My Opinions On Modern Technology

Disclaimer: This isn’t any sort of analysis of any one specific topic, I’ll mostly just be ranting about my various non-professional opinions.

My main inspiration for making this blog post is my new iPhone 15 Pro. Between somewhere around September 2019 and March 2025, I used an iPhone 7. My reasons for changing phones were as follows: My old phone had a very degraded battery. My old phone had a lot of useless data on it but I wanted to have a fresh start without necessarily needing to delete that data entirely. Yes, that’s all. Also, my dad had an unused phone which he bought about a year ago so he wanted to give a use to it.

That’s to say: since 2019, I have not had a headphone jack, and since March of this year, I have not had a home button. These missing features are pretty disappointing to me.

On my iPhone 7, I specifically turned off “tap to wake” and “raise to wake” features in my settings in order to reduce my screentime. However, I still sometimes habitially try to press the bottom of my phone screen in order to turn it on, so I kept “tap to wake” on for my new phone, though I still have “raise to wake” off. I still miss the more tactile feel, as a personal preference, and I also think that for certain other people the removal of physical buttons from many devices can be an issue of accessibility, and this is not just an iPhone problem, it’s a general problem. However, I am not severely visually impaired or otherwise have a disability that would cause me to be personally affected by this, so I can’t speak very deeply on it.

For a while I was somewhat disappointed by the fact that I had an iPhone 7 specifically, because of the headphone jack thing. The iPhone 7 is the first iPhone without one, so it’s like, I had an old phone, but just barely new enough to not have the old, now-removed, feature that I want. I only actually upgraded my phone in 2019 because my iPhone 6 which I was using before had a broken home button (Hm. Maybe that’s a positive argument for the removal of home buttons, if your home button can suddenly stop working. But at the same time, your screen itself can also stop working due to issues, so nevermind on that being a good argument.)

I have a lot to say about headphone jacks and home buttons as related topics. Both of those have been removed from phones for the express purpose of making them thinner, which I just think is a terrible idea. Personal smartphones are very valuable devices, and they’re devices you carry everywhere. One would think that you would build these things to be durable, but making them not only thinner but also taller and wider is the OPPOSITE of more durable. Then again, people buy new phones every year, so maybe tech companies don’t give a single shit if your phone breaks within a few years because, ha, you’re supposed to be buying phones more frequently than that.

It’s not all bad, though. For one, SD cards are a lot cheaper than they used to be, which means devices tend to have more and more storage. Everyday I am so grateful because I could buy a 128GB SD card for my 3DS for only 17 euros and it’s almost unreasonable that I would ever run out of space on it (I think every 3DS game is probably under 2GB since 2GB is the default SD card size that comes with a non-XL 3DS. XLs come with 4GB.)

Bluetooth devices are also very very cool. I have a pair of wired earbuds, which I do love and appreciate. They have good audio quality, they don’t have batteries and therefore don’t need to be charged, and shamelessly I will admit I partially just like them because they’re cute. But wireless is very convenient, since I can walk around listening to music and put my phone down on a table or in my backpack instead of needing to carry it or put it in my pocket (Which. It can fall out of my pocket sometimes.) Also the fact that your phone physically can send audio data wirelessly is pretty fascinating just as a concept.

I might have more to say at a later date. This post has really just been about physical devices, maybe I’ll make a different post about social media? Though, a lot of people here have talked about that and I don’t know what I could add that hasn’t already been said. Anyway, if you read all this, thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.