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Dumber phone

nomasters.io

101–110 of 347 posts

Re: Dumber phone

#101
post #77
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…

Let me ask the crowd. Would you use a browser plugin that eliminates newsfeeds? One of the things I struggle with is the endless novelty of a newsfeed. I can always scroll and get more. And then I can reload for another chance at finding something interesting. There are extensions that do this for Facebook alone, but I was thinking something more general. And something that's also clever about eliminating the way com…

Sure I'm interested in such an extension!

I like the delay idea. A minute delay to reflect upon your actions, or yourself or something.

Of course one can simply disable the extension. I guess you'll need testing to see what kind of delay makes the target audience not jump to disable the extension. If you're serious about this, I can send you my mail address and see if I can help with parsing feedback or something!

Re: Dumber phone

#102
post #65

I don't own a smartphone, simply because it's not convenient. I've had one from my previous job, it was Iphone 4 IIRC. It was bulky, I had to charge it every day, and when I enabled maps or a browser it got hot quickly. Now I'm using Nokia 106. It lasts 2 weeks on one charge (1 week if I'm listening to radio/podcasts a lot), it's much smaller than iphone, never gets hot, and I'm not afraid to drop it. I dropped it se…

I actually would rather have a phone that I have to charge every night. If it's only once a week then I'll forget but if it's every day it becomes a habit and therefore automatic.

Re: Dumber phone

#103

I've done exactly this and it helps a lot. I also tried the "gray screen" thing briefly but didn't keep it because it was a pain when using the nav stuff on Google Maps.

If you have an iPhone you can set it to be an accessibility shortcut and turn it on/off by pressing the home button three times.

Re: Dumber phone

#104
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…

You stopped half way. when you put your phone off notification, you have to make that final step to put your mind too.

I consider this (I have it too) to be almost full fledged clinical addiction. It toys with your mind and distort your life in unhealthy ways.

Re: Dumber phone

#105

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…

this is a cool tip, especially considering the security implications! afaik, police can coerce you to unlock with fingerprint, but not to give up your password

Re: Dumber phone

#106
post #80
post #65

I don't own a smartphone, simply because it's not convenient. I've had one from my previous job, it was Iphone 4 IIRC. It was bulky, I had to charge it every day, and when I enabled maps or a browser it got hot quickly. Now I'm using Nokia 106. It lasts 2 weeks on one charge (1 week if I'm listening to radio/podcasts a lot), it's much smaller than iphone, never gets hot, and I'm not afraid to drop it. I dropped it se…

I am glad this works for you, but for example the only function I could use on a dumbphone is alarm. I never call anybody and I send SMS messages only when the network coverage is too poor so it falls back. I use GPS all the time for public transport, I doubt a standalone GPS does that. What about photos, tablets can have decent cameras but phones are usually 2-3 generations ahead.

I meant gps in tablet. It has everything smartphone has, but with reasonably sized screen.

Re: Dumber phone

#108
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…

There are various apps to try and promote healthy levels of smartphone engagement. Eg in Forest (iOS and Android, no affiliation)[0] you plant a tree and it will grow with time, but will wither away the more you play with Facebook. It will occasionally notify in case you get lost in facebooklandia. If you object to that particular implementation, the point is there's a usage API in case you'd like to write your own a…

I don't have the facebook app, will this detect if I use it in the browser?

Re: Dumber phone

#109
post #44

For me it's the browser. What I did yesterday on Firefox for Android: - installed uBlock Origin (also First Party Isolation and HTTPS Everywhere), - disabled JavaScript via about:config javascript.enabled, - and added .css| rule to uBlock Origin (I would still like to disable CSS entirely, this only half works). Basically I would like to have "links2 -g" [0] for Android. There is also an extension for Firefox to auto…

When the first Motorola Droid came out, I found a "tricorder" app with a lot of the sensor data output with a LCARSish UI. It may have since been lawyered out of existence.

Re: Dumber phone

#110
> What if we could make our phones so boring we just look at them we we have to? What if we could strip out most, if not all of the dopamine inducing features and leave the phone in a state that is useful but boring.

I did just this to my Facebook feed. It may seem silly, but I signed up for a bunch of non-interesting Facebook groups which pollute my feed with noise. After a couple weeks, I deleted the app from my phone and resorted to using the website through my mobile browser when needed. So far I usually check about once every day or two, mostly just to see if I have any notifications. I find the feed so uninteresting that I rarely just browse it anymore. Before, I would spend a 15 minute here and there, adding up to probably 2 or more hours per day. One thing I noticed is how less often I find myself getting upset at stupid things. Before, I was reading local news stories that were being passed around, and finding myself upset at some of the comments. For what? I wasn't even really interested in the subject of the story anyway!

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