If a 30 second task can be done in just 20 on a device with a larger display, that's absolutely worth it for me.
Also larger device tends to imply longer battery life too.
However the market agrees with you so I must be missing something. I used to think it was driven by media consumption on phones, and that I try to avoid, but this isn’t the first time I have heard people tout phone productivity gains from a slightly larger screen.
I wouldn't assume that.
The expression 'fat fingers' concerns the phenomena where users (including myself) lack the eyesight and finer motor skills required to type accurately on a small keyboard, so a slightly larger display makes all the difference.
Perhaps you simply have those fine motor skills (and good eye sight) so a larger device isn't necessary to prevent typos and remain productive.
I've banned social and don't use my phone much anymore, so it's less of an issue than it used to be, but it's really frustrating when I'm clearly hitting the right key and it insists on pretending I hit an adjacent key.
Instead, after 20 years of iPhone usage, I am not allowed to type the names of projects I use all the time without fixing the autocorrect every time, or (as you say) carefully hitting the left side of the F key because dead center will produce a G.
That's a bug, not a feature. You don't need to be able to do every task all the time. In fact, it's nice to be able to separate that aspect.
Have you ever thought that with 80% of web traffic coming from mobile, you might be the outlier?
What next? The old Slashdot meme “I haven’t watched TV in 20 years. Do people still watch TV?”
I said you don't have to do every task, not do no tasks.
> Have you ever thought that with 80% of web traffic coming from mobile, you might be the outlier?
Wow, snark too. In recent years, I've taken a much more luddite stance against mobile device usage for my own mental wellbeing. Maybe other people should follow suit.
"You should do your taxes on the train". No, I don't think that I will. You're free to stress yourself out like that. Have fun.
> You should do your taxes on the train". No, I don't think that I will. You're free to stress yourself out like that. Have fun.
I along with 90% of the taxpayers in the US take the standard deduction - meaning my taxes are stupid simple.
I logged into the TurboTax app, it offered to download my w2’s, I answered five questions, entered the date that I wanted IRS to take out the taxes we owed and we were done. I don’t have to even file state taxes for the state I live in?
How would that have been easier from a computer? In fact it would have been harder if I had to use a computer because the other option I had to submit my W2 was to take a picture of it.
It’s a fair trade off. My company gives me a lot of leeway during the day and I am flexible about time zones.
The feigned ignorance on HN that most normal people don’t pull their laptops out to do everything in 2026 is amazing
So I tend to assume that these stories are often the outliers, and that my personal experience is more common. I recognize the fallacy, and I suspect we're both wrong and we're both right. I just honestly don't know which one of us is more of which.
It probably devolves to a question of what kind of work we're talking about. The work that I do (or the way I do it), I do not believe could be done effectively on a phone or tablet, most of the time. I work with people whose work can be done there. And there are probably more of them that there are of me. But that does not mean I could become one of them.
(addressing your comment on another subthread): if music, camera, and web are a person's "work", then sure. But that does not resemble "work" for me in any way.
Again, you can look at the worldwide penetration of cell phones vs laptops, where most web traffic comes from, the amount of resources spent on mobile development vs desktop, the amount of revenue globally of phone sales vs PC sales, etc
I also don’t spend all day working and I definitely don’t take out my laptop when I’m not working
Mobile-vs-web dev is probably a better metric. And developed, mature markets only. Anything else introduces the second- and third-generation tech gap inconsistencies.
Are you really arguing in 2026 about time spent on mobile vs PCs?
Also, you're being unnecessarily unpleasant in these threads; I wish I had read down further before replying initially, but I'm done now.
This is completely responsive to your thread if you think countries that use their phones more than the US is some type of signal they are 3rd world countries.
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/228589/notebook-or-lapto...
(English is her 3rd language)
Can I file my taxes on my phone? Probably. But I could also set myself on fire, and I think that might be more fun. Why would I not want to use a tool that is 100x faster and 1000x easier to use for any task more complex than writing a sentence?
I'm a developer. I've heard of developers SSH'ing from their phone and developing that way. It's impressive, in the same way removing all your fingernails is impressive.
90% of taxpayers claim the deduction - meaning their taxes are really simple.
I launched TurboTax, it offered to download my and my wife’s W2s, I clicked through a few buttons on a wizard and I was done. It had all of my information from the prior year so it already knew my employer.
As far as speed, have you compared the speed of the fastest iPhone to a low to midrange x86 PC? The latest A series chips in the iPhone are faster in single core performance than an M1 MacBook Air which is no slouch. But all that is besides the point. How fast of a computer do you think you need to file taxes? There was tax filing software for the 1Mhz Apple //e in 1986. You just had to print it out.
I entered maybe one number?
I live in a state without state taxes so I didn’t even have to file states.
FWIW, I also shopped for, did all of the paperwork before closing, for the house we had built in 2016 from my phone.
Are you suggesting that o just queue everything up until I set my laptop up?
Again you realize you’re the odd one right with most activity these days taking place on mobile?
If it's the former, you lead a very different life from me. There are very few things in my life that show up and require immediate action (or action within 24-ish hours for that matter. Most things can wait). If it's the latter, I try to fill that time with reading.
Is it really that hard to look at stats and realize that you might not be the normal one?
You also didn't answer my question. Nothing in your travel scenario there, if I were in your shoes, would need me to use my phone for more than a few taps per actual task, while the rest of my phone use would go to mindless browsing or reading. What specific tasks are you imagining popping up here that I would then queue to my laptop?
And no I’m not a young guy - my first computer was in 1986 in 6th grade…
But if you have no desire to actually respond to my inquiry, I shall remain in the dark.
You know sending email via mobile has been popular since 2003 right?
The same principles apply to Slack, Teams or whatever else you may use. I don't do work outside of work hours, so what would I know. Email was just the example I thought of in the moment. Again, I'm asking you a question out of a desire to better understand your situation.
Personal correspondence doesn't take many taps to do. It's rarely more than 25 characters at a time in my experience.
> You know sending email via mobile has been popular since 2003 right?
'sending' and 'popular' are doing some pretty heavy lifting here. Reading, sure, I'll buy that. Sending? I'm not sure sending emails longer than two sentences from any device without a keyboard has ever been popular, for values of. It's probably more popular than ever given that touch keyboards make it reasonably possible, but James S. Casual isn't sending a lot of emails from his phone just through the sheer power of not sending many emails to begin with.
And 'popular' for that matter. Possible, sure, but how many people ever even had a mobile device that could send email before the iPhone came out?
I'm sure sarcasm and implying I'm stupid are great ways to convince your interlocutor, or the unseen masses for that matter.
Myself personally, I work remotely. I might be running errands during the day and still be monitoring Slack so I can be on a call at 6 or 7 at night with someone in another time zone.
I also travel for work - consulting - and travel personally during the work day and may work after I land. Even if not for work, do you wait to get to your computer to respond to text messages? Check HN?
> Myself personally, I work remotely. I might be running errands during the day and still be monitoring Slack so I can be on a call at 6 or 7 at night with someone in another time zone.
> I also travel for work - consulting - and travel personally during the work day and may work after I land.
See, I would never do this. A.) I don't work remotely (not out of a desire not to, but it's just not viable with my current line of work), and B.) If I did, that work would be zoned off away from my personal life. If there's downtime, I can kill time by browsing whatever, but I wouldn't be out and about but also 'at work' at the same time. Work-time and personal time basically never mix in my life, and I'd like to keep it that way.
If you're 'at work' for 48 hours at a time, while travelling, then having to respond instantly at any given time makes a lot more sense, although I'd probably still want to defer those responses until I can get some downtime during any given travels to then type up my responses on an actual keyboard. I can however understand if that's not really viable in your life of work.
> do you wait to get to your computer to respond to text messages?
I've never(?) sent a text message longer than maybe 100 characters. Most are a fair bit shorter than that, and I don't send that many to begin with. Same goes for Discord, although confirming that is harder, since it's contaminated with messaged written with an actual keyboard.
> Check HN?
To read? Sure. I even read books on my phone. Respond to a comment? Not unless my response is really short.
Most on HN know the data: healthier people tend to enforce boundaries with their devices. The average person is addicted, yes, but I'm not sure being "the odd one" in an era of actually decreasing literacy and numeracy and attention span is the insult that you seem to think.
Again, look at the statistics..
Then I cam across this, showing about even split between laptop and phone
https://tgmstatbox.com/stats/united-kingdom-device-usage-bre...
I'd assumed it was more like 80% phone
Were you out to dinner with your wife?
I’m sure you would have thought we should have waited to take out my laptop when we got back home.
HN seems to have some really weirdly prescriptive view of how people ought to use their devices in a way that is almost like Steve jobs.
I don't have my work email on my phone, and personal emails basically never need any actual response.
> call a uber
This is a few clicks and not a big ask regardless of the exact device. You can order an Uber regardless of screen size.
> look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?
Google Maps works fine on smaller screens. Ask me how I know.
Because some of us read the original comment and thought maybe the discussion should be responsive to it:
> If the task can’t be done in a few taps I feel I’m better off opening a laptop anyways.
Talking about Uber, email and directions in Maps are literally "task[s] that can be done in a few taps". Perhaps being less "weirdly" defensive and taking the time to think about the discussion you're about to jump into would be helpful?
Things like KDE Connect provide a direct bridge and a bit of imagination does the rest.
If your laptop isn't cutting the mustard then ditch it ...
... Oh your phone has a tiny screen and a shit mic and speakers, unless you stick it in your ear?
Horses for courses.
Yes most people use KDE Connect..
That is, until I switched to a foldable phone (Galaxy Z Fold 7) half a year ago, and - I kid you not - I haven't used my personal laptop since that day.
FWIW, I still have a proper desktop PC; In the past decade+, I've been using a PC at home, and a "sidearm" on the go / away from home: always a 2-in-1 Windows laptop with top specs[0]. Being always with me, this laptop often replaced use of PC at home too, because of convenience & portability.
So by amount of productive use, for past 10+ years it was sidearm >> PC >> smartphone. But getting a foldable flipped it around. Having twice the screen size of a regular (large) phone is a big productivity win[1], but it's folding that makes the actual qualitative difference. Folded, the device becomes a regular smartphone - i.e. something that fits in my pocket, meaning it's always on me, in my hands, or less than 1 second away. Contrast that with tablets, whose form factor makes them basically just shitty laptops (same logistic as ultraportable, but toy OS of a phone).
I didn't expect this. I didn't even feel this change - I only noticed two months later that my laptop has been sitting unused on my desk, covered by a pile of stuff. Doing "laptop tasks" on a mobile device is still annoying (no keyboard, toy OS), but combining tablet-sized screen with portability of a phone makes them less annoying than logistics overhead of a laptop - and at least in my case, this eliminated the entire[3] space between "smartphone" and "PC".
--
[0] - Think Microsoft Surface, except I could get better specs at half the price if I bought an off-lease but pristine Dell or Lenovo.
[1] - It's not immediately obvious to people, but as things are today, a foldable phone isn't any better at media consumption than regular one, because almost all cinema, TV, videogames, etc. are all produced for widescreen - meanwhile, the inner screen of my Fold is approximately square, so e.g. for most TV, half or more of it is black at all times. However, all that extra space allows to effectively use multiple (3+) apps on screen, not to mention makes spreadsheets actually usable.
[2] - Bigger screen = less scrolling and tapping in menus, but also with text size scaled to minimum, my previous phone (S22) had a big enough screen that running two apps in split-screen became useful on a regular basis.
[3] - Well, almost. There are some tasks I really like physical keyboard and larger screen for - but for those, I just plug the phone into the screen via USB-C, and volia, it turns into a regular desktop. A shitty one, but good enough for occasional use.
Now I'm having second thoughts on what I'll do myself because I would have never guessed a foldable would be ideal as you described.
I've been trying to avoid building an $8,000 tech stack of redundant devices that I don't need. Which is what Apple is all about, and then some. It's not the initial investment that bothers me, it's calculating replacement costs over time. It's pretty quickly that you have half a new vehicle in redundant electronics. It leaves you asking: why?
So while I appreciate the longevity and durability of my iPhone 12 mini, along with seamless Airdrop and the Airtag network being as handy as it gets, I'm thinking about going back to Android for docking support. This is a feature I don't think Apple will ever add until the end of time, so I may as well bite the bullet now and get another OS switch over with.
I'm not entirely convinced I would love a foldable like you do, but I am rethinking that now. I've been on the idea that Microsoft's partnership with Samsung for Phone Link features will make my life delightful at my desktop battlestation, and DeX with a lapdock will cover any mobile needs. A lapdock really does create an alternative to the battery life offered by the M-series Macbooks, while leaving me with only two devices to maintain and replace with my desktop and phone.
It's amazing with the flexibility and options offered in the Android space, whether it be my proposal or your foldable experience, how they don't have more marketshare. I think the issue is marketing, people need to be shown what they can do with a product and Apple makes Continuity and closed ecosystem features seem like a value add. When it's kind of a lure to an iCloud subscription and $8,000 personal tech stack.
I find my efficiency directly proportional to the distance from my smart phone.