My iPhone Has Become… Just a Phone

For as long as I can remember, my phone was almost an extension of my hand. It was the first thing I reached for every morning and the last thing I looked at before going to sleep. If I ever left it at home, I would happily drive back to collect it. I always had the latest model, usually within days of release. I convinced myself it was because I appreciated the technology, but the truth is probably much simpler. I just loved the latest gadget. I loved discovering what it could do and finding new ways to use it.

Like many people, I worked my way through the generations. Nokia became BlackBerry, BlackBerry became iPhone, and each new release somehow found its way into my pocket. I admit I never tried Android, but I had many debates on the subject. My phone wasn’t really a phone anymore. It had become my office, my diary, my camera, my entertainment system, my satnav and my connection to just about everything.

Over the past few months, though, something rather strange has happened.

My iPhone has quietly become… just a phone.

It isn’t because I have lost interest in technology. Quite the opposite. If anything, I depend on technology more than ever. The difference is that PSP has gradually changed the way I interact with it.

Double vision makes it surprisingly difficult to hit exactly the place I want on a small touchscreen. My eyesight is much better suited to the larger display of my iPad, and better still to the even larger screen on my Mac. Voice recognition also seems to work better there, and using a mouse is far easier than trying to guide a finger to precisely the right spot on a six-inch screen.

I have spent plenty of time exploring Apple’s accessibility features, and they genuinely help. This isn’t a criticism of Apple in any way. The reality is simply that accessibility settings can only compensate for so much. When your eyes don’t quite agree where something is, or your finger doesn’t always go exactly where you intended, even the best technology reaches its limits.

As I write this, it is 4:39 in the morning. I have been awake for about an hour, and I honestly have no idea where my iPhone is. That sentence would have been almost unimaginable a few years ago. The funny thing is that I genuinely couldn’t care less. My Garmin Watch is connected, my iPad is connected, my Mac is connected, and if somebody really needs me, they will find me. Somewhere in the house is an expensive iPhone, and I haven’t even bothered looking for it.

Ironically, there are times when I think I would actually prefer an old-fashioned mobile phone with proper buttons. Something I can feel rather than see. Something that doesn’t rely on absolute precision from my eyes and fingers every single time I want to use it.

The irony is that I haven’t become less dependent on technology. I’ve become more dependent on it than ever before. The difference is that the device I once thought was indispensable no longer sits at the centre of that world. The iPad, the Mac, dictation software, AI and the accessibility tools built into them now do much of the heavy lifting. Without them, much of what I write simply wouldn’t exist.

Perhaps that is one of the quieter lessons of living with PSP.

The technology itself isn’t becoming less important. Quite the opposite. The technology that adapts to me becomes more important, while the technology that expects me to adapt to it quietly fades into the background.

One day, almost without noticing, the latest iPhone stopped being the most important piece of technology in my life.

It just became my phone.