Think of a smartphone as "laptop lite," not "better flip-phone," and I think that might help answer your question.

Since you don't have a smartphone, you know objectively "no apps" and "no wifi," but what that means is:

- no online banking at my fingertips so I always know how much money I have

- No personal e-mail directly at my fingertips so, for instance, when a recruiter hits me up, i can respond relatively quickly despite being at work (At my work I cannot in any way access personal email, only my work email address)

- No MyFitnessPal which allows me to track my calorie consumption throughout the day and monitor my macros, if I care enough to try to meet them

- No pedometer/Fitbit/Health app to help me know my step count for the day and if I need to "step it up" a notch to meet my daily goal

- No music to listen to (it's all on my smartphone)

- Not to mention the apps which are solely for entertainment, which again, especially at work, are pretty nice to have.

In response to this, you might say, "Well, you can do all of these things without a smartphone!" and yes, that's true - but with a smartphone, you can do them easily, and you can do them all in one place, and you can access every single one of them almost immediately, without having to page through notes, find trackers you've saved on the computer, run iTunes/YouTube on your work computer, what-have-you. It's a huge difference in experience, where the smartphone allows you to do a ton of different things at once, all in one place, neatly; none of the things I've mentioned are really "entertainment" items, yet they are probably the most frequent ways I use my smartphone on a day-to-day basis.

Well, that and texting.