Ask HN: What's it like to not own a smartphone?

You can try this for yourself with zero downsides - leave it at home for a day and see how it goes. If it's not that bad, leave it at home the next day too and then don't use in the evenings. Or try to delete some apps and keep the phone with you.

You don't need a drastic "I'm deleting all my accounts and ditching my phone" intervention. And in my experience, in the long run big sweeping changes are far less effective than incremental changes to your habits.

While there is a correlation between smartphones use and social networks, fundamentally I consider them as two separate topics. I am not a heavy social network user, therefore I’ll comment only on the first part.

I downgraded to a flip phone about a year ago. It’s a mostly positive experience for me. Although, it’s important to say that other people you care about are going to be to a certain extent affected as well.

I’d like to highlight a few nuances:

- No ad-hoc access to online Maps means I need to plan my trips including back up routes and memorize city by heart. I cannot get off a subway, open a smartphone and figure out how to get to a point B. This is a two-edged sword and while I can experience surroundings and explore cities, sometimes I need to ask people for directions.

- My flip phone’s battery lasts for about a week. It’s generally great, but sometimes I forget to charge it. It’s not a big deal for me as a flip phone is already an emergency phone but I communicated to my close friends and family that if they cannot reach out to me this very moment, I’m still safe and no one needs to panic.

- I hate writing text messages on a flip-phone, it’s slow and painful. As a result I send less messages to people I love. It had a minor impact on how they feel, but they got used to my downshifting choice in about a month.

- I used to heavily use Notes app to write down my thoughts. Now, I always carry a small notebook and a pen as a replacement. Whether I read something in a book, hear a funny story, make a grocery list, it always goes to a paper form.

- I cannot do quick fact-checking and look up something using online sources anymore, there is no ad hoc internet option. Whenever there is something worth checking, I make a note in a notebook and get back to this item when I’m in front of a laptop to do more thoughtful analysis.

- I cannot make dumb photos. Again, if I see something worth remembering, it goes to a notebook. It’s not perfect, e.g. when I am at a museum then a visual media is a much better option, receipts cannot be digitized instantaneously, which is especially handy at business trips, etc. On the positive side I got rid of my Dropbox subscription since I don’t have a continuous photo stream anymore.

- In a moment of boredom, I cannot skim through messages, news, or articles. Now I carry Kindle in my backpack; this year I managed to read two to three times more books than the last year.

- I cannot use QR codes, e-tickets to check-in. Everything is either paper-based or I forward them to my wife who uses a smartphone.

- I don’t listen to music as much as used to during commute time.

- This could be specific to my flip phone, but sometimes it cannot properly render text messages from iPhone users. It shows them up as blank.

- I still keep my smartphone at home and use it as a Google Authenticator device.

Ultimately, the whole experience is not about the technology, but about changing addictive unintentional habits.

Step 1 in the process is to just start leaving your phone at home when you go out.

Note and address your concerns and behaviors.

Do this for 30 days and re-address your questions and where you’ll go from there.

I got my first smart phone six months ago, Surprisingly it eats too much of time. For last 9 years I have been using nokia x201 qwerty phone, still it is my main phone. The main reason I use new smartphone is whatsapp, otherwise all other tasks can be performed on my dev machine.