Technology

i don't want my phone to be dumb, I want it to be open source, front to back! The issue of smartphones isn't that its "too smart", instead we should talk about why the control of our phones aren't within our grasp, but on the palm of corpos and govs.

you want to use your smartphone while keeping it simple? Install less apps and disable ALL telemetry (this is where being open source comes in).

You may as well ask me to throw away me phone entirely. I don't carry a smartphone to make phone calls. I hate phone calls.

95% of that is spam. And an old dumbphone won't even have auto spam detection.

I use my phone to take pictures, send those pictures, look for restaurants, navigate to those restaurants, listen to music, etc.

So what you're asking for is to make the part I hate about phones worse, while removing all the functions I actually use my phone for.

I'm closer to carrying around a cyberdeck than a dumbphone.

I don't like either sms or phonecalls.

I personally dont think you need to switch to a dumb phone to get those benefits, smartphones themselves arent what's causing issues its what you're using. You want less distraction just stop using those apps or turn off push notifications.

I’m currently in Asia and – in this country at least – you are basically required to have a smart phone to do anything. Credit cards don’t exist. And they use QR payments for most things. So that implies a camera and a banking app (for your bank). Many places don’t accept cash anymore (!) - I don’t really get how they can do that because not everyone has a smart phone (poor people (obviously) & tourists (not even allowed to get bank accounts here) come immediately to mind — of which there are millions of both). I think so far it’s not a big deal because these people just spend their money elsewhere, but I worry this will become entrenched.

Anyway, I tried “dumb phoning” my iPhone and there’s just way too many things I rely on daily that require a smart phone: paying by QR code, banking, international banking, translating, navigation, ride booking, accommodation booking, messaging on iMessage, Line, Messenger (almost everyone in this country uses the last 2). When travelling in a foreign country, these things aren’t really optional. If I can’t pay for a bus ticket or food, I could be really screwed.

Now you might say some of things in my list are doable without apps; like accommodation booking… sure. But even if you find a place old skool style, how do you contact them? Most don’t have web pages, they use Facebook pages. And the contact info is usually a Line or Messenger id. Even if somehow you managed to find a phone number, they are unlikely to speak English. I’m old enough to remember travelling before the internet and honestly it was great and worked well, but that was because everyone was on the same footing. We’ve lost that and I actually think it’s much more difficult now.

I’ve gotten rid of most social media (except fediverse) which has helped my screen time a lot, but I think going back to a feature phone is, unfortunately, impossible here. I do hope that they see how economically unfair requiring a smart phone is though and at least pass some laws that require shops to take cash payments (last I heard these laws did exist in the West).

Pretty much because my smartphone is basically my digital Swiss army knife. Like even if I got a separate digital camera and MP3 Player, I also use it for navigation and to communicate with my parents and friends over signal, and like hell I am gonna give up signal. Add to that it's also my portable wifi hotspot when I'm out, my train tickets, and how I pay for things when I'm sans-purse, I don't know if I can give up my smartphone.

Would it be good for me to get off social media and to stop doomscrolling the news? Yes, but I can do that by going out and touching grass.

There's literally no point. I already use my phone for phone things, not as a second computer.

I grew up before mobile phones so I know I have the skills to function without one. There isn't much I would miss. I am ok without social media, maps, chat apps etc.

Its the odd little things that I don't do very often that could get annoying. Stuff like translating a label in a foreign language. There isn't really an easy way to do that without a smart phone.

Dumbphones are ridiculously insecure, and they only support SMS communications which don't have any end-to-end encryption.

2FA app. 2FA via SMS is incredibly insecure.

Map and translation apps a close second.

Why would I want a device that I never use? I only make phone calls roughly 3 times per week. I message multiple times a day, but flip phones had shitty interfaces for typing. The vast majority of my phone use is web search, camera, navigation, and messaging. Flip phones could get better cameras than they used to have. Their screens were too small to do great at web searching. Navigation might work, I guess. Although I used to love my Treo and Pre for the full physical keyboard, I prefer swype typing now to tapping or physical keys.

I'd like to be able to use Signal.

It’s solving device addiction with another device. Sure it will be very interesting to investigate phone models to pick from. Indeed we are good at tricking ourselves. Creating “windows” with no phone at all works better for me.

Having a software authentication that can hold multiple keys for MFA. I’d love to switch to a dumb phone but that’s pretty much a requirement and I’ve never found a device for MFA that is as convenient for MFA

It would have to have Signal.

Who even makes phone calls today? Not me. I need a device that does everything but phone calls more than I need a device that only does voice.

I need maps and Line. Banking and everything else is nice but maps and Line are essential.

Navigation and manga

Not at all. It's really hard to live without the practical features of a smartphone, like web browsing and maps. What I need is privacy, not to throw it all away for a dumbphone.

I believe a lot of the benefits you claim dumbphones provide are all caused by abandoning social media. There's nothing wrong with technology, it's just social media. You don't need to use a dumbphone just to escape social media.

I don't make phone calls and rarely use SMS. All the features I need/want from a phone would be missing.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I genuinely love my phone. It makes my life better.

you couldn't pay me to go backwards in time, sorry!

see I was around before the age of the smartphone. growing up, I thought my cassette Walkman was the most revolutionary thing ever. and when PDAs were new, I would dreaammm about everything being on one electronic device.

smart phones have given me a freedom that younger me never had.

i no longer need to carry a notebook/memobook around, because I have powerful software on my phone that not only let's me note-take, but index and SEARCH my own notes. from my pocket.

i don't need to carry the 3 novels im reading at the moment because they're on the ereader app in my pocket.

contacts, games, all my news sources, photos, videos, all my media.

to me, this is still revolutionary tech and it has only improved my life

i think we are seeing a rise now of adults who were raised as iPad kids who never had to carry all their shit around the way us older individuals have. so they naturally would want to get away from it because they've known no different and they never had to live another way before that point.

its an understandable mentality from that one standpoint. but no, I will never give up my smart phone. i understand the reasons for those that do, but some of us don't really want to go backwards.

I'm switching to a Garmin smartwatch and a point n shoot camera in the near future. I'm excited to see how it changes adventuring.

Mainly my music. I’ve long thought about a dumb phone to avoid gps tracking everywhere as well as the spyware built in and the needless looking at it all the time. But music and podcasts need to come with me wherever I go. So I’d be carrying something akin to a smart phone around anyway. Doesn’t really side step the problem effectively.

Being forced to use a stock google android or iOS would be what drives me to use a dumb phone.

As long as I can install a custom ROM like LineageOS or GrapheneOS, I'm good.

Whatsapp. That's the only fucking reason I'm not using a dumbphone. In Brazil, everyone uses it. Need to talk to a company? Whatsapp. Friends and family? Wpp. Book a medical checkup? Wpp.

There's also the problem of cell phone fees being abusive when calling/messaging people from a different company.

My "smart" phone is rarely used as a telephone. It's set to silent, all notifications turned off, blocks unknown numbers, transcribes voicemail and spends most of the day as a window to the world.

I'm not sure what, if anything, a "dumb" phone would add to my life, except more interruption, more administration to keep contacts up to date, and yet another device to charge and maintain.

The main blocker is MFA. I can technically work around Google Authenticator (I use Aegis currently) because I can run it on my laptop, but I also need Okta verify (work VPN), Symantec VIP (bank), and the Steam app.

And some other very nice to haves:

• Signal messenger
• SSH client
• Libby app
• Organic Maps

I can find workaround for the rest.

That said, wouldn't it just be easier to uninstall the apps that cause distractions?

Let's start with the price

I don't use the phone part of my smartphone much, so thie idea of a dumbphone has no real appeal for me.

I don’t use the phone part to be honest. It’s an always connected mobile computer. The only calls I answer are from my wife and mom.

No

I would buy a feature phone today, preferably something eink, if it was painless to switch my SIM between it and my smart phone. Having to take the SIM out of one, put it in the other, then turn on the phone is not painless and they do not design the little draws to support thousands of open/closes against the contacts to read the SIM.

There are times I want the smart phone to have the SIM because I will want or need the extra functionality and if you just make the feature phone do everything then its just morphed into a smart phone with extra steps. I want the feature phone to be basic as I can get away with.

That said, I really want google wallet or similar that I can share between the two phones for my passes and tickets, audio streaming support, and maps. Something like a Hisense A9 would fit the bill but the temptation to add more apps than the basics would be too great, plus I still need a way to switch SIMs between the phones.

I cannot replace my smart phone, rather than supplement, with any feature phone because I use it for such a wide range of things. I can ssh from it to my home devices, I can manage my bank accounts, it tracks my health, it provides video and audio streaming on and offline, I can read and write documents/spreadsheets, plus anything you can do via a web browser.

Buying train tickets, buying concert tickets, checking schedules for work or school or train times, communicating with people over something that isn't SMS or calls, taking nice photos on the go, listening to music.

Of course many of these would be solvable with a different device (handheld camera, mp3 player) or by buying tickets and checking schedules in advance, but the trade off isn't worth it for me

Well I had the displeasure of having to use a candybar style phone my mother was using cause it was 'easier' for her.

• Ages to write a message
• Very difficult to navigate through very similar SMSs (automated ones like electronic prescriptions) and pick the correct one based on date. Or even get an accurate broader picture of how many SMSs you received and when.
• Did not setup email but I believe it would also be horrendous

But in my case, I disagree with the base premise of this post. The biggest anxiety and distraction caused by my phone is via phone calls. Asynchronous communications like sms and email are much better for me.

Honestly, for me, it's the one-two-three punch of easy notes taken anywhere + podcasts + camera.

• notes : before smartphones I carried a notebook in my pocket. And sometimes I still do; writing longhand is still pleasant for me, and being able to sketch and doodle with my notes is still clunky with a touchscreen, amazingly. But the experience of losing my notebook, or not having the right one with me when I need it, is disproportionately frustrating to me.

• podcasts : this is one of the few ways my ADHD brain truly focuses. Listening to a podcast while walking, biking, running, driving, doing dishes, cleaning a room, mowing the lawn, etc. is almost foolproof in getting me to pay attention to the content. I have to be in the right mood to read, and videos are background noise to me after having the Discovery Channel or Scifi Channel on 24/7 in my apartment in college. Before smartphones I had a trusty RCA Lyra that went everywhere with me; and while the form factor and experience were fantastic, I now have a backlog of over 800 podcast episodes that would not fit on that device's 512MB internal storage. (Also, I just got a pair of noise canceling earbuds, and I have to admit I really like them)

• camera : I've chosen my last four smartphones based on the camera quality. I've got kids, and being able to take adorable pictures of them at the drop of a hat is very useful to me. I don't need all the computational nonsense, but I do need it to be good enough and ever-present. Before smartphones, I would occasionally bring a digital camera around with me, but I can't afford one that would give me the quality I want, and it wouldn't fit in my pocket anyway.

Messaging, fitness tracking, and work stuff is also easier, though not in a way that I don't think I could backfill with other things if needed.

Nostalgia aside, the experience of these big three use cases is indisputably better with a smartphone than it was in 2005. Could I live without them? Yes! Absolutely. But I'd prefer not to, and since I shook my social media addiction I don't really feel the need to.

No way. Life is way better with smart phones. Tap to pay, maps, always having a camera, always having my notes, working as a mobile hotspot, controlling my home security system. 25 other things.

This stuff used to be so much harder. I’m not going back.

I will freely admit there are some dangerous addictive and invasive aspects to it also. I’m ruthless about what apps I will grant permissions to. And I don’t browse the App Store getting tempted by their promises.

I think the appeal of our phones not having to be a computer and not needing all the same rigor and paranoia and extra steps of a computer was really exciting. But it hasn’t turned out to be true. So now I treat it like a computer and approach everything with that level of skepticism. And also treat it like the gateway to capitalism that it is and I am skeptical of anything that’s trying to take my data or money. I think with the right attitude it’s a net positive device in my life