Ask HN: Who has ditched their phone and what is your replacement?

I am a freelance consultant for 20 years. I never lost a client or a job over not being reachable by cellphone 24/7. I return emails and calls asap when I get home. When I make appointments to meet someone, I always arrange a plan-b. No phone-call-micro-managing needed, like "where are you standing..?". I arrange beforehand a main meeting spot and an alternate spot. I am patient and can wait 15 minutes, no problem. I print out bus & train time tables, maps of the area with routes marked and have an offline map viewer (Cruiser) on my laptop if needed. That, and a sense of direction is all I need to get around.

The main reason for dropping cellphones is that they give me headaches and other neurological symptoms. Yes, its the RF and I don't care what people think of that. Its the RF.

The other reason for never getting a smartphone is that I had a PalmPilot once (a non-wireless handheld computer), and I would load websites onto it for offline browsing while commuting. Soon I realized that the constant context-switching had fragmented my attention so by the time I reached the office, I could hardly concentrate. Now I carry books and a notepad in my backpack. Much better for my brain.

So much peace now. I use VOIP through Telegram and Signal. I use email.

I get extremely fine-grained control over who can reach me, and when can I be reached.

I made this switch since February, 2020, and my life became better by 10-15% better automatically.

My phone hasn’t rang and I hadn't answered in the last 2.5 years. I love this.

So much better for mental health and wellbeing.

Now, I talk, but only with prior notice.

Instead, I've just invested in my own willpower and worked on not spending all my time on it -- albeit sometimes this involves deleting apps.

The minus is that some services will accept and send SMS to Skype and others won't. If you want to register on, say, OkCupid, Skype won't work.

I have looked into services you can connect a SIP phone to and the story is depressing. There are numerous vendors who are beyond sketchy who are priced similarly to Skype, but the reputable vendors are $20 a month or more.

I’ve also used Skype on numerous tablets, both android and iOS. The experience is a lot like using a phone but better. For one thing upstate NY has cell phone dead spots bigger than some European countries, my farm is in one of them. Since every gas station has free WiFi I get better phone coverage with my tablet than with a cell phone.

For everything else I use a desktop computer. That has a resolution of 1920x1080 on a 27" screen, which will be upgraded in a week or so to 2840x2160 on a 43" screen.

I dislike intensely using those tiny little phone screens for anything serious. I liken those as being the same as restricting yourself to performing "keyhole surgery". Sure you can do it, but why would you put yourself through the hassle?

I used ipod touch for ditching mobile surveillance for good since 2012, about 6 years ago i started using ipad mini. At some point I thought about getting iphone max modded to remove lte modem, but I heard they might not activate, and ipad mini is even better for video calls and actual work.

The good thing is apple does no want your phone or card for services if you not buying anything and top notch privacy browser is just enough to have access to any app possible, if built in/free apps are not enough.

I still have phone number registered to my flat and have voip redirection / recordings sent to my self hosted mail.

Am in the market for an enthusiast mirrorless camera, but haven't yet pulled the trigger. Some of them have wifi, which I'm trying to avoid.

I "get by without a cell phone" just fine. People who want / need to speak to me call.