I've been without my iPhone for a week now. It's amazing how many things you miss when a single device can do so much.

It's been seven days now since I turned off my rather erratic iPhone 5. Due to a hardware fault with the screen, it phones people in my contacts, looks for voice commands I've not given and in general was just becoming a nuisance. The phone is out of contract and warranty. With a new iPhone 6 coming in the next couple of weeks, it was false economy to fork out the money for a replacement device. The last week without an iPhone has been an eye-opener.

I always hear people ask what did we do before the smartphone arrived. To be honest, we probably did a lot of the same things we do today, however the arrival of the smartphone has allowed many people to do different things with just the one device. Aside from the interruptive nature of smartphones and many people's persistence in being glued to their device, they are in fact amazing little devices. Regardless of your choice of operating systems from the big three of Apple, Google and Microsoft, it can't be said that smartphones aren't useful. In the last week I've had a real chance to see what aspects of my life are influenced by it.

I start the day with my alarm clock going, or in fact the alarm on my iPhone. I've been using the alarm on my phone for a few years now. Without it to wake me up, I've resorted to using my wife's phone to wake me in the morning. Before taking our oldest son to school I also usually flick through my RSS subscriptions with Unread. I do this just about every morning. Just a quick scan to see what's new.

One thing I have missed is the phone and messaging capabilities of my iPhone. Arranging for clients to get in contact with me is now a list of places where I might be available at certain times of the day. They can get me on iMessage, HipChat, Skype and email on my MacBook and we have a landline number that they can reach me on during normal working hours during the day. I now try and work from home rather than working from a cafe as it's easier for clients to get in contact with me.

These are the essentials parts of my phone that I truly miss having. Each has a fall-back plan to keep me going, but the loss of the convenience of the smartphone is something that's been hard to adjust to. These are the essentials, but what else is there that I miss doing?

I love taking pictures with my phone. Having the facility to snap a nice picture during a bike ride, the kids mucking about or even the latest attempt at cooking in the kitchen. Preserving these moments with images is great to do.

It's not a massive priority but participating in the social network of your choice is something just about everyone does. Staying in contact with family, friends and followers on different networks lets you connect to others in a way we couldn't before. I don't mind the hit on things social networks like App.net but it I do use Path a lot for staying in touch with family.

Logging. No, not the timber kind, the geeky, self-improvement kind. Logging tasks, actions, goals, journal entries, images, bookmarks, ideas and all that other stuff. I do this a lot with my phone. It is perhaps the one action that I do the most on my phone.

Lastly there's reading. I do a lot of reading on my Kindle, but there are times during the day where I might sit for five minutes and read a couple of things on Instapaper. The convenience of having a reading list on hand is great when you've got a few minutes to kill.

These are the non-essentials things I like to do on my phone. While my world won't stop if I don't do these things, they do make a degree of contribution to different aspects of my life. Of all these I think I miss having a camera on hand the most.

It is only for a couple of weeks more though, but what the past week has taught me is that there's only so many things that you can do on a phone and that there are apps I had installed in the past that I didn't use and therefore won't need them on my new phone. Also there's parts of the day where I enjoy not having a phone. I definitely need to tuck away my phone in the morning and in the evening. The only time should be on my phone is doing any of the actions I mentioned above and when I'm not in the company of others. Hopefully this will be easier to follow through with a little break from the magic little glass box.