Is it normal to think simple phones are better than smartphones?
When it comes to doing what a phone should be doing, a feature phones simply has a smartphone beat out.
Smartphone users are always gushing about how the newest model has a twelve hour battery life or something, like that's impressive. Feature phones only need to be charged a little more than once a week, and that's with moderate use and without having to look up how to disable functions you're not using.
Smartphones break easily. Even the supposedly durable ones just can't take a fall. My "old" feature phone has shrugged off countless falls on various surfaces. It was even stepped on by a horse without anything to show for it but some marks. No way a smartphone could take anything near that level of punishment. It's also been dropped in water with no problems. Sure, it's a trend in every field that newer products are less durable than older ones, especially these days when demanding that an expensive product be held to some sort of quality standard is considered "whining", but that doesn't mean we have to accept it.
Touchscreens are so imprecise compared to a physical keyboard. With keyboards, you don't ever have the problem of it thinking you hit a letter other than the one you wanted it to. People who use touchscreen keyboards a lot haven't actually gotten much better at typing, they've just lost touch with how often they're hitting backspace. Not to mention how much easier it is to type numbers and punctuation with keyboards and the lack of smudges.
It seems all the arguments for smartphones are, at best, tangential. Better for browsing the Internet? That's what my laptop is for, and unlike your shitty smartphone it can actually handle web plugins gracefully. I can connect through my phone's Wi-Fi if need be. And no, carrying a laptop is not a hassle, and to say that shows incredible laziness. Better cameras? The best phone camera is still terrible, so that's not something you can argue on. Although it's possible that, much like how earbuds have ruined this generation's perception of audio quality and left them unable to tell the difference between high quality and low quality audio files, a growing number of people are becoming blind to differences in quality of images. Casual games? Phone games suck and are only of interest to people who don't actually play games. The best phone games are just ports of classic real games, which says something.
Plus, smartphones have been making unacceptable steps back, actually being incapable of things that older phones could do. It wasn't until the 4S that the iPhone could even do a task as simple as copy and paste. And to be clear, yes, keyboard phones were able to do that when the iPhone came out. Of course, there was no shortage of other basic features the iPhone was lacking when it hit the market, like recording video, voice dialing, and so on. When Apple adds features that people who didn't jump on the bandwagon considered standard, its users rejoice. So Apple creates a problem then gets recognition for solving it. Sounds like Stockholm syndrome. Smartphone companies and their customers are happy to spearhead regression.
I had an iPhone and went back to feature phones when my two-year contract expired because the iPhone is an irredeemable piece of shit. Face it. Smartphones suck and are only popular because of consumer sheep who will buy any shiny thing a commercial tells them to with no regard for quality.