Wow…I think you are being overly-pedantic and sensitive.
Tailwinds.
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Did you spend hours carefully and artfully wrapping those leads around your cable housings?
I think my first one was some Cat’s Eye thing a few years later. This whole mad new world of cadence training! 
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Definitely mine is ropey then…
I have an iPhone 8. Less than one year old. The battery will degrade as it gets older.
I took my old but waterproof phone out on a ride this weekend because I refuse(d) to buy a bike computer for mapping purposes. After a 5 hour ride the battery shut off with 30 minutes left in the ride… as it was just starting to get dark out. The phone had 25% battery left so I’m guessing it shut off because it was cold out.
RidewGPS is great but I’m not interested in always being afraid that my battery is going to die if it’s below 50F outside. off to buy a bike computer now!
Iphone8, 2 years old. Much more problematic with BT hookups and background app management than my old android. An hour and a half of browsing and emails eats 20%. Stream a ride from my Garmin through connect and I get max 7 hours.
Confounding factor is I use hearing aids which have an apple native connection through BT. So probably chewing life there too. Even if I switch them off it doesn’t have much of an impact. Ah well. Next gen Android are supposed to have direct hearing aid support so I will probably go back to them after this.
My problem with the iPhone and battery life is that I can’t just look at the ride time alone On weeknight rides, I’m starting immediately at the end of the workday and can be out for two hours. My phone is often at 30% or less if I’ve been using it for work and not gotten around to recharging it during the day. Heck, my phone is often on fumes and just barely getting through a 1 hr TR workout in the evening.
On weekends I ride early so I can start a 4 hour rides with the full charge however, I get back around noon and I need my phone for the rest of the day. Even if it can handle a four hour ride, it can’t handle the rest of the day after a 4 hour ride without being recharged at some point.
Just one of the reasons having a separate device for bike data is best for me.
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I love my watch.
Does it all. Lasts long. Always have it on me.
And its actually old, Garmin Vivoactive HR. But it works
Computer :
- simplicity as I have configured a fixed setup that interacts with my shifters. No accidental switching etc between apps which ruins your ride recording. Actually that multi tasking behaviour in a smartphone simply gets in my way and distracts when riding a bike.
- ant+ support so I can connect all my sensors and don’t have to deal with ble. Which caused me already headaches indoors
- screen is readable in full sunlight. Just back from Spain and my iPhone was barely readable in full light. Battery won’t survive 4h rides in such conditions with screen intensity full on
- dropped my Garmin by accident already few times which would rendered my iPhone probably broken
Forgot to add. Don’t know how this is going to work out but using a phone when cycling is under scrutiny here and more and more voices are pleading for a ban when cycling. so this could also have an affect if using a phone (possibility to do other stuff then cycling 
)
I’m honestly surprised how much of an argument this has created. Obviously OP is not stating that a smartphone is the 100% ideal solution but only that it is definitely a highly workable solution that makes a dedicated head unit purchase harder to justify.
With that said, personally I use a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt and will never look back. I figured I’d list some of the reasons I specifically chose the wahoo as I feel like they’ve been overlooked thus far in this thread.
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Having a separate device means I can have it charged and ready for a ride at a moment’s notice. The beauty of smartphones is in the tons of uses they have but that also means I’m likely to have been using it all day for stuff and may not be at full charge before a ride. Not having to worry just removes one more bit of resistance.
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Smartphones have highly glossy screens which means reflections. The monochrome screen on the bolt combined with the matte finish means its highly readable in sunlight. You can crank the brightness up on a smartphone and read it no problem but when glancing quickly the wahoo is just night and day easier to read. This adds up over the course of long rides and means I’m spending less time with my eyes off the road/trail/whatever.
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Physical buttons are far superior to touchscreens while riding. Even without adding in rain and how it jumbles touchscreen responses, I like being able to perform an action such as hitting lap without ever having to look at a screen or aim for a button with my finger.
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My wahoo has been 100% reliable for the last year or two. I definitely can’t say the same for when I was using my phone. Android or iPhone, both would have occasional hiccups that might cease recording or similarly screw up a ride.
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Rear radar support. I like being warned of overtaking vehicles when out on country roads. As far as I’m aware, this is only available on Garmin and Wahoo head units.
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Looks. This is highly individual and honestly not very important to me but i prefer the look of a purpose built device on an OTF mount than a big ass phone sticking out front.
with all that said, when I travel and use bikes provided by someone else I just run strava on my apple watch and call it good enough. Its basically like using my phone and good enough to log a ride and brag a bit to my strava friends about cycling in a cool place. Lets be honest, that’s all a lot of us are looking to do half the time anyways. How anyone chooses to record the ride shouldn’t be causing this much uproar guys
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Am I the only one who is using just a watch? I can’t justify spending money on a head unit - or even a good phone holder. Also, I do crash quite spectacularly; that would worry me for both phone or head unit.
I always found my biggest issue with using my phone was overheating in the summer. All that direct sunlight on long rides can quite quickly overheat a phone while it is running location data and pulling in your watts, HR, cadence and speed. Had a few run-ins with that overheating issue and decided to get a Bolt instead. Been more than pleased with it.
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On my commuter I had my iPhone on the handlebars and the cold air caused issues for the phone. Happened on about 4-5 occasions, then when it was moved to my bag, issues went.
If you can’t decide just use something inbetween. 
GpLama reviewed it on his youtube channel.
This is valid for the use-case of wanting to record data, but it’s not really relevant to people who want a screen on their bars that is always on and always visible. I use my phone in my back pocket for location tracking so that my wife can see where I am, and it barely uses any battery power at all. But that’s a totally different thing from the device on my bars that is constantly displaying the stuff that I like to see. It seems a bit like this whole thread can be summarised as “different things work for different people, and nobody much cares what anyone else does - people should try stuff and do whatever works for them”.
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You seem to have a working solution - good for you. I prefer having a dedicated cycling computer because a) it is always ready (no need to have phone fully charged) and b) no hassle when I switch phones every 12 months. And maybe c) I like having physical buttons for start/stop, lap etc.
I’m following a guy from a LBS who does epic rides and records those with the strava app on his iphone. I know this because of several group rides he organized. He regularly has to manually add pieces of his routes to strava because either the battery of his iphone x died or strava just straight up didn’t record or stopped midway through. This alone would be enough to convince me to get a dedicated bike computer. besides, a phone just looks stupid on your bars. even more so with the quadlock mount - been there, done that.
Funny. I used those rudimentary bike computers, that can only show speed and distance, long before smart phones were invented… it never even occurred to me you could use a smartphone in lace of a proper bike computer. Just the thought of slapping my phone on the handle bars gives me anxiety. On a sunny summer day, where the screen has to be set on brightest level and the sun is toasting the phone, I doubt my battery would last longer than 2-3 hours. I also had some rainy rides, that were more akin to a scuba diving trip. No way my phone would have survived that. Plus the constant anxiety about breaking the phone. Also my (average sized) phone is probably like 4 times the size of my bike computer.
No thanks.
I have my nice little bike computer that was like 200 € (including speed/cadence and heart rate sensors). When I want to ride I literally press one button and I’m good to go. The battery easily lasts 20+ hours. and the thing is essentially bombproof.
I understand the arguments for smartphones, but I honestly don’t find them compelling at all.
But obviously every has to decide for themselves. I just think if you do more outdoor riding than just a few short weekend rides during the summer, then a proper purpose-build bike computer is just so much more convenient.
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This is my use case but I am livestreaming with Garmin and it is only good for 6-7 hours. Screen off, wifi off just the BTLE bind and data on. What app are you using to share with your Boss then?
I have to confess seeing the phone out there on those photos is giving me the heebee geebees… Like someone dragging their fork across the plate. I can almost hear its gorilla glass tinkling down the road already.