d-RLY?

True, especially the part about your mom and others that had to use PCs in the 90s and 80s. I suck with a lot of CMD/PowerShell/Terminal stuff and get really in my head about whatever I am doing. Though a lot of it is due to things like switches and formatting order. Can be very very frustrating if there are a lot of them and having to constantly look at what they mean since they aren’t just regular words (which would obviously make the amount of typing get out of hand). The other main issue for me is dealing with moving or copying things around. GUI is much easier to get due to being able to see it in the same way I would move/copy things IRL. Especially frustrating if using USB drives, since they don’t just auto-mount/assign a letter if only using something without a DE. That part is (for me) a headache to have to deal with since the same OS will just do that if a DE is used. But also not something I do every day (or very often as I mostly use Linux when messing with my Pi).

But your core point of just doing it is very true. The reason that folks in offices in the 90s and 80s were able to get used to it was because they had to, and that there was a reason to at least know the things to do what they needed. They didn’t have to get bogged down with all of it (or even need most commands). So it would be best to focus on the things that are needed to get daily things done. Then it makes a lot of other bits easier to handle later on. And a lot of common things can be printed/written on cheat sheets or getting stickers with common commands to put on the side of the case or stuck to a desk in easily glanced at locations.

That is a real problem which is why a smaller (or even a “mini”) version of phones does matter. Keyboards can be adapted to be smaller, which can be helpful (but gets clunky when I have tried using those options from one-hand typing to two-hand adding steps). It does seem like the options for folks like yourself are an afterthought that leads to having to pick between being comfortable or having all the features and uncomfortable. Apple is basically the only OEM that has real options in both smaller and larger sizes without losing as many (if any depending on the year) features.

I have been using Samsung phones since the S3 and while I personally like the larger ones, I do have a friend that has also had their phones about as long as me. And he always gets the non-plus version of whatever the S series is out when he upgrades due to liking the smaller size (similar to your experience). But I know he would love a small version of the Ultra for the extra features, but don’t see Samsung doing that anytime soon. Which sucks given how much they try to be the “Apple” of Android devices.

I personally like large screens due to being able to see more (do have to mess with scaling and font sizes to force browsers). Though I do find that I can only do “serious” work with actual PCs (even tablets don’t “feel” right). Some things make more sense as having a mouse and keyboard are easier to just do things. But other times I can only describe trying to use small screens (including my large phones and tablets) as kind of a digital “claustrophobia” of sorts. Though some of that is because of touch interfaces/UX can’t show as many options/menus and the keyboards take up more of the space.

Though I do hate that we don’t see more compact flagship level options for folks that like them or need them. Apple is like the best option as far as losing fewer functions, and Samsung does still make a point of having a non-plus version of their main yearly releases.

As far as the screen size impacting battery. I think that the opposite is seen from the times I have heard it brought up. The larger body allows for more battery space. I believe that when I was looking at smaller phones for a friend that was thinking that a small screen would help reduce his desire to distract himself from being always on his phone. That one thing I saw people/articles mention was how one down-side for smaller phones was literally how they needed to charge more often to make it through the day. I think the resolution and refresh rates make the most impact on battery. As I remember my S8+ could do like 2k resolution, but in the settings it would mention that battery life might be less than if I picked 1080p. Which would still be an issue if I had the non-plus version.

It is more leeching than sharing, but if it is actually torrenting then it should also be uploading while the “stream” is playing. So kind of like PeerTube. Just really depends on both how it is setup, and how popular the video is at any time. Though it sucks that there isn’t a good way to make sure connections happen.

There are lots of times that I get torrents the regular way that I would like to have uploading to other peers at the same time. But will notice that I get few to zero peers for uploading with popular files. There are times that I will leave it seeding for weeks without any uploading. So I end up deleting the torrent so I can move files or free up space because I already made a second copy to sort. Not always the case, but frustrating to not even see a few MB go to anyone. With PeerTube I see my upload working more consistently, but main issue there is just not often that I am watching something that a lot of others (or any others) are also watching.