In my search for increased productivity and less distractions I'm constantly faced with having to weed out articles, videos and podcasts talking about smartphones. The phone is hardly the source of my frustrations and struggles, for one obvious reason. Well obvious to me. The interface on smartphones absolutely suck and I can't stand using it.
For me, the screen size is to small (regardless of how big a phone you get), the navigation is a disaster, inconstancy seems to be the goal of developers of smartphone and apps. Because of the reduced screen size some genius decided that gestures would be a good idea for navigation, but forgot that it is completely undiscoverable and manuals are a thing of the past, so you have no idea how to use anything anymore.
Another issue is companies attempting to use clever metrics to figure out where to put buttons or optimise engagement. E.g. YouTube Music have is "Discover" button, but the interface is so crammed that you almost can't avoid hitting that button. When you do some random recommendation will start playing, interrupting whatever you where listing to. I'm sure there's a point to this, seen from YouTubes point of view, but it's poor UI design
For mobile at least I think this "need" that companies have to customise the look and feel of their apps break usability. The thing is "I don't care about your branding, I care about the service/functionality you're offering".
Besides the terrible user interface of smartphones, it helps that I have no social media, only LinkedIn, which I see no reason to have on my phone. Nor do I configure the email client, because why would I want to read email on a tiny screen. Besides email is specifically a medium for "things that can wait".
There's simply every little need for me to be on my phone, and when I try to use it, it just feels painfully inefficient.
I feel bad for the people who are doing actual user interface and interaction work, they are apparently no in high demand. I don't seem much evidence of the use actual UX work from any of the major tech companies. The last operating systems to clearly having employed actual experts are Windows 95 and older versions of macOS.
The main feature of my phone is to call people, something that is completely underestimated as a feature by many. In my younger years I tended to dislike calling, but after many years to working in jobs where the main goal has been "Make things work as quickly and effortlessly as possible" I've learned that you save hours, if not days by simply calling someone. Most companies even have people who's job it is to answer the phone, so I assure you, you are not bothering them.
So why do I still have a smartphone? Because I need MobilePay and navigation when I travel. Also iMessage and Signal are both much needed improvements over plain old SMS.