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My year with a distraction-free iPhone

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Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#41

Post by [deleted] »

colmvp wrote: post #36
pocketstar wrote: post #28

I have a now 4 year old iPhone 4. It is incredibly slow, crippled by ios 7.1, so slow that Facebook is useless and I only use safari when I really need to look up something. I call it my Comm, because that is what I use it for, communication. iMessages, Whatsapp, FB messenger, hangouts all work relatively well. My iPhone is essential distraction free because it is too slow to distract me, ill look up while waiting, t…

How is your battery? I figure at four years it's got to be pretty bad. I have an old iPhone 5 and my biggest blocker is the fact that the battery can only last a few hours at most with minimal usage, which makes it an absolutely pain to travel as one is away from charger most of the time. In fact, the only reason why I'd upgrade to a new phone is because I can't stand having it die so easily.

[deleted]

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#42

Post by johnpowell »

colmvp wrote: post #36
pocketstar wrote: post #28

I have a now 4 year old iPhone 4. It is incredibly slow, crippled by ios 7.1, so slow that Facebook is useless and I only use safari when I really need to look up something. I call it my Comm, because that is what I use it for, communication. iMessages, Whatsapp, FB messenger, hangouts all work relatively well. My iPhone is essential distraction free because it is too slow to distract me, ill look up while waiting, t…

How is your battery? I figure at four years it's got to be pretty bad. I have an old iPhone 5 and my biggest blocker is the fact that the battery can only last a few hours at most with minimal usage, which makes it an absolutely pain to travel as one is away from charger most of the time. In fact, the only reason why I'd upgrade to a new phone is because I can't stand having it die so easily.

No clue about the iPhone 5. But I replaced the battery in my 4 and it was ten bucks for a new battery and about as many minutes. Pretty much two screws and my key to my apartment.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#43

Post by kissickas »

dredmorbius wrote: post #33
ggreer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A stripped-down smartphone has quite a few advantages over a dumbphone. Notice which apps are installed: Google Maps, subway maps, Rdio, Uber, Instacart. As he says, these things are like living in the future.

It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS and for which I can completely control the OS and environment. CyanogenMod seems to be as close as I'm likely to get to that at present.

Any phone's location can still be tracked by cell tower. From whom are you trying to get privacy?

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#45

Post by SCdF »

So I've gone the other way: everything that is distracting (fb, twitter, reddit, ideally HN but android apps suck for this) is on my phone.

Then, my computer is for work, and my phone is for being bored. That way (in theory) there is no reason to be logged into timesinks on my computer, so I can use it without distraction.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#46

Post by maximilianburke »

I was away at a friends cabin about a month ago. Sitting on a lawn chair on their dock I shifted and my Nexus 4 fell out of my pocket, bounced off the dock, and into the lake.

When I got back home I popped the SIM card into my old iPhone 3GS and have been experiencing a similar smartphone underload. I updated the apps I needed to, mostly 2-factor software tokens for VPN and my Google account, and realized that I wasn't missing much of my Nexus 4.

I did try to save the phone with a couple handfuls of dessicant packets but it never successfully got past the bootloader screen. But that's fine with me, I am in no hurry to replace it.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#48

Post by kareemm »

Tried this, and one of the big difficulties is that I send email to my todo list manager to create todos ("pick up milk", "Email person about important_thing").

I don't want to give this up, but can't find an app that only sends email. So when I opened Mail to send a todo email, I'd see all the new emails that were begging to be read. I could create a new email account that I use for sending only, but that seems like a pain.

Anybody seen an iOS app that sends email, but doesn't check it?

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#50

Post by blutoot »

hnriot wrote: post #20
blutoot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of disabling the browser completely it would probably be more prudent to use a white-list of websites which the iPhone allows as well: Restriction -> Websites -> Specific Websites Only

or just exercise some self control! I don't have to hide the kitchen knives in case I stab guests... It's not that's hard to ignore an icon.

It doesn't work for me - I've tried. Self-control works really well for me when the task at hand is really interesting and I want to give my everything to it. I don't know about you but so far those tasks haven't come to me at a regular pace. And I tend to seek out these online distractions as a diversion tactic when the task I'm supposed to be working on is really boring or uninteresting. So it's all about one's personality.
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