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| iPhone 4 next to iPhone XS MAX |
WSJ technology writer Joanna Stern updated the experiment in 2019 by testing the 2010 iPhone 4. There's no question that the advanced tech confers advantages today, but there were benefits in going retro:
there was the disappointment and anxiety when I wanted to FaceTime with my 2-year-old son but couldn’t. It seems the smartphone has in many ways eliminated the human emotion of missing people. It wasn’t fun, yet I have to admit that there was also something sweet, something poignant, something human about missing somebody you love...It's ironic that many who turn off their pocket supercomputer feel more empowered.
I ended up using a paper map and directions given to me by actual humans to get where I wanted to go. Sure, it took me 30 minutes longer to get to my destination than if I had used Google Maps. But I was thrilled to see that the part of my brain that had to link together different highways, cardinal directions and instructions from gas station attendants still worked.
More than that, it allowed me to better visualize where I was in the physical world because I knew how I had gotten from there to here. You feel strangely grounded in a way you can’t be when you’re vacantly making turn after turn dictated by a computer. Again, it has only been a decade, but I had forgotten what that felt like.
The best part of my only-tech-from-2010 challenge? No never-ending social-media feeds.
Related: a man had his smartphone stolen in 2017 and says the thieves did him a favor.
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