I spend a lot of time on the phone. For the two week period between 12th - 26th Oct 2025, on average I was spending more than 4 hours of screen time per day.

ChatGPT puts me in the 🔴 High bucket: 4 - 6 hours/day.
And it says anything below 2 hours is ideal. Thats a tough goal.

✅ Low / Healthy

< 2 hours per day
Usually achievable if you’re intentional with usage. This level is associated with better sleep, focus, and mental health.

⚖️ Medium / Typical

2 – 4 hours per day
This is around the global average for adults. Not harmful by itself, but can start affecting attention span, sleep, or posture if not managed.

🔴 High

4 – 6 hours per day
Often indicates habit-driven or distraction-based use. Linked to reduced productivity and more frequent eye strain, neck pain, and mood dips.

🚨 Very High / Heavy Use

> 6 hours per day
Usually seen in people working on their phone, scrolling social media, binge-watching, gaming, or constantly checking notifications. Strong correlation with poor sleep quality, anxiety, and digital addiction markers.

Goal

In Nov'25, every week, I want to do less than 21h mobile screen on time.
Or less than 3h/day on average.

Let’s go!
Will update actuals over the next couple of weeks.

I recently swapped out my trusty iPhone 13 Pro with the new iPhone 17.
The 13 Pro was holding up very well, but I was tempted by the iPhone 17’s better cameras, 256GB storage, and ‘significantly improved battery life’. The base iPhone models having the ProMotion display made the decision even easier.

So what are the real world improvements?

After two weeks of use, the changes that I appreciate the most in iPhone 17 are

1. USB C Port
2. Faster Charging Speeds
3. Lighter Device

USB C

Finally those lightning cables are dead. There is just one type of cable everywhere in the house, just plug it in without thinking. It’s a game changer. Super convenient.
It’s most noticeable when using CarPlay. Gone are the days of fiddling and swapping between cables based on who is driving.

Faster Charging

With the iPhone 13 Pro, a quick morning charge was rarely sufficient to last the day. So I had developed a habit of daily overnight charging.
With the iPhone 17, to my pleasant surprise, a quick 30-minute top-up in the morning got it to 80%. It would get a further boost in the car to work and on the way back home. Now, I am always having 30%+ without even the overnight charging. Fantastic.
I guess this is how the Android folks have always lived :)

Lighter Device

This is by far the biggest change. Every time I take the device, my mind goes “oh, so light”.
Yes my pinky is very happy now.

What about the other upgrades?

Every year Apple claims “this is the biggest upgrade to iPhone ever” and by moving from 13 to 17, I had just zoomed past four such claims. There are a lot of improvements as per Apple marketing and each needs a callout

Performance

It’s faster. Apps open quicker, jumping between apps is quicker. I never felt the 13 was slow, and so the 17 overall just feels a bit more smoother overall. Good, but do I notice a 50% improvement? No.

One specific use case where the speed was instantly noticeable was the speech-to-text on the iPhone keyboard. It is much much faster now. Even Siri transcription and response feels a lot faster. Apple has put some meaningful hardware improvements to AI inference. Just waiting for the software to catch up.

Battery Life

Slightly better. Not the gargantuan improvement as I had hoped. Might need more time to get a better sense of this.

Cameras

Both wide and ultrawide cameras are clear upgrades. 24MP photos are appreciated. While the casual snaps look the same as the 13, when you zoom in and crop, these new cameras hold up much better.
Spatial audio and audio mix feature in videos are really cool, and the selfie cam is a solid upgrade. On a facetime call, my brother just flat out asked if I upgraded my phone. It’s that obvious I guess.
The cameras didn’t feature in my list above because 95% of the photos look the same and the quality improvements are not something I am constantly reminded of in day-to-day usage

Camera Control

Used it once maybe. Not very ergonomic. After so many years, I have gotten used to opening and operating the camera from the screen. Old habits die hard.
Won’t be surprised if this button gets deleted next year with iPhone 18.

Bigger Screen

Noticed and appreciated this a lot on Day 1. After two weeks, it’s become normal.
I do feel my typing accuracy seems to be better on this phone. I’ll take it.

Always On Display

Very cool. Tried a bunch of wallpaper and home screen settings and liked it.
But over time, it was distracting and I started glancing at my phone more often. Turned it off.

Dynamic Island

Okay. Useful. Sometimes.

Action Button

Had high hopes. This is a new habit that I need to pick up. Verdict TBD.

Apple Intelligence

Feels gimmicky as of now. Waiting for the new personalized Siri. Fingers crossed.

Verdict: It’s the convenience

10 years ago, each iPhone cycle seemed like a meaningful upgrade. Every year Apple would give us a slew of new capabilities and hence a list of new exciting reasons to switch.
But now, that list seems thin. Capabilities are more or less the same, and the upgrades are to convenience - it just does the same things but a bit better and quicker.

Finally, then the iPhone is good enough.
Or to be more accurate, iPhones have been good enough, at least since the iPhone 13 Pro.

We are all waiting for the new capabilities. Personalized Siri is first.

Today I completed my first ever roadtrip in an Electric Vehicle. A solo drive in my parents’ Tata Punch EV from Kalpetta, Wayanad to Hassan, Karnataka.

• Distance: 212 Kms
• Time: 5h 30mins (including 35 mins for charging)

This route had three distinct sections

1. Kalpetta to Gonikoppa: windy ghat sections
2. Forest section post Gonikoppa
3. Then flat lands all the way to Hassan

The car did phenomenally well in all three sections. The instant torque from the electric motors is the defining factor.
It climbs the ghat sections like a sports car. Zooms through the forests in eerie silence. And it makes quick overtakes a breeze on the flats.

The tradeoff is the charging stops. It’s more evident when traveling on a new route in an EV.

Punch EV claims a 421km range. In reality, if you can cross 300km, thats great.
So the 212km on this trip should be easy given I am leaving Kalpetta with 100% charge. But this is a route my parents might travel again in a few weeks and what if they don’t leave with 100%, or run into some potential issues on the way back? I wanted to scout and survey the chargers on the route and experience the process firsthand.

Being somewhat midway, Gonikoppa was the natural choice. There were 2 chargers listed and I picked the Zeon charger in Tata Motors showroom which had the best Plugscore on PlugShare app. Went to the spot, downloaded the zeon app, topped up the wallet with ₹100 and plugged in the charger and hit the start button.

Charging didn’t start. Tried three times, same issue. No clear error reason.

Frustration. Confusion.

Its a Sunday. There are no staff or security around to help.
Should I ditch this and go find another charger? Then I remembered someone on youtube complaining that these apps need a minimum balance. The app didn’t mention that as the error, so its going to be a long shot. So I topped up the balance to 300 and voila, 4th time lucky, charging starts.

I charged up to 85% and set off. I’ve heard that usually in EVs charging speed drops off at 80%, but in Punch EV I was surprised that charging was good all the way to 85%, so that was great.
Overall, that took about 15 mins (and some emotional swings) for me to figure out how to start charging. Many others might have just given up.

The whole fast charing experience felt like the how smartphones were pre-iPhone. Clunky and complicated. Definitely not mass market.
Would be cool if it was just plug and forget. Charging networks detect which car and then auto deduct money from a central shared wallet (could be fastag balance). This removes the friction of apps, wallets and pre charge authorizations.

My takeway: EVs are clearly superior to petrol/diesel cars in every way. Today on-road pricing has also become at par and overtime as the charging experience improves, this will become a no brainer. Exciting times.

PS: Thanks Gemini Nano Banana for creating the trip infographic. Please forgive the spelling errors.