I tried a dumbphone but it was a frustrating experience.
I recently bought myself a cheap old Android device and installed LineageOS on it. I then removed the play store and browser, and installed a handful of apps that are useful and that I don't get sucked into (personal email, whatsapp, maps, kindle). If I need to (e.g. for a trip) I can load the browser and whatever apps back on
It's the only thing that has worked _for me_ to stop randomly scrolling through rubbish when I'm bored, after having tried parental controls etc. on an iPhone
My aversion to smart phones has always been two-fold:
1. I don't like being interrupted. Land lines drove me crazy when the phone would ring unexpectedly (and it was often telemarketers). So in the early days of people starting to buy cell phones, my view of them was that I would be carrying around this thing that would constantly make noise and interrupt me wherever I went. So I default hated mobile phones in general for the longest time.
2. Once I finally bought a cell phone, and I was observing how much people were using them in general, I felt like it was a device that I didn't really control. On the desktop I use Linux and have since the late 90s. I'm a "power user" who likes to customize everything, use as much FOSS software as I can, I loathe bloatware and don't like sending my data to remote servers. So I really only used a smart phone to text my family and occasionally use a web browser if I was out in public and needed to look something up.
As for #1, I realized that smart phones in general have a killer feature that landlines never did: you can set your default ring tone to silence and then give people you actually care about a custom ring tone.
And for #2, I eventually bought a Google Pixel and installed GrapheneOS. Now I feel less hatred of the device. I still don't use a smart phone as much as most people do, but I feel like it's mine and I'm in control of it. There's no bloatware or spyware, I install the FOSS apps that I want to use and I customize the thing to my liking. It feels like running Linux on my desktops ... I'm the user & the master of the machine. It exists to serve me, not the other way around.
If I didn't use my phone as an mp3 player, reach for a web browser occasionally or temporarily install proprietary apps when I'm on vacation (Uber, My Disney Experience etc.) I'd probably get a dumb phone myself.
I've done basically the same thing, but without lineage involved. Most / all of what you say there can be achieved with stock Android. One can download F-droid, disable the play store and google services, disable 15 other things, disable the stock browser, and do the same little trick of having no browser, and then easily downloading one occasionally if there's an actual need, then re-deleting. This works for me if I have it as a rule that I never re-enable the stock browser.
Not suggesting you do this, your approach is better I would say. Just for anyone reading, it is possible to do something very similar with a standard Android phone, and roll back if required. I only have a few apps from F-droid installed, and never feel the lack of something. Used OpenStreetMaps once or twice when in a new city for navigating offline with a downloaded map, for example.
I think the biggest thing about the smart phone is important apps like on-call, office reimbursement/receipts, chat applications such as WhatsApp or GroupMe, and the camera. Were it not for these, I might switch. Also I do light reading/research on my phone, which I would miss.
I have recently migrated most of those “important” apps to an old iPhone that has no SIM card
My interrupt driven life is segregated to a WiFi-only device and I am available most of the day. However the rest of the day is my own and I have a barrier to divide the two.
I am still weaning myself away from link/discussion sites like HN (Gen AI is making this easier) but ditched other social media a decade ago and have had no regrets at all.
There really is something about returning to a “slow” lifestyle. Read more long form media. Listen to albums in their entirety. Go for a walk with zero notifications or distractions. Take time, be bored. It’s better for you.
Stop letting your life and worldview be controlled by some algorithm that is not acting in your best interest.
I think we will look back on the decade or so post-smartphone and realize that the never ending feed was the most impactful innovation, and it didn’t do us any good at all.
> Also I do light reading/research on my phone, which I would miss.
Same. I particularly like queuing up items to read when I'm on transit, in a waiting room, standing in line, etc. It helps me both be more patient during those odd 3-10 minute blocks of downtime and read a few things that I might not otherwise take the time to read.
I suspect the light phone could fill this roll for me, as far as the reading is concerned.
For the past two years though, I've been using just an Apple Watch, which I was able to connect my old phone number to. It has maps, texting, calling (works best via bluetooth), weather, heart rate monitoring, alarms, email, sports scores, and some music apps. When attached to my wife's phone plan, it costs me $5 per month for all service.
I think the unfortunate reality of dumbphones is that of the folks searching for dumbphones, we all have fairly specific ideas on which features we want and which ones we don't, but there are only like 5 reasonable options available, and most don't hit the mark for many of us. If you want good maps, that rules out many. If you want a camera, that would rule out the watch like I use. If you want reasonable texting ergonomics that isn't speech-to-text, that rules out pretty much all of them
I think a watch is indeed a better 'companion' for people that want to detox from screentime. I do find Apple is hesitant to make it act as a primary driver. I find myself needing my iPhone too much for my liking. Hopefully this will change in the future.
I want the connectivity, I just don't want to...
- carry 2 devices.
- have a media consumption device with me all the time
Can you tell me more about your watch use? I wanted to do something like this, but I got the impression that even if you get an Apple watch with a SIM card, you still would practically need an Apple phone paired with it.
I wanted a dumbphone so I could avoid the crapware in android. But then I saw the Punkt MP01 with it's 4G hotspot and lust filled my heart.
So then I had a smartphone with android crapware and a very bad UI.
It did keep me from doomscrolling at the bus stop, so there is that.
I suspect the "iPhone of modern dumbphones" hasn't been invented yet. My gut feeling is there are about as many reasons people want to use dumbphones as there are people using dumbphones so getting "one dumbphone to rule them all" the same way the apple and Samsung have is a ways off.
Jobs did his thing with the iPhone. He took a complex and indecipherable phone market and removed pretty much all choice.
It worked brilliantly and if your phone is not a featureless slab of glass you have an insignificant niche of a market.
This idea of “one dumb phone to rule them all” is what every carrier in the world was trying to do in 2005 and we ended up with hundreds of ambitious and doomed designs.
What I miss most about the pre-iPhone era is that I didn’t think about my phone unless I needed to communicate with someone in my real life.
The dumb phone isn’t making a huge comeback. People escape into their smartphones.
But I appreciate this movement that in return offers us an escape from the smartphone
I always wanted a pocket-sized computer. But I never wanted a pocket-sized computer with a built-in telephone. Strange idea.
Some folks got to experience the world before telephones were portable, and also before mobile telephones came with general purpose computers attached ("before"). To anyone born after, the idea probably seems perfectly natural.
The case for carrying a mobile phone on one's person wherever they go is compelling, for emergency reasons alone. But the case for one carrying a portable computer wherever they go, not so much.
Those generations born before might remember that as kids we used to have handheld video games, with tactile buttons. Of course, kids wanted to bring these games everywhere. But no responsible parent let their kid bring them _everywhere_.
I used a string of KaiOS devices mostly as my primary device from ~2017-2023.
I loved the battery life, the lack of distraction, the size and portability. I liked KaiOS because I could still chat via Facebook, Whatsapp, check email, maps, when I needed to. But it was annoying enough that I didn't spend much time in them. I loved/hated the physical T9 keys. I could text while not even looking, but it definitely was never as fast as a smartphone. If the predictive text was better it may have worked out.
The problems are
1. The camera. I had multiple devices with different levels of camera but it's truly a marvel of our world that I can carry around something that takes cinema-quality photos immediately. Dumb phones do not have good cameras. It's almost useless to even include one, I mostly just used it to remember specific posters/signs like parking.
2. The 'requirement' to use smartphone apps. Certain bank logins need an authenticator app. The Canadian border required Arrive can. Some concerts use apps for tickets. Yes, there are workarounds. Yes, it's possible to live without these.. But I can tell you from firsthand experience it's getting harder and harder, more annoying. This is actually simultaneously the reason I stuck with it so long, as a sort of protest against the direction our society is going.. but alas it didnt quite last.
3. Job changed, I needed to access discord while working at a bar. I realized I was carrying BOTH phones around for almost all of 2023, using my dumb phone for calls and texts, and my smartphone with WiFi to run discord and a few other apps. It felt stupid and was annoying so I bit the bullet and switched my sim to the smartphone.
4. I literally listen to less music. The music player apps were all garbage and it's no longer 2007 so it's not really fun to maintain a library of mp3s on a device. None of the KaiOS devices support streaming music.
If someone comes out with a small "dumb" phone with maps, Spotify, a great camera, and support for signal, Whatsapp, maybe FB messenger, and a basic browser, with good predictive typing and an OS that doesn't lag, I would pay a premium for it.
Edit: one of the most annoying side effects is when I'm in public trying to check maps or write a text and suddenly everyone around me asks "omG is that a flip phone???" and I am not a rude person so I maintain a slight conversation while they pry and ask to see it and show their other friends. Slows down the process of quickly using my phone quite a bit
i have a phone with KaiOS. The trouble I have is texting. Everyone wants to text but if I need to reply it takes three different button for each letter. I am looking some t writing a custom keyboard. does any have any ideas?
Edit: Maybe (just now looking at KaiOS development stuff) I could write a morse code keyboard.
To recharge my EV on the go, unfortunately, I need a macrospy device, aka smartphone [1] but I normally do not use it as a phone, and I answer calls from it only on the go, my phone numbers for 99% of my contacts are on my home pbx and calls get redirected only when I'm on the go. Only very few in my family know my "mobile" phone number. For me it's essentially:
- a GPS device for car navigation
- a portable hotspot when needed
- rarely a quick browser looking for basic information (like a phone number of a shop)
- rarely a MUA if I need to see, not compose, my mails on the go.
That's is. I've tried a KaiOS phone but it's just a bad hybrid, so I quit it.
[1] macrospy as opposed to classic micro-spy (bugs) that was bought and deployed with significant costs, potentially aleatory reliability and potentially short lifespan by those who want to spy a target. These days PR are able to do the inverse: an expensive and very visible device, bought and kept up by the spied target to enjoy being profiled...
Isn't this a damning condemnation for the tech world? Can anyone think of another product that was so popular and then people started abandoning it for their own mental health? This sounds like drugs!
We created the most influential hardware device in the past 30 years (smartphone) and within 5 years it was used to weaponize human vulnerabilities (high jacking dopamine, porn, propaganda, etc...) and has had a huge negative impact on our young people so much so that social media* is now being compared to smoking. I think the takeaway is "Don't trust anything this industry makes because eventually they'll use it to extract profits and harm you in some sneaky way". Kinda like how most people rolled their eyes when tobacco companies push vapes as "safer".
Most of my non tech friends are starting to look at the tech industry like the oil industry. Greedy, hurting society for profits, and delusional. This is sad because most people I work with are amazing and great people who build fantastic products.
* I think social media would be a fraction of what it is today without the smartphone
i love my iphone 12 mini for this very reason. It's still small enough to fit 'mostly' comfortably in my pocket, even a shirt pocket. I hate how large most phones are now and everyone i know that sees my phone makes fun of me/it. I just don't get why (or how) one uses such huge devices as their phones now.
My daily driver is a Unihertz Jelly Star: full android 13, but on a 3" screen and it fits in a watch pocket. Probably not for everyone, but I love it and maybe you would too...
My first Afghanistan deployment, I left with an old nokia and came back to find the world had invented smart phones. My second deployment, I left with a new iPhone 4, and came back to find people walking around with tablets.
I miss my iPhone 5, that thing was so tiny. It was amazing.
Yes, small is the best. Currently I use a Palm Phone which is the perfect size. But of course discontinued. The market needs a lot more choices in that size.
Not for me, I've NEVER had WA and I regularly tell anyone: "to reach me you have mails for long async stuff, phone calls for quick/urgent/important topics, with various VoIP numbers to match you country/phone plan, you do not need anything else".
People tray to force others on walled gardens must be LART-ed enough to understand.
If enough people do have a problem with a thing, the cause could either be seen as the thing, or human nature. But we aren’t changing human nature, so we can only really go after the thing.
(sorry, this is long. i took a few minutes to write this down.)
I never owned a Google/Apple device and never used one for more than a few minutes in my life.
I currently use my pinephone exclusively since my +15y old 2G dumb phone broke last year (i
broke it while fiddling with it, duh. it would likely have lasted another 15y. it still had its
first battery which lasted 5d with moderate phone usage).
Before pinephone i used a +15y old 2G flip phone (it had its first battery and lasted +7d) and i loved it,
which replaced my htc hd mini and htc hd2 around 2015 (fun times, sigh).
I hate the modern concept of phone and observing the long-lasting effect
of addiction on people's social and mental capabilities reminds me how important
a mind free from distraction and addiction is.
I know it takes a lot of self-discipline to own such a thing and not get sucked
into all the dark patterns that lurk you into addiction and drain your brain (and pocket, ultimately, as this is what it's made for).
Every now and then HN features some "i quit my smart{phone,watch} and it was hard" post
and commenters romanticize about it, yet i doubt most of them grasp the real implications.
Every now and then I whitness the effect of detox/cold turkey with "smart"{watch,phone}
on people (usually children, which cant't know better. they are exposed to digital media way too much with way too
little guidance/regulation by adults who are exposed too much and who don't seem to know better as well)
and it's the classic symptoms.
Unlike other additctive things, while addictive, modern phones seem useful/beneficial at the same time, which
is used to justiy excessive use. It's a fallacy, i don't see it.
Software run on these devices is not meant to be useful (in the generic sense)
but to keep/make you a customer (and they use lot of psy trick).
Do I miss out on things because i don't take part in the "modern" way of interacting with people/companies/state?
due to my self-impossed "accessibility issue" (not using "apps", that is)?
Sure, but I think
* people forgetting my birthday because their facebook app didn't remind them (because I don't provide data to facebook)
are dumb,
* banks who don't provide any other second factor for auth than their Google/Apple apps are dumb,
* (nothing to complain about state here yet, but will probably come later)
To me this just reveals the brokenness of some aspects of social interaction and economy
as the exclusion very well applies to elderly people as well (who even struggte with using
a computer, so they miss out on even more that can't be done in a purely offline way).
And i'm not even taking into account the macroscopic political aspects of driving
social life, state affairs and economy more and more into the walled garden duopoly
that is Google/Apple.
Nowadays, Nokia branded HMD dumb phones are available (i have a 4G 2660 flip here, works ok'ish).
[+] [-] jdsnape|1 year ago|reply
I recently bought myself a cheap old Android device and installed LineageOS on it. I then removed the play store and browser, and installed a handful of apps that are useful and that I don't get sucked into (personal email, whatsapp, maps, kindle). If I need to (e.g. for a trip) I can load the browser and whatever apps back on
It's the only thing that has worked _for me_ to stop randomly scrolling through rubbish when I'm bored, after having tried parental controls etc. on an iPhone
[+] [-] gspencley|1 year ago|reply
1. I don't like being interrupted. Land lines drove me crazy when the phone would ring unexpectedly (and it was often telemarketers). So in the early days of people starting to buy cell phones, my view of them was that I would be carrying around this thing that would constantly make noise and interrupt me wherever I went. So I default hated mobile phones in general for the longest time.
2. Once I finally bought a cell phone, and I was observing how much people were using them in general, I felt like it was a device that I didn't really control. On the desktop I use Linux and have since the late 90s. I'm a "power user" who likes to customize everything, use as much FOSS software as I can, I loathe bloatware and don't like sending my data to remote servers. So I really only used a smart phone to text my family and occasionally use a web browser if I was out in public and needed to look something up.
As for #1, I realized that smart phones in general have a killer feature that landlines never did: you can set your default ring tone to silence and then give people you actually care about a custom ring tone.
And for #2, I eventually bought a Google Pixel and installed GrapheneOS. Now I feel less hatred of the device. I still don't use a smart phone as much as most people do, but I feel like it's mine and I'm in control of it. There's no bloatware or spyware, I install the FOSS apps that I want to use and I customize the thing to my liking. It feels like running Linux on my desktops ... I'm the user & the master of the machine. It exists to serve me, not the other way around.
If I didn't use my phone as an mp3 player, reach for a web browser occasionally or temporarily install proprietary apps when I'm on vacation (Uber, My Disney Experience etc.) I'd probably get a dumb phone myself.
[+] [-] sourcepluck|1 year ago|reply
Not suggesting you do this, your approach is better I would say. Just for anyone reading, it is possible to do something very similar with a standard Android phone, and roll back if required. I only have a few apps from F-droid installed, and never feel the lack of something. Used OpenStreetMaps once or twice when in a new city for navigating offline with a downloaded map, for example.
[+] [-] Fire-Dragon-DoL|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] djha-skin|1 year ago|reply
I think the biggest thing about the smart phone is important apps like on-call, office reimbursement/receipts, chat applications such as WhatsApp or GroupMe, and the camera. Were it not for these, I might switch. Also I do light reading/research on my phone, which I would miss.
[+] [-] mingus88|1 year ago|reply
My interrupt driven life is segregated to a WiFi-only device and I am available most of the day. However the rest of the day is my own and I have a barrier to divide the two.
I am still weaning myself away from link/discussion sites like HN (Gen AI is making this easier) but ditched other social media a decade ago and have had no regrets at all.
There really is something about returning to a “slow” lifestyle. Read more long form media. Listen to albums in their entirety. Go for a walk with zero notifications or distractions. Take time, be bored. It’s better for you.
Stop letting your life and worldview be controlled by some algorithm that is not acting in your best interest.
I think we will look back on the decade or so post-smartphone and realize that the never ending feed was the most impactful innovation, and it didn’t do us any good at all.
[+] [-] hoistbypetard|1 year ago|reply
Same. I particularly like queuing up items to read when I'm on transit, in a waiting room, standing in line, etc. It helps me both be more patient during those odd 3-10 minute blocks of downtime and read a few things that I might not otherwise take the time to read.
I suspect the light phone could fill this roll for me, as far as the reading is concerned.
[+] [-] dmattia|1 year ago|reply
For the past two years though, I've been using just an Apple Watch, which I was able to connect my old phone number to. It has maps, texting, calling (works best via bluetooth), weather, heart rate monitoring, alarms, email, sports scores, and some music apps. When attached to my wife's phone plan, it costs me $5 per month for all service.
I think the unfortunate reality of dumbphones is that of the folks searching for dumbphones, we all have fairly specific ideas on which features we want and which ones we don't, but there are only like 5 reasonable options available, and most don't hit the mark for many of us. If you want good maps, that rules out many. If you want a camera, that would rule out the watch like I use. If you want reasonable texting ergonomics that isn't speech-to-text, that rules out pretty much all of them
[+] [-] peebeebee|1 year ago|reply
I want the connectivity, I just don't want to... - carry 2 devices. - have a media consumption device with me all the time
[+] [-] rssoconnor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] retrocryptid|1 year ago|reply
So then I had a smartphone with android crapware and a very bad UI.
It did keep me from doomscrolling at the bus stop, so there is that.
I suspect the "iPhone of modern dumbphones" hasn't been invented yet. My gut feeling is there are about as many reasons people want to use dumbphones as there are people using dumbphones so getting "one dumbphone to rule them all" the same way the apple and Samsung have is a ways off.
[+] [-] mingus88|1 year ago|reply
It worked brilliantly and if your phone is not a featureless slab of glass you have an insignificant niche of a market.
This idea of “one dumb phone to rule them all” is what every carrier in the world was trying to do in 2005 and we ended up with hundreds of ambitious and doomed designs.
What I miss most about the pre-iPhone era is that I didn’t think about my phone unless I needed to communicate with someone in my real life.
The dumb phone isn’t making a huge comeback. People escape into their smartphones.
But I appreciate this movement that in return offers us an escape from the smartphone
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|1 year ago|reply
Some folks got to experience the world before telephones were portable, and also before mobile telephones came with general purpose computers attached ("before"). To anyone born after, the idea probably seems perfectly natural.
The case for carrying a mobile phone on one's person wherever they go is compelling, for emergency reasons alone. But the case for one carrying a portable computer wherever they go, not so much.
Those generations born before might remember that as kids we used to have handheld video games, with tactile buttons. Of course, kids wanted to bring these games everywhere. But no responsible parent let their kid bring them _everywhere_.
[+] [-] jonahrd|1 year ago|reply
The problems are 1. The camera. I had multiple devices with different levels of camera but it's truly a marvel of our world that I can carry around something that takes cinema-quality photos immediately. Dumb phones do not have good cameras. It's almost useless to even include one, I mostly just used it to remember specific posters/signs like parking.
2. The 'requirement' to use smartphone apps. Certain bank logins need an authenticator app. The Canadian border required Arrive can. Some concerts use apps for tickets. Yes, there are workarounds. Yes, it's possible to live without these.. But I can tell you from firsthand experience it's getting harder and harder, more annoying. This is actually simultaneously the reason I stuck with it so long, as a sort of protest against the direction our society is going.. but alas it didnt quite last.
3. Job changed, I needed to access discord while working at a bar. I realized I was carrying BOTH phones around for almost all of 2023, using my dumb phone for calls and texts, and my smartphone with WiFi to run discord and a few other apps. It felt stupid and was annoying so I bit the bullet and switched my sim to the smartphone.
4. I literally listen to less music. The music player apps were all garbage and it's no longer 2007 so it's not really fun to maintain a library of mp3s on a device. None of the KaiOS devices support streaming music.
If someone comes out with a small "dumb" phone with maps, Spotify, a great camera, and support for signal, Whatsapp, maybe FB messenger, and a basic browser, with good predictive typing and an OS that doesn't lag, I would pay a premium for it.
Edit: one of the most annoying side effects is when I'm in public trying to check maps or write a text and suddenly everyone around me asks "omG is that a flip phone???" and I am not a rude person so I maintain a slight conversation while they pry and ask to see it and show their other friends. Slows down the process of quickly using my phone quite a bit
[+] [-] tocs3|1 year ago|reply
Edit: Maybe (just now looking at KaiOS development stuff) I could write a morse code keyboard.
[+] [-] jareklupinski|1 year ago|reply
I'm in the process of "de-apping" my entertainment: I replaced TV/Streaming with a stack of DVD's and hard drives, and Music apps with cassette tapes.
I'm thinking there's something to the "tactile experience" that vinyl lovers want from their collection, but I just don't have that much room...
Things like Taxis/Maps/Work will be impossible to remove from my smartphone, but this way at least my free time is fully mine again
[+] [-] kkfx|1 year ago|reply
- a GPS device for car navigation
- a portable hotspot when needed
- rarely a quick browser looking for basic information (like a phone number of a shop)
- rarely a MUA if I need to see, not compose, my mails on the go.
That's is. I've tried a KaiOS phone but it's just a bad hybrid, so I quit it.
[1] macrospy as opposed to classic micro-spy (bugs) that was bought and deployed with significant costs, potentially aleatory reliability and potentially short lifespan by those who want to spy a target. These days PR are able to do the inverse: an expensive and very visible device, bought and kept up by the spied target to enjoy being profiled...
[+] [-] Dem_Boys|1 year ago|reply
We created the most influential hardware device in the past 30 years (smartphone) and within 5 years it was used to weaponize human vulnerabilities (high jacking dopamine, porn, propaganda, etc...) and has had a huge negative impact on our young people so much so that social media* is now being compared to smoking. I think the takeaway is "Don't trust anything this industry makes because eventually they'll use it to extract profits and harm you in some sneaky way". Kinda like how most people rolled their eyes when tobacco companies push vapes as "safer".
Most of my non tech friends are starting to look at the tech industry like the oil industry. Greedy, hurting society for profits, and delusional. This is sad because most people I work with are amazing and great people who build fantastic products.
* I think social media would be a fraction of what it is today without the smartphone
[+] [-] disqard|1 year ago|reply
Big Tech does indeed resemble Big Oil, plus "I'm in this picture and I don't like it" (for many folks on this site).
[+] [-] BadHumans|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] NiagaraThistle|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] puetzk|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisRR|1 year ago|reply
Now I have an S23 which together with the Zenfone is considered the only real "small" phones, and yet they're still almost the size of a normal phone
[+] [-] withinboredom|1 year ago|reply
I miss my iPhone 5, that thing was so tiny. It was amazing.
[+] [-] Rinzler89|1 year ago|reply
Foldables are now the best of both worlds now if you're open to this relatively niche tech and some of the compromises it brings.
[+] [-] jjav|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] test1235|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] r00fus|1 year ago|reply
I do want them to text friends and us for coordinating. Otherwise, they do feel ostracized for not having a smartphone or Apple Watch.
[+] [-] silent_cal|1 year ago|reply
1. Pacific Block app to block images and videos on the web
2. AdBlock Pro
3. Text Font Extension to make all fonts the same on Safari
4. Delete all social media apps
5. Block social media URLs
Surprisingly getting rid of pictures, videos and fonts goes a long way towards making the web less addictive.
[+] [-] ChrisRR|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kkfx|1 year ago|reply
People tray to force others on walled gardens must be LART-ed enough to understand.
[+] [-] cjk2|1 year ago|reply
Perhaps that's the problem no?
[+] [-] bee_rider|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Piraty|1 year ago|reply
I never owned a Google/Apple device and never used one for more than a few minutes in my life.
I currently use my pinephone exclusively since my +15y old 2G dumb phone broke last year (i broke it while fiddling with it, duh. it would likely have lasted another 15y. it still had its first battery which lasted 5d with moderate phone usage). Before pinephone i used a +15y old 2G flip phone (it had its first battery and lasted +7d) and i loved it, which replaced my htc hd mini and htc hd2 around 2015 (fun times, sigh).
I hate the modern concept of phone and observing the long-lasting effect of addiction on people's social and mental capabilities reminds me how important a mind free from distraction and addiction is. I know it takes a lot of self-discipline to own such a thing and not get sucked into all the dark patterns that lurk you into addiction and drain your brain (and pocket, ultimately, as this is what it's made for).
Every now and then HN features some "i quit my smart{phone,watch} and it was hard" post and commenters romanticize about it, yet i doubt most of them grasp the real implications. Every now and then I whitness the effect of detox/cold turkey with "smart"{watch,phone} on people (usually children, which cant't know better. they are exposed to digital media way too much with way too little guidance/regulation by adults who are exposed too much and who don't seem to know better as well) and it's the classic symptoms.
Unlike other additctive things, while addictive, modern phones seem useful/beneficial at the same time, which is used to justiy excessive use. It's a fallacy, i don't see it. Software run on these devices is not meant to be useful (in the generic sense) but to keep/make you a customer (and they use lot of psy trick).
Do I miss out on things because i don't take part in the "modern" way of interacting with people/companies/state? due to my self-impossed "accessibility issue" (not using "apps", that is)? Sure, but I think * people forgetting my birthday because their facebook app didn't remind them (because I don't provide data to facebook) are dumb, * banks who don't provide any other second factor for auth than their Google/Apple apps are dumb, * (nothing to complain about state here yet, but will probably come later)
To me this just reveals the brokenness of some aspects of social interaction and economy as the exclusion very well applies to elderly people as well (who even struggte with using a computer, so they miss out on even more that can't be done in a purely offline way).
And i'm not even taking into account the macroscopic political aspects of driving social life, state affairs and economy more and more into the walled garden duopoly that is Google/Apple.
Nowadays, Nokia branded HMD dumb phones are available (i have a 4G 2660 flip here, works ok'ish).
[+] [-] galina700|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] galina700|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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