31–40 of 89 posts
I grew up without one, but came in fully to the working world of 'always on'. It took me 6 months of 'non corporate work' to get used to the idea of not receiving emails all the time. It becomes part of your identity and you feel lost without it. But then you regain something lost - peace of mind. I can't even imagine what it means to grow up 'fully connected' - sometimes I think that young people must be excessively…
Last time I got a new phone (2015 or 2016), most of the QWERTY phones were just crappy or outdated smartphones. I found a slider with QWERTY that is apparently 3g only. Everybody hated the voice quality.
This time around, I gave in and got an iPhone SE. I hate the distraction, but I wasn't willing to live with T9 for texting.
Good luck!
I own a Kindle for books, which helped a lot with my Internet addiction and the lack of focus, and for communication I have a dumb mobile phone with a battery that lasts for weeks.
Realistically speaking the only reason I'd buy a smartphone these days is for photos. Anything else is just fucking useless. I can't do work on a smartphone, and I don't even want to. I enjoy having time off of any electronic device because it helps my brain unwind and adds quality to my life.
What I did is disable all notifications and ringtones. Calls go to voicemail and if people leave a message I’ll call back on my own time, otherwise I won’t. Only my SO has audible ringtones and notifications so I know that if the phone rings it’s worth answering.
I don’t install apps if I can help it, I havE gotten rid of Facebook twitter etc a long time ago and will use the browser for the rest. If they go out of their way to make the browser experience shitty on mobile (Reddit, linked in), well, more power to them I’ll only use my computer with ad blocking instead.
And of course I’ll never install my works chat app on my phone, nor will they ever get my phone number.
But I do find having a smartphone is convenient. Maps at the tips of your fingers when you’re lost, calling places when you’re on the go and need to ask or change something, gps for the bicycle, transit pass for public transportation and trains, music on the go... it feels like by disabling all notifications, no social networks presence, and no native apps if I can help it, then I have the best of both worlds. Oh and nextdns.io for ad blocking on the iPhone, it works everywhere except in the YouTube app and for websites that inject google ads after the page has loaded (only a couple of websites as far as I’m concerned)
I want to try this once. But I'm so much into WhatsApp, Instagram. It will be kind of digital detox. I had deleted twitter and Facebook 6yrs back that was once of the best decision I had made. Now I'm kind of addicted to that Insta feed and Youtube feed. I will be deleting Insta account. But hope will come over the need of WhatsApp and other cool apps and ditch phone completely. But if you suddenly need a document an…
I downloaded maps for offline use but I hated it and really missed having decent navigation at the push of a small button in my hand.
For music I used a 2008 iPod video. I actually still prefer it when riding my motorcycle.
I was shocked at how much I still needed the iPad for MFA via google authenticator / Microsoft auth / Authy because the Yubikey I bought didn’t work with most sites. This was a couple years ago. YMMV.
I wish I’d blogged about it. I ended up going back to a cheap Android after a couple months of missing a decent camera then go frustrated with the speed of the phone and went to a pixel and then back to iPhone.
When I have been without a phone it’s demonstrated how much I really need one for the simplest things like a calendar, a timer, a flashlight, a camera. A lot of that a dumb phone can do. But navigation is the deal breaker.
That said I think $1000 phones is stupid. I am very happy with the new iPhone SE
Also, leaving Facebook about ten years ago and never picking up any of the alternatives was a critical step toward taking back my attention.