I carry around an F1 Orchid Dumb Phone from Sunbeam Wireless (voice to text on it is awesome!) and try to leave my smartphone in my office and find I am more relaxed and have more time when I don't scroll HN and News as much. I still usually bring my smartphone when I leave home but I love spending evenings without it.
Ask HN: How is life without a smartphone?
31–40 of 48 posts
Re: Ask HN: How is life without a smartphone?
#32I got a smartphone a couple of years ago. The only real difference for me is I no longer bring a camera around on shorter trips, and having a map app was helpful when I was living abroad.
Life with a dumb phone was fine. I guess sometimes I had to type urls people would send me into my computer. Near the end it was a bit annoying when people would send me five texts in a row, or when people wanted to be super loose with their plans. Planning social stuff has become a lot looser, I noticed, in the last five years because of constant texting.
If you’re considering getting a dumbphone, all I can say is, it’s easier than you think. Carry a little notebook around with you, wear a watch, ask people for directions. I wasn’t shunned by my friends or anything like that. I’m in my early 30s and I even had a landline when I was in college. It wasn’t a problem. You do need a printer, though.
Re: Ask HN: How is life without a smartphone?
#33I’m 38 and I’ve never owned a smartphone. In 2012, my boss made me get a cellphone so he could stay in touch with me at a conference. I bought a flip phone for $15 at Office Depot and used that for awhile. Overall, outside of work it was pretty pointless. No calls were ever worth answering and the T9 texting was annoying.
I have a Google Voice number that I use for calls/texts from my iPod Touch or iPad. For awhile it worked with my 3G Kindle so I could text on the go without Wi-Fi. Then Amazon turned off the free 3G and I haven’t had cellular internet since.
Really don’t think I’m missing anything significant.
Re: Ask HN: How is life without a smartphone?
#34Never had one. Phone carriers haven't invested to have cell coverage in my neighborhood, why should I invest $1000 to have a $100 a month bill?
My bill is generally less than half of $100/mo and my phone was significantly less than $1,000. I also use Wi-Fi the majority of the time and still find my phone generally useful in areas where I don't service. Although admittedly, loss of service is a rarity for me.
Spending $500 to get a $50 a month bill doesn’t sound that much better to me.
Re: Ask HN: How is life without a smartphone?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is a common excuse, but makes no sense, because nobody's Instagram feed is reading "come to hospital, your mum's dying".
I will say that when I wrote that, I was largely thinking of Slack in particular due to a recent experience. I started graduate school this fall, and went down to part-time at my job. I'd originally planned to keep Slack notifications turned off on days I was focused on school. Everyone was aware I wasn't working on those days, and the rest of the team is perfectly competent and able to handle themselves. In the even…
Worried about missing something important that your competent coworkers could have told you about through a number of different avenues?
Definitely sounds more like (no offense intended) a rat frantically pressing a lever, waiting for one of the presses to yield a piece of cheese.
Re: Ask HN: How is life without a smartphone?
#36You can go even farther than no smartphone and eliminate email, as Donald Knuth did on January 1, 1990, after using email since ~1975-1989. His reasons for wanting long hours of uninterrupted concentration may well align with yours:
Re: Ask HN: How is life without a smartphone?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
That just means you have identified a weakness to strengthen through meditation! You are reaching for those apps for a dopamine hit.
I read it more as they were worried they were missing something.
I had this issue too and what I found made all the difference: try this for a week. Just a week. Do whatever you want afterwards but that week will teach you a lot about how much you really need or don't need your phone.
Re: Ask HN: How is life without a smartphone?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Shift from being pushed information to pulling it. Only check apps, SMS, etc... when you want to check them, not when your phone buzzes or blinks at you. Do you ever find this sometimes makes things worse? I've tried it with specific apps, and I often find myself checking those apps more to make sure I haven't missed anything! With notifications, I feel comfortable that if I haven't been notified, there's nothing…
That just means you have identified a weakness to strengthen through meditation! You are reaching for those apps for a dopamine hit.
Nice to read a solution through self reflection and meditation. This should be the default for anything.
Re: Ask HN: How is life without a smartphone?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Shift from being pushed information to pulling it. Only check apps, SMS, etc... when you want to check them, not when your phone buzzes or blinks at you. Do you ever find this sometimes makes things worse? I've tried it with specific apps, and I often find myself checking those apps more to make sure I haven't missed anything! With notifications, I feel comfortable that if I haven't been notified, there's nothing…
You can set an app to only notify you silently. This means it won't buzz or beep, but when you pick up your phone it will be on the lock screen. Android has similar (and more) customizability options.
Notifications are still cognitive asteroids. I use my phone predominantly as a clock so a clean lock screen means nothing to worry about.
Re: Ask HN: How is life without a smartphone?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me too. Never had a smartphone or any type of cell phones. When I'm out, I only have my bank card, driver's license, car key in my pocket. And a bootable USB stick containing all my working environment.
How does you USB stick work? Is it just a Linux ISO or are you able to boot into a system with custom configuration?
It is a Debian setup with my custom configuration