I imagine Lemmy skews WAY to the side of PCs/computers. But the average consumer is almost exclusively using their phone for everything except work and taxes. I'm a digital native and I even find browsing Lemmy to be easier via app than browser.
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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I use mostly my phone for everything not work related. It's in my pocket at all times. It's faster than my ancient ThinkPad. It uses less power. It has a higher resolution screen. It has better speakers. Other than keyboard, it's better in every way.
Unless I need to type more than 3 minutes, or open more than 3 tabs, I just use my phone. Includes sshing into the odd server for a quick check or tweak.
My wife uses her laptop maybe once a month. Most "normies" rarely use a computer, some even don't own one.
I use computers at work. Outside of work I use my phone, my Steamdeck, and my PS5 for my needs/entertainment. After fixing and working on computers all day, I don't wanna even see another computer after I leave the office. So I just don't own one. I borrow my grandma's laptop if I absolutely need to use a computer outside of work lol.
I don't think Lemmy is the right sample to ask this question. Definitely a lot of gamers and tech enthusiasts here.
Personally I avoid doing computer tasks on my phone if I can at all help it. Trying to accomplish tasks on a tiny mobile screen is just frustrating and limited. Have both desktop and laptop that I prefer to use.
I may be an outlier (well, maybe not on lemmy...), but I have 4 PCs that I use regularly:
- Daily driver laptop
- Work-ish laptop
- Storage server
- Utility server
These are the ones I am left with after getting rid of some hardware I didn't need.
I use both. I actually hate web browsing on my phone. Mobile websites are often absolute dogshit and I hate having to read articles on a small screen. I also absolutely fucking HATE shopping on mobile. I do all purchases via my Desktop PC. No idea how people use mobile for all this stuff.
Millennial in the US. These are my main devices: iPhone, gaming pc, steam deck, and an old MacBook Pro.
- iPhone - general phone use, killing time browsing Lemmy when I should be working, playing roms, and Pokémon GO.
- Gaming pc - primary. I prefer doing everything here including shopping because fuck shopping on a phone, I’m a millennial and for big purchases I have to use a big screen and a computer.
- Steam Deck - mobile PC gaming for couch and occasions I’m away from home for a long time.
- MacBook - secondary PC, only when I need a PC and don’t want or can’t be at my desk.
Honestly with how far right big tech has moved, along with the predatory tracking and telemetry, I’m considering giving up smart phones for good. Not sure I even want to bother switching to a Pixel with Graphene OS after my iPhone is done.
I miss simplicity, so I’m actively evaluating if a dumb phone (or even an e-ink dumb phone) is right for me. I’m also evaluating lugging my laptop around when I’m out and about because I can simply buy mobile service and plug in a USB cell modem if I need internet. My old 2012 MacBook Pro running Linux doesn’t track me and treat me like data cattle, so it may be worth carrying that around since I don’t get the same feeling of disgust compared to when I look at my smartphone.
Big tech ruined everything.
Edit: on mobile, fixed some typos
Question: am I on the toilet?
Big purchases require big screen.
Idk man, pretty sure musk bought a major world power with the tiny screen
I use a desktop or laptop computer almost daily in my personal life. Mobile devices are terrible for actual productivity. And security. And usability.
And security
Disagree.
Sure, privacy wise, you can say that they are terrible (freedom wise, they are not great either). But Security? Phones are probably the most secure devices (as long as you keep them updated). Verified Boot, Sanboxing for every app, Strict Permission Control, Default Encryptions, Limiting Password attempts per X amount of time, to make brute force difficult, and can even attempt to wipe itself if too many incorrect password entry. Even if an app is malicious, all you need to do is uninstall it and most of the time they do not persist.
Most desktop installations require admin or sudo permissions, one malicious program/package and you gotta wipe clean and reinstall.
Cameras and microphones that have no physical disconnect. Virtual keyboards. NSA subsidies for cheap phones sold in poor areas. Zero visibility or access to OS components without special steps.
Windows let users install and run any junk binary to their appdata folder by default. That's why cryptolocker got real popular around 2010. Granted this isn't supporting my point, but admin is not required in a lot of instances.
I guess I'm saying I disagree with your disagreement. Non-mobile is far more secure. My desktop and laptops do all of the stuff you listed as mobile capabilities.
Again, the government surveillance aspect is more of a privacy issue. Yea, I hate how intrusive the government is, but, from a purely security perspective, if your threat model isn't targeted surveillance by the government (which for most people, that's not their threat model), if you think about how much technical knowlege the average person has, a smart phone does a better job protecting them from the every day security threats than a computer.
NSA subsidies for cheap phones sold in poor areas.
Cheap smartphones are subsidized by the "recommended apps" screen that phone manufacturers add, that app developers/publishers paid for so that their app is listed during the phone's set up process, that's why they are so cheap.
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Smartphone is my least common choice. PC most of the time, smart tv for YouTube, tablet, then phone.
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PC is for gaming and doing things I do on my phone but easier and faster
I volunteer at the public library. Almost all the people who come in are phones only, and totally lost on a PC. They come in to fill out gov't PDFs that won't open on their phones and to print stuff out. My classmates, in the IT program (!) have a lot of trouble navigating on their laptops, and only a couple of us have desktops at all.
Who goes into IT without knowing how to use a computer?
People hear that it's a higher paying office job that has a low barrier for entry, not realizing that continuing education and constant learning are mandatory. If you don't have a passion for it, you struggle.
I work with a number of developers who don't know how to find and edit a file on their computer.
Literally.
I can smell the Javascript from here.
I ask myself that on a regular basis.
Probably the old assumption “there’s money in computers” is still guiding some people into the wrong field.
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I've only ever used a high end gaming PC (cost me about $5,300, but it was worth it) to play games, draw, browse the internet, and social media. I'm really not a smartphone kind of person and I think it's because I'm mostly a PC gamer who has grown accustomed to always having a huge 27-inch 2K screen and having everything respond instantaneously, as opposed to a 3-5 second input lag on everything.
The average non-tech person only has a phone. And maybe a shared family notebook if at any point someone needed a computer for things that you can't do on the phone (like filing taxes and such).
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My phone is basically a mp3 player that can do 2FA. And of course for for communicating while traveling, though often enough the phone is only there to provide the hotspot.
But other than that, I'll use the laptop whenever possible.
I only use my phone when not at home. At home, it’s about 50/50 tablet/desktop.
The blue collar people I know only use a phone for personal computing, I have a spare laptop I lend to co workers so they can complete CBT and badging if a phone won't cut it.
More than once I've had both my personal laptop and the loaner at a jobsite so the crew can get badged quicker.
Damn, I haven't heard about using a laptop for CBT but that shit probably hurts - that's gonna be a wide surface area for impact.
In the BDSM community CBT stands for cock & ball torture.
In the mental health community CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
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Desktop computer mainly, sometimes a laptop. Tablets are painful to use IMO
I use my phone a lot when I just don't feel like starting up my computer
People are responding personally in this thread, which does not answer the actual question being asked. Lemmizens are very far from most people.
I'd be shocked if most people had PCs any more - at best, an old laptop to lug out for "paperwork."
Seems like smartphones are generally used more often than PCs among younger cohorts compared to older. In Britain at least.
That's a very different question. A smartphone can to some degree emulate the other devices listed so when people are asked to pick only one device most are naturally going to choose that even if it's not currently their primary device, and since they could only choose one it's not useful in determining how many people use other devices. It also appears to be a follow-up question asking about second most important devices so it's definitely not useful out of context.
From that survey question alone you cannot reasonably claim which device is used most often.
Phone is for work only. Tower PC for everything else.
I'm probably an outlier.
m8 literally everyone on the fediverse is an outlier 😅
My thoughts exactly. The number of Linux users and programmers here may distort the picture OP gets from these comments.
For consumption of content, phone to laptop use is probably about 70% phone and 30% laptop.
For production of content, 20% phone and 80% laptop, with Lemmy being a large part of the 20% phone production.
Back during early COVID there were a bunch of people caught out not having anywhere to work from in their home.
That to me suggested a lot about where phone and tablet usage have gone, and where desktop and laptop usage has now gone. It seems a lot people see laptops and computers as specialist devices.
There are at least four computers and three laptops in my house, but not chance my friends have that.
I have a high-end gaming computer, but it is headless(doesn't have a monitor) I use a VR headset and Virtual desktop instead of a monitor. In Virtual desktop I have two 4k 120hz screens. I use my computer from a comfy recliner, or standing, or walking around. Whatever fits the use case. While in my home, or any home with decent wi-fi, I have access to my gaming PC. And I can live the augmented reality life.
Cell internet isn't quite good enough for the same thing to be possible out and about yet. But it's honestly not that far off. It's good enough for a productivity desktop experience, but streaming a 4k game or video is not great on cell. Might be viable if I drop it to one 1080p monitor at 60hz and drop the bandwidth target to 1/8th or so. Haven't tried. Assuming the consistency of bandwidth will be a concern. Too many sporadically dropped packets for unbuffered video to play smoothly.
But for the most part, the VR headset has replaced my computer monitor, my TV, and my phone while at home. It's an android based headset, so I can load any phone games I play on it. And play them on a 6 foot wide "phone" using my hands as hyper accurate laser pointers instead of mashing the screen with fingers, covering up the very thing I need to poke.
What headset do you use that can output that resolution at that refresh rate?
It doesn't have enough pixels to represent 4k 1:1 on every frame. At the field of view I put my screen at, 80 degrees, it can only directly represent about 1440p, but with the micromovements of my head, I see a completely different set of pixels every frame. So I tested, and 4k still looks noticeably sharper than 1440p, so I use it.
Stuff doesn't have to be perfect to still be worth doing. It just has to be worth doing. I very much enjoy where VR is at currently, but I have enjoyed where it was at the whole time so far, and I'm definitely gonna keep enjoying where it's at in the future. Even before it started replacing other things, it was always it's own thing too. And while I still play VR games quite a bit, I also use it for almost everything else now too.
There are a few options for headsets capable of this right now, mine is unfortunately a Meta Quest 3, hard to stomache, but pretty great headset... It's been the easiest and cheapest headset to mod for 14+ hours of comfort and battery life. For me, a halo style head strap has been the best option in my testing, that can be different for each individual, so a BoboVR S3 pro kit was all it took. The default quest 3 face gasket was already comfortable for all day use for me. Infinite battery life by swapping a new one in every 2 hours is barely inconvenient, and luckily I still occasionally forget so the headset battery gets to see a discharge cycle every now and then too without me having to remember to purposefully do it. The batteries can handle charging it back up to full while playing.
The second screen is stored above my normal field of view, I can either glance at it for the normal stuff you would use a second monitor for while gaming or watching TV, generally a browser window that I don't have to tab out of the game to see. Or I can hit a button and both monitors swap places instantly, and the content of the second monitor becomes my temporary priority. Recent use has been having a spec guide open while playing Diablo 4, and generally my social media and various app friends lists are arrayed on that screen, as well as some rain meter gadgets for performance monitoring and stuff. Second monitor stuff.
I also, of course, leave the headset and Virtual Desktop in passthrough mode all the time. So I can still hang out with and talk to my family. And watch TV with them. The TV at the field of view it's at is only about a 720p representation, but it's clear enough to read closed captioning, and if you are old like me, you may remember that DvDs are 540p, and they were good enough for watching epic movies on for years. It's not as good as it will be on the next headset, or the next one after that, but it's good enough to be worth doing for me.
Luckily for me, but unlucky for her, my sister has a bit of night blindness, so she can't watch a TV in a dark room, it would be too bright relative to the rest of the room and hurt her eyes. Works out with the Quest 3 passthrough having a relatively narrow dynamic contrast adjustment. With the lights off, the headset would find the TV too bright relatively too, washing it out and showing only a white rectangle. But with the lights on, I see it as clearly as them, just a third of the resolution.
My sister has also started using my old headset to play on her computer, that headset doesn't have infinite battery life, only about 8 hours, but she has now started plugging it in after and continuing to play. She mainly plays Baldurs Gate 3 on it. The hand controllers serendipitously worked out to be a pretty fun and useful way to play BG3, just mapped "scrollwheel" to camera panning. Since in a windows environment the hand controllers are treated as a mouse input, so the joysticks are scrollwheel input. And yeah, B is right click, so hold B and move your hand to change where the camera is looking, and joystick to move the camera, it's like flying a drone with one hand being a representative of the drone orientation. And otherwise BG3 is mostly about clicking stuff with a few keyboard shotcuts here and there. So, no real limitations from having to essentially use a floating keyboard. Most other "flat" games are best played with a controller. A wireless keyboard and mouse would also be an option. But in a recliner, a controller is probably best.
Thank you for the detailed response! I have a bigscreen beyond and have occasionally tried to use it with virtual desktop for my two 1440p monitors, though I still vastly prefer a real monitor. Though, it works great when my cats want to be in the way :) I just ask because the refresh rate is 90Hz, snd so that kind of throughput seemed very high. Your point about the micro-movements in a way adding to that resolution makes sense though.
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