6 Things Smartphones Should Be Able to Do by Now

Switching between these orientations is easy enough; the sensors in every phone I've used detect rotation just fine. But if you're not rotating the phone intentionally, like if you're laying it down on its back or, heaven forbid, trying to use your phone while laying down on your side, you're basically screwed. Yes, I know there are ways to lock the screen in one of the drop-down or settings menus or with a witch's hex, but ugh man, seriously? Then you'd have to turn it off when you're done, and again, ugh. It's easier just to sit up, which is the worst thing ever.

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"This is some serious bullshit right here."

And there's another thing which happens occasionally. I sometimes get in a situation where I'm trying to look at a picture that's rotated 90 degrees from they way it should be, like the phone doesn't know which end of it is down. Rotating the phone, like one might do with any other object in the world, just causes the phone to change orientation, which causes me to twist it again, and so on, and eventually my wrist just snaps off.

Also, whose idea was it for a phone to beep when you're lowering the volume of the notifications? Yes, I know it's to show me how loud it is now, but if I'm preemptively lowering it so as not to make any noises, I don't want to know how loud it is by way of a bunch of goddamned noises. Come on phones! BE MORE PERFECTER.

But the second problem goes deeper with that. Autocorrect has made everyone lazy. Because we can drop our phone in the front of our pants and hump out semicoherent text messages, we haven't developed the hand dexterity we'll need to survive in a future filled with very small things to touch. Our growing reliance on autocorrect is dooming our hands to grow ever more sausage-like.

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"Like it's my fault my owner has fingers the size and texture of entire candied hands."
"That's nothing. My owner is, if not a seal, then a horrible mistake sired by a lonely seal scientist and a bottle of whiskey."

And what toner-cartridge-huffing maniac thought it would be a good idea to put a mandatory "Download Our App!" screen between the user and the actual content they want to see? (Yes I know who's an occasional culprit of this. What can I say? Management doesn't consult their crazy, probably hair-bearded, and certainly mentally unstable columnists on IT decisions.) Sure, in a few cases, where a user is hitting that site multiple times a day, the app might make sense for them. (If the app is good. Is your app good? Are you sure?) But for the majority of incoming users, who might very well have never heard of that site before and might never come back again (some random forum, for example), dealing with a mandatory pop-up ad before giving them the delicious content they crave is madness.

In response to this, some phone manufacturers have created face sensors to detect when we stop looking at the screen, and only then turn it off. In my experience, this only helps automate this wrong-decision-making process. Obviously, it's unfair and irrational to demand our phones have mind-reading capabilities, except yeah, let's go ahead and do that. Get on it, you engineers with extremely fashionable eyeglasses working at Apple, and you engineers wearing substantially less fashionable eyeglasses working at Google. Please read my mind to make my phone nicer, and sure, go ahead and pump some ads directly in there while you're at it. If you can make the phone hover in front of me, that'd be good, too.

How many of you have adjusted your social lives based on the current charge of your phone? I have. Not a lot; not to the point of canceling a fight club or anything. But I've definitely loitered at work with the phone on the charger, and taken a longer route to give the car charger more time, and sprinted into a gathering and seized the host by the lapels while shrieking something about electricity. And I know I'm not alone. People are beginning to develop real anxieties around not having a functioning phone. It's called nomophobia, which is a fittingly dumb name for something so dumb. These devices are supposed to make our lives easier, and yet here they are, measurably making them worse.

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"And then my phone is screaming at me for wetting the bed and I'm calling it 'Mommy' and the whole school is laughing at me."

What's even worse is that these crappy batteries are showing to manufacturers and other aspiring tyrants just how much humans are willing to put up with. By proving ourselves willing to adapt our lives around our phone charge, we've essentially all agreed to wear a twelve-hour leash. Smartphones are great devices, sure, maybe even worth that sacrifice. But how long will it be before the concept spreads? When will someone develop a really good shoe which requires a docking station, or an incredible burrito which requires a three-year commitment and a data plan, or something even more humiliating?

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"PLEASE LOG IN WITH YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT."

Big Brother isn't your flat screen on the wall (except when it is). It's your goddamned smartphone battery, pressing down on your face, forever.

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and your best friend. His first novel, Severance, is incredible and available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Apex Books. Join him on Facebook or Twitter.

For more from Bucholz, check out The 12 Most Common Fantasies Teenage Boys Have and 5 Brilliant Ways Historical Figures Dealt With Their Haters.

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