, and also informs me that the non-premium version has ads.I'm not critisizing Inkpad, just the website. Google Play's website is pretty bad too if the problem truly is that I'm not on a mobile device, but it can't figure that out. This is the cue for people who think it's me that's stupid and not the websites to chime in. My own opinion remains that many people's standards have been beaten down so far they'll accept anything that's put out there and think it's great.So, maybe you know the couple things I was wondering about InkPad. Does it accept voice? And can I share lists with other people?--Percy

I downloaded InkPad to my iPad and noted the following issues:

1. When your account is created you're given a "Welcome to InkPad Notepad" note that is a list of what it calls "helpful tips". I found a couple problems:
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   1. GET BACK TO THE HOME SCREEN
      Tap on the "left arrow" at the bottom of any note. If you have multiple notes open, you may have to do this several times to get back to the home screen.
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      There is no "left arrow" at the bottom of any note, not on my computer and not on my iPad.
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   2. SHARE A NOTE
      Press the "share" icon at the bottom of a note. InkPad will then show all the ways you can share that note, including email and SMS.
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      There is no share icon at the bottom of a note, not on my computer and not on my iPad.
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2. When a note is open, there appears to be no way on my computer to check an item. There is a "checkmark" icon on my iPad which puts it in "check/uncheck" items mode. And there's a "notes" icon to return to normal note display mode.
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3. When I check an item on my iPad and then examine the note on my computer, the check appears as "[X] " prefixed to the item. I can manually insert and delete the "[X] " and save the note, and the change will appear on my iPad the next time it syncs. But there is no automatic way to check and uncheck items on my computer.
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4. When a note is open, the vertical "..." icon opens a menu that includes elements to manipulate checked items. There doesn't appear to be an equivalent menu on my computer.
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5. The items of a note can't be sorted.
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6. You cannot create a multi-line item in a note. An item can wrap, but you can't insert your own linefeeds. If all your items are short and fit on one line then it is easy to tell when items begin and end, but when you have long items then the boundaries are unclear, sort of like paragraphs would be hard to identify in a hardcopy book if there were no indentation.
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   Obviously it is possible for items to include linefeeds since the "helpful tips" list has them, but linefeed insertion isn't a feature made available to users.
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7. There's no voice option.

I could make this work for me, but I don't think it would be easier than handwritten lists. It would just be a different way of doing what I already do.Sorting of lists is something that's important to me. One of my two remaining tennis rackets broke last week, so with only one left I have to get another one. But they don't make my racket anymore, so I have to select a new one (and buy two or three). Off the Internet I was able to grab a list of the top 100 players on the ATP computer and their rackets, place that list in a file on my computer, then use "sort" to sort the list by tennis racket type so I could easily see which models were most popular (Babolat Aeropro Drive topped the list). Anyone have a smartphone that will do this?I'd like a list app that could do that for me. That would be truly smart.--Percy

I can switch my iPad between text mode and checkbox mode by tapping the icons at the top right. There's a checkbox icon and a text list icon. In checkbox mode there are icons on the far right of each item that do nothing. Something for premium mode, perhaps? Who knows - there's no documentation.There are no such icons on my computer, but I can manually perform the check/uncheck function by adding or removing "[X] " to the front of items. The URL is Go Premium - Inkpad Notepad# - try it, you'll see. There's also no menu to perform functions like "Move all checked items to the bottom".I apologize for the off-topic rant I'm about to go off on now: The Web (stationary and mobile) is bad and getting worse. It's bad because there are too many webpages and apps to create and support and not enough talent to do it. If I owned InkPad and it were my sole responsibility it would come out with new features monthly and within a year or two would be amazing. It is instead owned by an entity called Workpail that probably owns a number of other apps and probably has only .25 employees per app at most. It could even just be one or two guys, because it appears to operate out of an apartment or small house in Northampton, Mass. The Bloomberg Business website says this about Workpail:

quote:

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Workpail, LLC develops mobile applications. It offers games for mobile phones and web, notes taking application, and social games.

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Maybe Internet users (again, both stationary and mobile, both website and app users) think of the people who program their apps and websites as amazing software engineering geniuses, or maybe they just consider the devices or computers amazing and everything about them amazing, and maybe this affects how they think about the apps and websites. If the behavior or organization of an app or website seems difficult or weird or insufficiently functional or has bugs then most people don't think there's anything wrong with it. I don't think this way myself (obviously), so I don't actually know what's going on in these peoplel's brains, but if they're thinking the apps and websites must be great because the people who created them are geniuses or just because the devices are amazing then they're wrong.Think of the average guy you know - that's how smart these guys are. They have IDE's and scads of software libraries to draw upon, and all they're doing is throwing stuff together with little thought because they're also responsible for six or seven other apps or websites, so it's just "dash off some code and move on." Whether an app is successful or not is very much hit or miss, so most companies just throw a lot of apps out there and hope something sticks. Design? Code reviews? Functional reviews? Quality control? Testing? Forget it!So that's my rant.--Percy

Before smartphones there were Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's), and although the device class is mostly gone now, a personal assistant is exactly what I want my smartphone to be. I want it to operate as if it were an actual person following me around all day long and carrying out all my commands. Not physical commands, of course, such as a real person could do, but everything related to remembering and organizing information. I would talk to it and it would understand everything I say. It would recognize ambiguity ("When you said 'next Tuesday', did you mean tomorrow or the one after?"), but it would also be able to resolve ambiguity ("He said Bob, and he knows several Bobs, but there's only one Bob who plays tennis, so he must mean that one.").I also don't want to be constantly removing and replacing a phone from a pocket. I want it to be effectively invisible. I talk and it somehow hears me as if it were a person standing close beside me. It responds and I hear it, again as if it were a person standing close beside me. I don't want to wear an earphone and microphone. I know, ridiculous expectations, but pretend I'm Steve Jobs and just do it.And solve this ridiculous charging problem.Sorry for the way I expressed this - obviously I was talking to the industry just now, not you. Yes. In other words, smart.--Percy

That's a possibility some people speak of, among them Hawking, Musk and Gates. Once machines become intelligent and self-aware they may quickly evolve themselves into a super-intelligence against which we cannot compete.--Percy