Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dumber phone

nomasters.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 347 posts

Re: Dumber phone

#201

Post by jpfed »

munk-a wrote: post #188

There are a lot of technical ways to get around this but here's a simpler approach. I just don't own a smart phone. I own an old flip phone and use it primarily to communicate with my immediate family through texts and calls. I have the advantage of not being required to have a smart phone for work and I'm quite happy with that situation. I generally don't use facebook or pretty much any other social media sites (hac…

A feature phone would be fine, but I'm too attached to always having a camera on me. And as far as I know, feature phones generally have crap cameras.

Re: Dumber phone

#202

Post by airstrike »

procparam wrote: post #19

One huge distraction-enabler is the fingerprint sensor. It makes things too easy for me - I put my hand in my pocket, put my finger on the sensor, and by the time it's in front of my face I can be mindlessly browsing reddit. So I would add the following tip: disable the fingerprint sensor if you have one (also face recognition, etc), and replace it with an inconveniently long password. This way you really need to thi…

Delete the reddit app and logout. Have a really long password so you're too lazy to type it in. That's my trick. Used to spend hours and hours on reddit... now I'm just stuck on HN :(

Re: Dumber phone

#203

Post by JibJabLab »

driverdan wrote: post #147
yosito wrote: post #27

Personally, I find my smartphone addiction gets worse when I turn off all notifications. Because then FOMO takes over and I spend tons of time digging into apps to make sure I didn't "miss anything". For me, it works much better to intentionally choose the notifications I get to be the things I really want to be interrupted by. I wish there were an AI or human secretary who could make those judgements on a per-notifi…

> Because then FOMO takes over This is the real problem, not the phone or its apps. You need to eliminate FOMO from your life. You'll be much happier for it. I don't have a recommendation on how to do that. For me I came to the realization and acceptance that there is always more. More work, more knowledge, more news, more parties, more potential friends, more opportunities, etc. It never ends and it's impossible to…

This similar mindset helped me break away from playing League of Legends all of the time. Just understanding that I've been through it all and nothing new or different would happen helped me to just move on. I didn't have to accept the toxic community.

Re: Dumber phone

#204

Post by 627467 »

yosito wrote: post #27

Personally, I find my smartphone addiction gets worse when I turn off all notifications. Because then FOMO takes over and I spend tons of time digging into apps to make sure I didn't "miss anything". For me, it works much better to intentionally choose the notifications I get to be the things I really want to be interrupted by. I wish there were an AI or human secretary who could make those judgements on a per-notifi…

> Because then FOMO takes over

Others have mentioned this is a separate issue from the smartphone (although smartphones to make it easier for us to enable FOMO).

In my experience (most, if not all) FOMO disappeared in my early thirties and once I gained a more settled life. And while I do still check HN, twitter-lists daily (usually more than once a day when commuting, or having a break) I have noticed how on a busy day (or a weekend day), I completely forget about that.

Maybe age, and changes in lifestyle have been most responsible for this, but I also find that I'm less impressed by new stuff now than I used to be, so I'm much less likely to feel that I'm missing something out.

Re: Dumber phone

#205

Post by munk-a »

jpfed wrote: post #201
munk-a wrote: post #188

There are a lot of technical ways to get around this but here's a simpler approach. I just don't own a smart phone. I own an old flip phone and use it primarily to communicate with my immediate family through texts and calls. I have the advantage of not being required to have a smart phone for work and I'm quite happy with that situation. I generally don't use facebook or pretty much any other social media sites (hac…

A feature phone would be fine, but I'm too attached to always having a camera on me. And as far as I know, feature phones generally have crap cameras.

You are correct, yes. I don't generally take many pictures which may be an advantage for me not having a smart phone.

Re: Dumber phone

#206

Post by oldsklgdfth »

mozzarella wrote: post #170
peacetreefrog wrote: post #125

There are a lot of "hacks" in this thread (put your phone in grayscale, put variable reward apps in a folder, turn off fingerprint sensor) but in my experience the mindset is by far the most important part. What's worked for me (and the article talks about this too) is viewing my phone as a tool with a limited set of functionality. For me, that functionality is: calls, texts, Google maps, Spotify, Audible, podcasts,…

When my dad decided to quit smoking, he didn't throw out the pack of cigarettes he was currently in the middle of. Instead, he put them up on the shelf next to his work desk. The pack wasn't totally in his face, nor was it out of sight. Despite the visual reminder being present, he broke his years' long pack-a-day habit. Eventually - long after he stopped smoking - he threw the pack out, as part of his usual housekee…

> the asymmetry in the ease of adoption vs. difficulty of opting out

A term related to this idea is dark pattern.

This is a good overview of the idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkrdLI6e6M

Re: Dumber phone

#209

Post by ngngngng »

adhambadr wrote: post #122

Checkout our phone www.blloc.com . I think its exactly what we thought of, dumbing down the smartphone to the bare essentials without missing out too much. we don't have it perfectly communicated (working on it), but we're trying to find the middle between a "smartphone" and full blown detox. We got inspired from some of our friends who went "dark" and didn't work out; we were as product designers sick of snapchat, g…

I want this with an e-ink display. I'm honestly not kidding, if this had an e-ink display I would buy it this second.
Post reply on HN