Then a couple of weeks ago I felt the social pressure and lack of a good camera so I bought an iPhone 12 mini. It was awful. I returned it 48 hours later and am now back with my beloved Nokia.
The grass really is greener this side of the fence.
You must not be in the US... that is a 3G phone and the 3G networks here are either shut off or in the process of being shut off.
plus using it to type and such is really a big annoyance. the keyboard is smashed in the lower 20% of the screen.
I never used taxi services anyway; bus services are pretty good here, and I cycle.
A bigger issue is that a lot of services are "smartphone-only", and can't be done with a regular computer; sometimes this makes sense, sometimes less so. I partly get around this by running Android emulator on my computer when I really can't avoid it, which works "well enough". This will only get worse in the future.
I dislike telling people I don't have a smartphone; people look at you like you're some sort of freak. Recently someone told me that "I do not belong in modern society" shrug. I guess it's not inaccurate, as I dislike a lot of technology and feel it makes our lives worse in many ways (in spite of working as a programmer, but that's just for the money at this point; very hypocritical, yes).
Right now I have a "true" dumb phone (or at least, as dumb as you can get), which can just call and SMS and that's it. Oh, it also has snake, of course, and curiously it also has some other games you need to "buy" for €5 or so. IIRC the EU will switch off 2G in 2024 or so, so I guess I'll have to buy a slightly less "dumb phone" by then. We'll see.
Buses and trains have their times at the stops/stations, or for less trafficked routes I just check on my computer and remember when I need to go.
Uber/Lyft are vile and I don't use them.
The only thing I miss with navigation is real-time traffic. Which, all things considered, is just a "nice to have".
You might have to give up uber. It's worth it though.
A lot of camera capabilities hinge on the physical size of the sensor, i.e. how much power it consumes to shoot and how much heat it generates. An iPhone camera sensor is tiny and so can do pretty amazing things like shoot 1080p 240fps slow-motion. Trying to do that with a 4/3" sensor is more demanding. I need slow-motion for my work.
This is what I did and it works surprising well. I still have a decent camera and can use my banking app etc.
You could say that I actually have a pretty decent phone I just disciplined myself to use it as little as possible.
Edit: the part I am really missing is the compactness of a dumb phone. Years back I had a tiny Xperia Mini and liked the size of it. I would love to see a successor at around $300-350.
Please make it happen Sony
By now, I have no illusions of being able to discipline myself to that extent. Even with many time-sucking apps uninstalled, there's always a fast browser on the smartphone, and it's a big temptation by itself.
This morning I’ve had mine in my hand since I woke up. I’ve done my schedule for the day, worked out a food and exercise plan, organised an evening out with my friends, done my finances, edited a couple of photos and given my daughter delivery estimate for her new iPad. It’s just gone 08:05 so I’ve got half an hour to shitpost on HN :)
I am completely set up for a productive day.
I just happen to use it as a simple phone with most of the crap turned off. Which maybe explains the improved battery life.
Edit: right now at 10% after 4 days and 16 hours. 8 hours of screen time. Top app was Microsoft Teams (56% of my battery usage).
The experiment was DOA, since there was no way of transferring my contacts from the iPhone to the Nokia. Furthermore, Sweden runs on BankID (an electronic id service) and it wasn’t available for the Nokia.
What did work on the other hand, was buying an Apple Watch with cellular. Now my phone is often in my bag/car/house and I’m still reachable via the Apple Watch, but have no way of doom scrolling.
When I first got BankID it was not tied to my phone and it was a lot of hassle to figure out how to make that the case with Handelsbanken (my bank at the time).
Much easier with Nordea, nordea having greater English support (though not amazing) and a much better web interface (bordering amazing when compared with Handelsbanken).
You’re right, but there’s no way I’m lugging an additional widget everywhere I go.
Now, the Apple Watch doesn’t have it either (yet) but it’s a good enough compromise where I can take a walk or run an errand without needing to take my phone with me.
I suggest you read "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.".
* Got rid of the native apps (except for Messenger Lite) years ago
* Switched to mbasic.facebook.com in the browser
* Recently I logged out of said mobile site
Now every time my muscle memory goes to facebook.com it asks me to login and I close the tab. I don't miss it at all and have no urge to login once I see the login form. I think I may have finally quashed my FB addiction!
Of course, you can go the Replicant/PostmarketOS/etc. or Purism/PinePhone or whatnot route, but then you're missing out on so many things and/or have to spend so much time on things (not worth it for me) that you might as well not get a smartphone. A smartphone is greatly reduces in value if your banking app and $popular_messenger_app doesn't work. And besides, it only solves part of the problem: I still have a device too large to comfortably use, in spite of being quite tall with big hands.
Self control and discipline start somewhere.
If you set yourself up not to need to exert this discipline, like in your example of keeping junk food out of the house, that's a burden off your mind.
That's mental energy you can use for other things.
(This simple analogy of requiring exhaustible mental resources for discipline doesn't necessarily apply to everyone. But there are some people it does apply to.)
In fact, much of the review centers around "smart" features -- things you'd probably need an Internet connection for -- rather than phone features.
For reference, here's a video that shows how KaiOS works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFMu6a7jL54 . I'd say that's pretty smart for a phone! Low resolution non-touch screen, sure. But it has modern website support in case you need it + plenty of communication and SNS apps...
If anything, I'd guess most people are more comfortable ditching the "phone" part of a smartphone (no calls or SMS support) so long as it has Internet. Limiting yourself to no more than WAP-level Internet support (no CSS or JS support at all)? That's the true dumb phone experience.
- identify myself: The state I'm in has not rolled out any support for electronic IDs so short of "taking a photo of a DL (which the Nokia also would allow for) and hoping for the best", I can't do this with a smartphone either.
- ride the bus, buy tickets for trains: Ditto for transit. No phone-compatible NFC integration at all means I still need a good old fashioned transit card. Train tickets can be bought digitally via the browser, which probably doesn't count (and the Nokia could also do this).
Also:
- banking: While there are dedicated apps, I don't see how the Nokia would prevent you from doing this via the bank's website or over the phone. Banking apps are not particularly more secure than the website and usually don't offer anything beyond what is available there.
So really a lot of the features mentioned are not that commonly available even for smartphones!
A phone that can run apps doesn't count as a dumbphone on my book. Do I use the term differently than most people? When I think of dumb phone, I think of the StarTAC, probably because it was my first. The RAZR was dumb, too, in my mind. A modern example for me is the Punkt MP02. It runs Android, technically, but you wouldn't know it, because you can dobmuch with it but, you know, use it as a phone. That's dumb to me, a phone that is a mostly just a phone.
When the original iPhone came out and didn’t support apps I (unsuccessfully) argued that that meant it wasn’t a smartphone, and it was even less smart than most dumb phones on the market.
At the time I used Sony Ericsson dumbphones, and they had very rich J2ME support - you could set Java apps as a live wallpaper (which iPhone still doesn't allow), multitask (which took years to get to the iPhone) and all this on very very modest (single-digit MB RAM) dumbphone hardware.
I'd personally define "dumb phone" as one that doesn't use the internet at all, period.
seriously?
Huh, how abandoned is it really?
It's not for everyone, just saying there exists devices between dumb and smart phone for those of us who wants to tune out a little bit.
Edit: Re battery, I’d say 12 hours. If i use it a whole lot, which i rarely do, i’d say 6 hours. Whenever i come home, i put it on the charger by the door, next to my keys.
I've also found myself using it as a 'dumb but useful phone'. Having Apple Pay / train tickets on it has been surprisingly useful.
The activity tracking has been surprisingly motivating.
Hard recommend.
If former, what other ways you've adapted for essential stuff that need a smart device.
If later, do you ever plan on getting a smartphone again ?
but the only things that make me really, really strongly consider getting smartphone is some form of Maps - let it be Google or something
and ability to send&receive pictures (MMS suck)
It's definitely possible to live with dumb phone, but stuff like maps, sending pictures and maybe access to email are sometimes incredibly handy
Now the only social network I still use is Linkedin.
But I also "waste" my time on other stuff now, so I don't know if it's better, the brain always find new ways to procrastinate I guess.
I get the ideological thing here but realistically smart phones are a really really good bit of tech and I adore mine.
That's the point. I call it "knowing what you need to be in control of your life".
> It's ten times more difficult to adapt to changes without information at hand.
I understand - for me, the argument goes that if I find myself needing to frantically google something, then I'm already on the wrong path. I accept this means that some lifestyles are not possible. Personally, I prefer it.
It’s not about frantically googling stuff. Last weekend the trains here went to hell here in the UK and the information at hand by the staff on how to get home was completely wrong. I managed to source information from elsewhere and that made the difference between me getting home at 21:00 or 23:30. Similarly when plan A fails (oh crap the restaurant we were going to is gone) then you can adapt to a plan B quickly with a good outcome.
I tried a KaiOS based phone also in that time, but that was so unbelievably unstable that I ditched it after using it for two weeks or so.
I still have a smartphone powered off in a drawer, that I pick whenever I need that (~once a month, for banking stuff, using Google Maps to drive to another city, etc). I have Telegram running on my laptop and a few other things like the app for my mowing robot.
In general, also at work, I like to mute all notifications if I need to focus, heavy Pomodoro user, too.
There are not that many downsides for me. Sometimes someone asks me to send a phone number to them, which is only possible via Bluetooth. So I need to write the number down on a piece of paper, type it back into an SMS and send it. What a waste of time - I first thought. But in reality, that dump phone saves much more time, than these little pieces of manual effort cause, so in the end, I still have more free time. I was surprised at how often I do things that I don't need to do that often, e.g. checking my bank account balance.
Rather of buying a new phone, it worked for me to just live with my iPhone 6 until today. It became so slow that it achieves pretty much the same behavioral perks but still supports a wider range of useful features imho like keeping my Spotify account usable on my commute. Opposidely, my reddit addiction -- and news sites in general -- completely disappeared as the website now takes seconds to load and the panel advocating to download the app takes up half the screen making it just unusable.
This "dumb" phone has an entire main-CPU OS, a web browser (!), and then another entire OS on the modem chip (which, of course, runs code which you have absolutely no influence over).
I miss dumbphones.
You'd really have to want to do this though, but it would be a good learning project.
When I tell people to "page me," I get one of two responses:
A) "What does that mean?!" (typically younger folks, less than thirty), or
B) [Initial Disbelief] "They still make those?!" (typically older folks, above forty)
I absolutely love it; of course this affects my social life... except that I run with an extremely small crowd, in a particularly small subset of my mid-sized US town.
I now have access to my cell phone, but it never leaves my house (used essentially as a landline, because it costs less than a local landline); I will BLOCK my Caller ID when making phone calls to anybody (outside a few trusted contacts), and I never hand out my new cell phone number (and disabled my decades-used phone#).
To each his own — I am mid-30s, and used to be 1337 ... never really understood cell phone culture, and am happily marching to my own beat!
I don't want a new display, case, operating system software or anything else, and that's why the 3310 falls short.
This is exactly what I did after trying a dumb phone. I have to say asisd from all the diversions, smarthpones do bring very nice features. I just wouldnt want to miss E-Banking, 2FA for some of my apps and so on. This is why I bought a Wiko Y81 for 60$ and I continue to love this phone. It is so painfully slow that it truly allowed me to get my social media habbits off. However while being slow it is still a solid phone, reading, listening to spotify and doing emergency stuff (like retrieving a lost boarding card from google drive) works fine. What's even better is due to its weak screen the battery lasts forever! It's so refreshing to just leave the house with 15% battery for the day and still getting through.
But one huge advantage smartphone has is the camera and the maps. These are really the killer feature for a smartphone. Everything else is a bonus!
The bonus includes mobile banking, receiving important emails, and so on!
Life is simple when you throw away the cancer apps from smartphones. Then proceed to use it as it should be used i.e. just a phone!
For the gadget tweakers, this device can be "hacked" a little and have alternative apps loaded (and bloatware removed) so that is a plus. Its sister device, the Nokia 800 Tough, is also tweakable and can be set up so the batter lasts 4 to 5 days (getting rid of all bloatware and making it an SMS/Telephone will do that to most phones though).
> Google Assistant. It’s not deeply integrated with the device (more on this below) but it can still be useful for voice text entry and quick Google lookups.
> Ability to sync your email, contacts and calendar, or simply import your contacts from a third-party service.
What makes this a "dumb phone" then?
Two flaws of the device that I think would make it hard to use as a primary are the short battery life (far from the fabled 10 day charge of yore) and the short key travel distance that makes it very easy to do multiple presses by mistake. The second thing is particularly annoying when entering your PIN (if you decide to use one).
Imagine a 3g, pre 4g phone. Basically that's what it is.
they're just hard to find for a good reason. :)
The protocol isn't that complex, so worst case you can write your own. (I've ported the TOTP protocol to get a 6 digit nixie clock to generate my tokens, lol)
The more fancy ones that pop up a message (like in iOS or with Google Play Services) probably won't be supported.
- KaiAuth https://www.reddit.com/r/KaiOS/comments/ft0jjn/kaiauth_simpl...
- GAuth by gbrad (https://kaptein.me/blog/porting-converting-web-apps-website-...)
- https://github.com/fwenzel/firekey
For some reason, when the KaiAuth developer tried to submit it into the KaiOS app store, KaiOStech rejected it because it doesn't "match the use case for majority of our users".
If it was anything like my old Nokia dumb phone days.
