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The invention of smartphones probably made the idea of international travel less intimidating since you now have a pocket translator tool and can find your way in a foreign place with GPS navigation. (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[–] [S] 16 points 10 months ago* (17 children)

I'm Gen Z lol

Oh lol I just remembered the first smartphone was invented in like 2007 (as in, actual mass market product, not just prototypes), I had my first in 2015, so probably warped worldview lol. Like my parent were still using flip phones in early 2010s and this was also around the time when I first had internet access (didn't have internet in my neighborhood in my previous country).

I always forget and thought smartphones were invented in like 2013 or something, since that's the first time I see one, my aunt had one that I just played with during family gatherings. Pretty sure I remember Google Translate to be an app already.

But I mean like smartphones paved the way for these tools to exist ubiquitiously, not as in these tools immediately existed upon the invention of smartphones, know what I sayin'?

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I once missed a call from my mother on my cell phone because it was getting late...

    I got in trouble due to the fact I didn't call her back.

    The phone didn't have caller ID on it.. so I had no idea who had called. All it said one 1 missed call.

    Cell phone tech has definitely been a process.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I got in trouble once because there was a small earthquake in Brooklyn that made everyone call each other so it clogged up the lines, this was before 5g so the congestion problems were way worse.

    Mom at first thought I broke her phone lol.

    Your comment reminded me of that incident lol

    So every time after that, I'd bring up that incident when ever my parents falsely accuse of doing something wrong

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Smartphones are much older than that. Symbian Series 60 had a substantial install base long before the iPhone. The N-Gage was a smart phone, for example, so we're not just talking high end stuff.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    Never heard of it before (or maybe I did but forgot it) so I just looked it up, didn't they only have like 6% marketshare in the US? I mean that's less than amount of people who use adblockers, and I never met someone irl who uses an adblocker. My point being, its very rare and I never seen one.

    I was in China before 2010, never heard of it as a kid. My dad had some motorola feature phone thingy.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    I've no idea what market penetration was like on a different continent twenty years ago 😂

    Many Nokia phones ran Symbian S60 (I specify because there was a number of Symbian OSes. I've never quite pinned down why). Not just Nokia, but in their day Nokia were THE phone company.

    I went from a Nokia N90 to an iPhone. The iPhone had fewer features at the time (the app store came later, it couldn't record video - let alone edit it, etc.). The thing was that the features it did have were so much more user friendly. It was night and day.

    Smartphones are surprisingly old although I doubt more than a tiny handful of their users actually knew what they were capable of back in the day. I had my N-Gage setup with a web browser, MSN Messenger client (the IM service of choice in the UK at the time), Xvid video player, Ogg Vorbis audio, office software, and quite a few games too (both Java and native). My N90 could use all the same software when I moved to it a few years later.

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  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    If you're going to end your sentences with "lol" you don't also need to say that you're Gen Z. One or the other will do. 😏

    I agree your original point stands, regardless of the timescales involved.

    The invention of the smart phone did make international travel less intimidating, even if some of the functions took a while to appear.

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    end your sentences with "lol" you don't also need to say that you're Gen Z.

    I am pretty sure we lol-ed a lot already before the majority of Gen-Z was even born...

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    Yes, but we didn't integrate it into our sentences lol

    Someone made a joke and we answered "lol"

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    I first encountered and used it in the online forums during the late 90's and early 00s.
    Has been part of sentences back then and I still use it like that.

    "lol" primarily as standalone reply sounds like something from an later messenger-centric era.
    Are you a Millenial by any chance?

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    Believe it or not the first production smart phone was released by IBM in 1989, it was the bastard lovechild of a DOS PC and a car phone; it could do fax and modem over the phone. Blackberry put out a device you'd call a smart phone (runs an extensible OS with an app ecosystem, multimedia capable, mobile data as we know it today) in 2002. But yes the iPhone arrived in 2007 much to the unhealth of society.

    The original iPhone did not have an app store.

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