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Comment by robotron | Hacker News Reader

I would say the major selling points of smart phones is not browsing the web, but the use of "apps". Browsing is still mostly a pain on such small screens, not many pages are optimized for mobile.

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Indeed, the selling point is access to the internet. More for targeted use than for extended browsing. While such browsing can be done on phones, eventually one gets a sort of "what would be better done on the bigger screen" intuition. Which is when syncing content back and forth between machines starts to shine (and comes to feel indispensable), as it lets you start internet tasks in either place without needing to consider which screen would be better long term; you just switch when the need arises.

>syncing content back and forth between machines starts to shine

What do you mean by that? Firefox Sync/Chrome Sync? I only browse at work because I can but not because I'd prefer to, personally.

Well, I wish it was more seamless and all encompassing, that would shine even brighter and I keep meaning to try such things. But even so, right now I use Read it Later as the synced list that all the devices can see. For things I'd rather not have cluttering up that list I use two kludges: QR code browser extensions to go from the bigger screens to the mobile one, and "share via email" (or IM or SMS there is barely a difference in general) to go the other way.

I would argue that the major selling point for selling any phone (smart or feature) is to use the "phone" part. Everything else comes second.

Let's not even talk about the ultra fast depletion of the battery when browsing the internet...Or is it just mine?

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