> Convergence was, if you go back and re-watch that video from the iPhone launch linked above, the big selling point of the iPhone. It is a media player, an internet browser, and a mobile phone all in one. And these days, it is a camera, a satellite navigation system, and a payment card too. So it is not enough to make a good phone, you have to make a good all-of-those-things.

Or people have to be willing to go back to "Not all of this in one thing."

And there are some nice benefits there. "Separate things" don't tend to data mine in the way that modern smartphones do, and I'm not too concerned about my not-at-all-networked camera submitting stuff upstream without me realizing it. I don't mind having music separate again, and I've been re-acquainting myself with internal navigational skills using paper maps and written directions to get around.

It was nice when "all the things" were on a single device, and I've done that, but as I'm more and more opposed to "turning everything I do into extracted behavioral surplus," going back to separate things makes sense - and, realistically, it doesn't suck nearly as much as I expected it to.

I now carry a phone that does calling and texting and... if I'm in the mood for pain, some bluetooth audio to speakers. It'll do calling via BT to the car if I bother to turn it on, and that's about as fancy as I normally get. Though anymore, I'm as likely to forget the phone as not when I go places.

Photos are done with a pocket camera now, going back to that which I did for years. I take fewer photos, but it's fine, and it also means that working on projects I'm documenting, I don't have the distraction of the phone there. I have a camera, and it takes pictures.

It's a different approach to life, more of a return to a 90s/early 2000s approach, but I've been quite happy with it, and find it a welcome change from "Everything in one device."