Smartphones hold about a day's charge, which is fairly terrible compared to the old dumbphone days, but fits fairly well with an average person's daily schedule: you return to your place of shelter and charge your phone for about two hours while you sleep.
Having USB ports on a bus is nice, and would likely help out those who forget to charge their phone while they sleep, those who don't have access to a stable residence, or those who used more charge than usual and are now low battery, but is absolutely not a "it's 2017 -- why isn't this a thing" requirement for something as short-term as one's trip on most public transport.
Instead, USB charging-only ports or other ways of charging one's phone should be ubiquitous in places where one spends a long-enough time anyway: long-distance transportation (buses, trains, planes, cars, ferries, etc.), and workplaces, even in places where one must place their phone in a locker for the entire shift.
but fits fairly well with an average person's daily schedule
In theory this is true but in practice lots and lots of my friends have dead phones or phones with older batteries or simply don't remember to recharge their batteries. I teach as an adjunct and students often carry chargers with them and plug their phones in during class (though I forbid phones and computers in class: https://jakeseliger.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distract...).
If you just look around, you'll probably see people with their faces in their phones all the time. This may be a bad thing in many respects (I tend to buy those arguments), but it can be good for public transportation, which lets people do the thing they really want to do. If we want better transportation systems, we have to get those systems to let people do the things they really want to do (i.e. stare into their phones).
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 24.9 ms ] threadHaving USB ports on a bus is nice, and would likely help out those who forget to charge their phone while they sleep, those who don't have access to a stable residence, or those who used more charge than usual and are now low battery, but is absolutely not a "it's 2017 -- why isn't this a thing" requirement for something as short-term as one's trip on most public transport.
Instead, USB charging-only ports or other ways of charging one's phone should be ubiquitous in places where one spends a long-enough time anyway: long-distance transportation (buses, trains, planes, cars, ferries, etc.), and workplaces, even in places where one must place their phone in a locker for the entire shift.
In theory this is true but in practice lots and lots of my friends have dead phones or phones with older batteries or simply don't remember to recharge their batteries. I teach as an adjunct and students often carry chargers with them and plug their phones in during class (though I forbid phones and computers in class: https://jakeseliger.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distract...).
If you just look around, you'll probably see people with their faces in their phones all the time. This may be a bad thing in many respects (I tend to buy those arguments), but it can be good for public transportation, which lets people do the thing they really want to do. If we want better transportation systems, we have to get those systems to let people do the things they really want to do (i.e. stare into their phones).
And I bet that companies making those kind of phones would win big if they drop those chargers on buses for free.