Nowt wrong with that. From what I have seen of your posts that plays to your strengths. If you made an informed choice then it would be a bit silly to say you are wrong, either way.
Amongst the massive amount of trolling this sub-forum gets there's often a bunch of folk that are too ignorant to speak on a topic, or willfully myopic, or just plain old school liars. 'Till we can identify which is which it's probably a good thing that we first play a generous move and try to educate them before writing them off as a member of one of the other groups.
People have been making bold claims since forever here: Wool has properties X and is the best. If you choose Wellingtons not Danner for the woods you will die. Stainless steel is the wrong choice for a woods knife your life may depend on. Waterproof breathable fabrics are all hype and true outdoorsmen would be better of in a waxed jacket or rubber suit. And on and on. In this instance phones we're singling out for pillory, and the prosecution just did not stand up. I like that 'cos we all get to make more informed choices if we shake the tree.
I envisage a future thread where someone makes the claim that devices running on 18650 / 18350 cells are a liability 'cos they are more of a fire hazard compared too AA/AAA. And if we have that one out we may well find that on balance they confer considerable advantages on the savvy user, yet are a blight on the muppet. Same as we got here with the phone thing. If somebody said I just prefer AA 'cos..., I can respect that. Again, same as just a preference to not take a sophisticated phone as a navigation aid. It's honest. When folks are disingenuous and make absolute claims pointing at phones as a cause of a problem, well that's simply a lie. Nobody should be comfortable with that.
This is called a strawman argument. The reasons were given very clearly why a map and compass are superior. You are arguing that it is just opinion; completely different argument. Another example is that you have reduced the argument to the absurd, as if the difference between a map and phone is the same as battery types. Then you even attempt to make not so subtle personal attacks. Perhaps a mistake to continue but I learn from these arguments so perhaps someone else can get something out of it too.
While GPS and phones may be good for quick reference in areas with signal, there is simply no comparison to map and compass for serious navigation requirements (especially in true wilderness settings where there is little or no signal).
Claiming that there were lies made while not pointing them out is itself a form of lie, and disingenuous. Separate articles were provided pointing to the problem, both from professionals who have to rescue people in the wild (and anyone can easily look up more articles if they see this as insufficient information). Reading the articles with the slightest amount of critical thinking should suggest how something is wrong, and that it cannot just be pinned on the individuals. (Think of weapons, how large is the potential area of damage for a knife compared to a nuke? The fragility and risk involved with technology increases as the energy input increases, and one of the aspects of fragility is the decline in personal responsibility. One could argue that no map is the ultimate ideal as it requires such high navigational skill, the ability to map in your head, and would be the exact opposite of using the phone as a surrogate for your brain.)
The repeated claims that everything comes down to opinion and personal preference is simply a sign of the times (it is essentially an amalgam fallacy: appeal to emotion, appeal to authority, appeal to personal experience); when people become overly sensitive to others and any strong ideas. There are truths which go beyond personal preference, and simply denying them does not make them go away, it actually perpetuates the problem. While people who rely on the 'personal preference' fallacy feel in some way disrespected when a person presents a strong idea, it is really a disrespect to cause ignorance surrounding a well-researched topic - in this case by trying to shut down discussion with the old line, 'It's just personal preference.'
You could respond to Mors Kochanski's "Ideal Bushcraft Knife" that it's all just personal preference and a Bear Grylls' knife with an iPhone taped to it is just as good. But you would be wrong, and it would be an insult to the person and all the effort he put into studying and sharing that knowledge.
In other words, it is not an insult to tell someone they are wrong when they are (and you can prove it), but it is an insult to tell someone they are wrong when there is no proof and you rely on your solipsism of 'personal preference'. The latter is what people tend towards today, and it's connected to tall-poppy syndrome and moral relativism (essentially it is a technique to knock down people with more experience and/or knowledge with the idea that the use of an object is completely relative). You're welcome to your personal preference but don't try to pass it off as some great ideal which trumps all future discussion, otherwise your attempts to turn everything you don't like as disingenuous might be called out for what they are: a disingenuous facade of discussion which is really aimed at shutting the discussion down.