From our other sites
The story
Even now, when it’s normal to calculate on a smartphone and use Excel or generative AI at work, Casio’s worldwide calculator shipments have stayed roughly flat over the past five years. A premium calculator the company released this April for ¥99,000 (tax included) sold out its domestic stock in about six weeks. On 5ch’s News Express+ board, this article sparked a wave of comments on “why calculators still sell today,” with posters divided over the different calculation logic used by smartphones versus calculators, and over how calculators, abacuses, and scientific calculators each still have their place.
Everyday math on your smartphone, Excel or generative AI at work—
With digital devices everywhere these days, it’s easy to assume the single-purpose “calculator” is nearing the end of its usefulness. And yet at industry leader Casio, worldwide shipment volumes haven’t dropped significantly at all over the past five years.
In fact, an unusually high-end calculator the company launched this April at ¥99,000 (tax included) sold out its domestic allotment in about six weeks. At a time when high-performance devices are within everyone’s reach, why do calculators keep selling? We asked a Casio representative.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Exactly. I had AI double-check some calculations once and it made quite a few mistakes lol. Would've been way more efficient to just have it write a one-off program instead.
Honestly, the abacus isn't really practical unless you've gotten good enough to do it entirely in your head lol.
These days it's America that's into abacus training. Meanwhile in Japan you've got working adults who are shaky even on their times tables. No way we're beating India or China.
True that. A rotary dial for temperature is about the easiest to use. Nowadays it's all just for looks.
My high school used pocket computers instead of scientific calculators. Pocket computers are handy.
It's Micom Detective (a retro "microcomputer detective" tokusatsu parody character)
Because it looks cool.
By not showing the customer the calculation process and only revealing the final purchase price, it creates an atmosphere that makes them want to sell.
just throw your PC away already.
Sometimes things just aren't entered in the spreadsheet yet, and going the extra mile like that shows you actually know the job.
On a calculator it comes out to 10 even without adding parentheses.
Because it calculates following standard order of operations, it's really awkward for accounting-style work.
What on earth are you even talking about?
Flip phones themselves can't actually be used anymore though, right?
So does that mean it was one of those "feature phones"?
Must be a 4G feature phone!
I run a UQ Mobile Android smartphone plus a 4G feature phone with an Ahamo SIM in it
Putting an Ahamo SIM in a 4G feature phone isn't really standard, so I'm thinking about porting my number (MNP)
Maybe to povo or Japan Communications SIM
Isn't it faster to just write the calculation on paper than to think "add 1, so move one bead up; subtract 1, so move one bead down"?
You're seriously underestimating the abacus.
There's no real substitute for a keyboard
And personally I'm the type who uses a mouse even with a laptop
Once you're used to it, you can't go back.
Those are rare these days
A smartphone calculator is basically a stripped-down scientific calculator doing basic arithmetic, so it's useless for financial accounting
you could've already clack-clacked through it on a real one
An abacus would do fine too
The calculator app I use takes less than a second to open though.
Not judging things with your own head, and leaving even the judgment itself to AI — that's the domestication of humanity.
Looking at the thread title, how exactly did you connect this to AI?
With a Windows calculator app you can go as many digits as you like
You can just use the numpad directly so it's no different from a real calculator
And you can make the display text as big as you want too
The numpad's on the right side — don't tell me you type on a calculator with your right hand?
"Is the 'Calculator' Still Necessary in the Age of AI and Smartphones?"
A calculator is a tool for making judgments with your own head, you know?
Not thinking and judging with your own head, and leaving even the judgment to AI — that's the domestication of humanity.
If you looked at the thread title and still can't see how this has nothing to do with AI, that's an issue that comes before you even start using AI.
On a calculator: 80
On a smartphone: 53
53 is the correct answer though.
As you can tell from how a smartphone calculator displays the whole expression you typed at the top
it evaluates the entire formula at once
A calculator, on the other hand, computes each number and symbol sequentially as you enter them
That's exactly the point — do you even need speed for this kind of calculation?
What are you even calculating in the first place?
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Standard calculators use an “immediate execution” method that computes each symbol as it’s entered, while smartphone calculator apps are designed to parse the entire expression and respect operator precedence (processing multiplication and division first). The “3+5×10” example that came up in the thread — 80 on a calculator versus 53 on a smartphone — comes down to this difference; neither one is malfunctioning. This calculator behavior has historical roots in matching the entry-order calculations used at cash registers and in bookkeeping, giving it a practical use distinct from scientific calculators or Excel. The thread split between the view that “dedicated devices are unnecessary in the age of AI and smartphones” and the view that “calculators offer a usability accounting work can’t get anywhere else,” with a side debate also breaking out over the merits of learning the abacus.
*This article is composed of excerpts and a summary from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Is the “Calculator” Still Necessary in the Age of AI and Smartphones? Amid Fears of “Sales Halved”… Shipments Stay Nearly Flat, Why “Dedicated Devices” Still Win Out in a Multitasking Era.”
Leave a Reply