Dunno if this makes me an ‘apologist’ or a realist but I paid $199 for my then ‘out-of-date’ iphone 6 about 4 years ago because I won’t piss away a grand on the ‘latest’ version. My crappy iphone is still a phone, a camera, a video/camcorder, a radio, an ipod, a gps, a computer, a fitness tracker thing, and prolly a bunch of other crap I left out because I don’t use those features. There is simply no way you can assemble a pile of individual devices that can do all of this cheaper or better much less cheaper and better. I get the disdain for these devices as they have exposed a large portion of society as a pack of driveling morons, but when it comes to dollars, cents and functionality facts are facts.
I say exposed as opposed to ‘turned into’ because smartphones don’t cause stupidity, they expose it, much like guns don’t kill people but they do expose the killers among us. There is no shortage of incredibly useful things in this world for responsible individuals, but when you give a moron things like alcohol, cars, weapons, chain saws, credit cards & yes, smart phones, you run the risk of a different result.