I've got a Samsung Galaxy S5 on Verizon and recently turned on the S Health fitness app. Just to get a quick start, I picked what seemed to be the default goals of 6,000 steps a day and 60 minutes of activity. Now I find myself getting chastised by my phone on lazy days to the point where I'm almost nervous that my phone is going to yell at me for sloth.
It's so bad that I don't take it out of my pocket and plug it in to charge unless I know I'm going to be sitting down so that I get credit for every step I take.
One of our sons does the same thing. He recently said, "I don't want to disappoint my phone."
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I'm kind of amused by the fact that, out of all the many things that those electronic devices in our pockets do, the function that we've picked to use as their name is "Phone". I've only had a smartphone for about three months, but even though I use it many times per day, I barely use the "Phone" function at all - I think I've made three actual voice calls on it so far, and one of those was just a test to see if it worked. And my daughters each have one that we've never even activated the phone service for, and that they just use as mini-tablet computers. And they both call them "Phones".
I suppose we'll keep the name just out of habit, and the lack of agreement on an alternative. But someday, I'll be showing some kids the antique hand-crank wall-mount telephones that we inherited from my wife's father, and they'll ask me, "How can it be a phone if it doesn't do anything other than talk?"
Also, I suppose we are on the path to what Roger Zelazny had in "Roadmarks": Pocket-sized sentient computers (his were disguised as books) that would act as navigators, communication devices, and general-purpose assistants, and get offended if the people carrying them ignored their advice or took them for granted.
So how intelligent do our phones have to get before their opinions of us should matter to us?
And anyway, your phone just wants what is best for you. And pictures of your cats.
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