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Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

pam-moore.com

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Re: Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

#171

Post by arrrg »

rpearl wrote: post #49
pavanred wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its about 10PM here. I got back from work 3-4 hours ago and my phone just beeped and I could read the email with simply a flick of a finger and saw that it was a work related email though I was having dinner at that time. Now, though I am at home that's running on a thread at the background in my head since then. This is perhaps just one use case but it's hardly surprising that people now want to go back to way it wa…

don't put work email on your phone

It depends on the particulars, but my preferred approach is actually to turn all work email notifications off (even unread badges).

I check my mail a couple times a day during work hours, usually when I arrive in the morning, after our standup, after my lunch break, sometime during the afternoon and before I leave (but not right when I want to leave, at least a couple of minutes beforehand).

I always pay close attention to immediately deal with all mail I receive, i.e. complete the task immediately (usually if less than five to ten minutes are required), write a to-do item or (my favorite option) archive the mail. The important part is to get it out of your brain and besides archiving or doing it, the best other way is to write it down.

This obviously only works if real time critical information is not usually sent via email (unexpected, action required immediately and minutes to hours required, depending on the complexity) and if no one expects email to be used for time critical information. Luckily we have policies in place to both ensure that email is used for non time-critical information and other more direct channels (Slack, phone, coming over in person) are used for actual time critical information.

I know that this culture part is often the actual hard one. If people expect you to immediately react to email then there is not much you can do inside the expectations and you probably have to turn notifications on.

Even if you leave notifications on, dealing with email immediately (picking doing it immediately, writing a to-do, archiving it) is still a time-management basic and extremely helpful, but it doesn’t work very well if you have that notification gnawing your nerves somewhere in your brain. Dealing with email immediately actually has to mean dealing with it immediately, i.e. the first time you take notice of it.

(This is a very German perspective, though. My probably biased and also very limited experience in communicating with people in the US was one of general hyperactivity and I had the impression that many treated email sort of like a real time communications channel with weird expectations about response times.)

Re: Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

#172

Post by maccard »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #104
maccard wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any family? My parents live in a different country, a phone is a particularly good way of keeping in touch. Ever been ill? How do you get in touch with your GP? Ever had an accident, or witnessed an accident? Ever been a victim of bank fraud, or had to contact the police? I can understand dodging a smartphone, but a phone (cell or landline) of some sort is pretty much a requirement these days.

I have a phone for practical reasons (I rarely need to use a phone). But I can clearly see that most of these are solvable by the internet or by old-fashioned solutions. Getting in touch with a GP? I can use the internet. Bank fraud? Same, or just go to a branch. As far as accidents and emergencies are concerned, these are no different than the solutions pre-smart phone or when your phone has broken, out of power, or…

> Getting in touch with a GP? I can use the internet. Bank fraud? Same, or just go to a branch.

Lucky you. My GPs website has phone number and an address on it. My bank are equally as unhelpful. They have internet banking, but there is no way to suspend a card or re order a new one without phoning them. Last time I had an issue with my card I was out of the country so visiting the branch was out of the question (not to mention the branch is almost 2 miles from my home, has no parking and is only open 9:30 to 5 Monday to Friday, when I'm working). There's no technical reason they can't do this online, they just don't currently.

As much as I'd like to not have an active phone, it's not really feasible to live todays world without one. You're relying on other people to have phones so that you don't have to carry one. Your suggestion to keep a cheap non smartphone defeats the purpose of not having a phone.

Re: Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

#173

Post by peatmoss »

mikkelam wrote: post #67
onion2k wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first question to anyone who says they can live without a smartphone: what do you use for two factor auth?

There are lots of ways, how about a Yubikey

Nothing makes me sadder than 2-factor that supports a phone but not my Yubikey. Yubikey is so much more convenient.

At my last job, I begged IT to turn on the U2F feature of our SSO product. Sadly, they did not, even though it was literally a checkbox in the service’s UI. I even sent them a link to the knowledge-base article.

Re: Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

#174

Post by zolthrowaway »

gambiting wrote: post #91
krageon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Email across the planet has been around since day one. It has been present around the globe for ages, if you could find an internet cafe on holiday. Reading email on your phone also needs a smartphone. > Mass transit has had posted schedules for many years. It is nice to see an updated one with up to the minute tracking but it wasn’t that inconvenient either. You must be one of the blessed multitudes that live in a…

>>Reading email on your phone also needs a smartphone. Nokia 6310 could both read and send emails, and I'm sure the functionality arrived slightly earlier too. >>second point I mean, if I'm in some 3rd world country without a reliable public transport system, then I'm not sure how internet access or a smartphone for that matter helps at all. In my experience in those places the bus/train just turns up when it does, n…

I can't remember the exact app name, it's been a few years, but CMU had an app for Pittsburgh Port Authority buses. They were almost always off the posted schedule. The app used people already on the bus and some other factors to determine location and give a far more accurate estimate. It saved me numerous times from missing a bus/thinking I missed a bus that ran only once an hour (54). From my experience, smart phones and technology certainly do help with unreliable public transit.

Re: Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

#175

Post by skinnymuch »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #166
deanclatworthy wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Finland at least, most employers provide your phone and contract. Of course you can take a separate one but then you’re carrying two phones. I’ve been dying for gmail and workplace (fb for work) to add a feature so I can stop work related notifications after 17. Having this at iOS level would be great also.

My employer provides a work phone and subscription, and I am free to use it privately. I've chosen to keep that phone work-only, so I have bought my own private phone+subscription, and never the twain shall meet. The work phone gets left in a locker at work along with my work laptop, I refuse to bring it home with me until I have agreed in advance to work from home for some specific task. I know a lot of employers ex…

Are you not friends with any work colleagues who would want to call or text you as friends?

Re: Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

#176

Post by ersii »

Fnoord wrote: post #143
paavoova wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Life with a smart phone is so much better than life before a smart phone. But at what cost? The software and OS is a locked-down ecosystem for most consumers. The hardware even more so. Such mass adoption forces one to conform in order to participate, meaning even for the privacy-conscious, consumer trends dictate all. Just a couple months ago US carriers were found to be selling realtime customer location data. Wh…

If you don't take your phone with you, you're not being tracked. It isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. We have the choice of not taking our phone with us. Also, PTSN can be easily eavesdropped as well, and paying by the minute isn't attractive. The phone companies squeezed us long enough.

Well... even if we do leave it at home, everyone else has at least one where ever you go..

Re: Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

#177

Post by davchana »

krageon wrote: post #77
freeflight wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the service you are talking about there are quite a few non-smartphone reliant options like SMS or email.

SMS is like having someone shout your second factor off of a rooftop a few streets away, loud enough that you can hear it. There is 0 security on it and anyone with even a modicum of motivation can intercept it without you noticing (ever). This is bad advice. Email is bad for similar reasons (although slightly less in terms of exposure if you use a good provider).

I thought bad guys could get your SMS only if they manage to clone your SIM or call provider to change the SIM by social engineering. In both cases service on my SIM will stop. Unless they are state sponsored, in which case they can just arm twist telecom provider to give them texts.

Could you please tell how they can sniff SMS without user ever noticing?

Re: Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

#178

Post by upofadown »

nemild wrote: post #20

Anyone have tips on some good US flip phones that work with modern networks (4G)? In a perfect world, with GPS (but not required)?

With 2G going away everywhere finding a usable feature phone to use on new networks has become a desperate question. One problem is that display technology seems to have actually regressed. The original transflective monochrome displays were viewable under any light conditions and consumed very little power. So backlit colour displays require a flip phone form factor just to protect the keys from being pressed and turning on the display all the time. The Nokia 3310 3G is a good example of getting this wrong.

Re: Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

#179

Post by worble »

onion2k wrote: post #57
prolikewh0a wrote: post #17

I obliterated one of my smartphones last year after dropping it on concrete while getting off the bus. I freaked out, had no clue what to do since I was low income and couldn't afford anything for quite awhile. For a few days it was like I was an addict, constantly feeling my back pocket vibrating, constantly reaching to check my phone. After a few more days, I felt very liberated. I felt very free. I started enjoyin…

My first question to anyone who says they can live without a smartphone: what do you use for two factor auth?

The only two factor auth I have is steam, which I could just disable.

Re: Why I’m Using a Flip Phone

#180

Post by carlob »

beefield wrote: post #18
squiggleblaz wrote: post #10

Life with a smart phone is so much better than life before a smart phone. It's hard to realise how recently they came around. I've probably only had the internet on my phone for five years (I've had a smart phone for longer, but I couldn't get the data to work and data was expensive enough at the time I didn't care). I can communicate with my fiancee even when she's in another country (international sms = fail). I ca…

> you'll work out how to waste your time without your phone and you'll be back to square one. I had a dumb phone for a year or so until maybe half a year ago. The ways I found to waste my time without smartphone were refreshingly different. Most importantly, thinking and wandering in my own mind without the urgent need to check every new thought from the internet. Long story short, there is now nokia 8110 with 4G and…

> nokia 8110

Bought one yesterday, I have to say that KaiOS is still veeeery immature, so far very far behind series 40/60 nokias. If you can find a Nokia 208 or 515 which are the last they made with 3G+ you might be better off.

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