What does “could be made that without it” mean in this context?

Question

I have been trying to translate an article about wearable smart watches. But there is a sentence which is unclear to me. I don't know what does "could be made that without it" mean in the following context?

I know I can’t be the only one that finds nightly recharging an irritation. I know we do the same thing with our smartphones, but that is a whole different appliance. My smartphone is my nerve center of mobile communications. The argument could be made that without it, any high-tech wearable is useless in carrying out its task, so in exchange for pretty much managing my entire digital identity (more on that later), I am willing to keep the battery juiced.

P.S: In the above context, author is reviewing wearable smart watches and a bit comparing it to smartphones.

Answer 1

The sentence is confusing because it uses heavy noun phrase shift. This just means that part of the subject has moved to the end of the clause. Here is the original clause. I have put the subject of the clause in bold:

• The argument could be made that without it, any high-tech wearable is useless in carrying out its task.

In this clause the word it, means "my smartphone".

Here is a version without heavy noun phrase shift:

• The argument that [without it, any high-tech wearable is useless in carrying out its task] could be made.

This sentence is passive and so a bit difficult to understand. Let's make it active so that we can understand it better:

• I could make the argument that [without it, any high-tech wearable is useless in carrying out its task].

This sentence is still complicated because the preposition phrase without it is at the beginning of the argument instead of the end. Also, "in carrying out its task" doesn't really give us any extra information. "Useless in carrying out its task" just means "useless"! Let's move "without it" to the end of the clause, and let's leave out "in carrying out its task"

• I could make the argument that any high-tech wearable is useless without it.

Remember that "it" here means "my smartphone". So the clause means:

• I could make the argument that any high-tech wearable is useless without my smartphone.

Hope this is helpful!

Answer 2

You seem to be parsing the sentence in a confusing way.

The argument could be made that without it, any high-tech wearable is useless in carrying out its task.

Here, it refers to your smartphone (from the previous sentence).

The statement is:

Without you smartphone, any high-tech wearable is useless in carrying out its task.

And the author just says that this statement can be used as an argument:

The following argument could be made: without you smartphone, any high-tech wearable is useless in carrying out its task.