13 things the smartphone has made obsolete

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Goodbye Hello Kitty phone. AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

The smartphone you carry around with you is more powerful than the the computers in NASA's spaceships

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It has also replaced many of the consumer electronics and gadgets that used to fill our homes.

Check out all of the things smartphones have replaced.

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GPS navigation devices

tomtom
A TomTom GPS device is displayed in a Best Buy store Tuesday, April 8, 2008, in Salt Lake City. Shares in navigation device maker TomTom NV fell sharply Tuesday after the company cut financial estimates for 2008, blaming weak pricing power and retailers' stocking fewer of its products. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac) AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac

With mapping apps like Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze, there's no reason for most people to buy a GPS navigation system for their car.

Landlines

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This Monday, Oct. 13, 2014 photo shows a vintage 1976 rotary Sanrio Hello Kitty telephone displayed at the home of collectors, Marty Garrett and his wife Salumeh Eslamieh, in San Francisco. The first Hello Kitty Con, a four-day festival of all things Kitty held in honor of the character’s 40th birthday, opens Oct. 30, 2014, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

More than 40% of homes in the US have only wireless phones, according to a survey the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did in 2013. Younger people are more likely to live in homes without landlines — almost two-thirds of 25- to 29-year-olds only have mobile phones. 

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Answering machines

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Flickr/Anthony Crider

And if you don't have a landline, you have little use for an answering machine.

Payphones

payphone
Flickr/Phil Roeder

In some cities, it can be difficult to find a working payphone.

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Scanners

HP ScanJet 4300C
HP ScanJet 4300C Flickr/Ash Kyd

Scanner Pro, an iPhone app, scans documents to create PDFs. It's completely replaced my scanner. 

Point-and-shoot cameras

canon  PowerShot S40
Canon Inc. President Fujio Mitarai shows off a new four-megapixel PowerShot S40 3x optical zoom compact digital camera, with a high-resolution CCD sensor and RGB primary colour filter, at an unveiling in Tokyo October 2, 2001. PowerShot S40 goes on sale in Japan late this month for 99,800 yen ($830), including a 16MB CompactFlash Card and other accesories, and will be available on the American market in early November. Mitarai said that market share gains and new products including PowerShot were helping Canon avoid a cut in its earnings forecasts despite mounting economic gloom and after last month's deadly attacks in the U.S. Reuters/Eriko Sugita

They say that the best camera is the one you have with you. Fortunately, the one you have on your smartphone is good enough for most situations. Of course, this doesn't include high quality DSLR cameras, which are still necessary for serious photographers.

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Camcorders

camcorder video camera lemons
Flip REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

The same can be said for camcorders. Smartphones, with with increasingly better cameras, more storage capacity, and improved stabilization features, are good enough to record video in most situations. (Again, there's still a market for DSLRs and higher quality cameras for professionals.)

 

Alarm clocks

alarm clock
Phalinn Ooi/flickr

When was the last time you set an actual alarm clock instead of just using the one on your phone?

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Voice recorders

Olympus S-711 voice recorder
Olympus S-711 voice recorder Flickr/Jonathan Aquino

Most smartphones come with apps that are great voice recorders.

 

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iPods and digital music players

Apple iPod U2 special edition
Flickr/James Chao

Apple still makes some iPods, but if you have a smartphone, you really don't need one.

 

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Calculators

Calculator Error
Flickr/jypsygen

Smartphones come with basic calculator apps, and you can download a graphing calculator app if you need one.

Maps

Tourist reading a map
Tourist reading a map Flickr/Pedro Ribeiro Simões

Remember when your glove compartment was filled with maps? Maybe you don't. Either way, there are now only a few situations where you need a folding paper map. 

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TVs

samsung smart tv
Samsung

As smartphones get bigger, people are increasingly using them to stream video. Some people use their smartphones rather than TVs to watch movies and TV shows.

Smartphones
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