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Dumber phone

nomasters.io

21–30 of 347 posts

Re: Dumber phone

#21

I adhere to a lot of these rules myself and have recently noticed peers doing the same. Another I'd add that really makes the phone boring is putting it in grayscale mode. On iOS: Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations > Color Filters > Grayscale. Then you can set the Accessibility Shortcut to Color Filters, and when you triple click the home button your phone goes grayscale. I don't have it on 2…

I set my Android device to grayscale for a while. I liked it but for the video player and one photo app I would like to have colors.

Does anyone know how to do this? I have tried to do something with Tasker but couldn't figure it out.

Re: Dumber phone

#22

This is already being built from a company with a similar vision : Lite Phone https://www.thelightphone.com/ Lite Phone 2: Campaign https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/light-phone-2-design#/

I really like the Lite Phone idea; browsers and the vast majority of apps are distractions. But an integrated camera is not a distraction; it's a tremendously convenient feature!

Re: Dumber phone

#23
While %s/drug/phone/g makes for an easy rhetorical trick, it also destroys a lot of essential context. It's also a bit on the offensive side if you or someone you know has dealt with actual drug addiction; as in, it cheapens it.

Picking some offenders from their list..

* You keep using your phone after it’s no longer needed to solve a problem. (Because nobody uses smartphones for fun?)

* You feel strange when you don’t have your phone. (I also feel strange when I don't have my watch, lighter, and multitool on me. This applies to all every day carry items.)

* You’ve begun having trouble doing normal daily things without your phone. (Normal daily things include responding to alerts, taking phone calls, and sending messages. I could not do my job without a smartphone, let alone a great deal of plain old human socializing. Further, IMs and SMSes are more respectful of my friends' time than phone calls which demand everybody drops what they're doing)

* You borrow money to pay for your phone. (Given the industry move to carrier financing rather than contract lock-in, I think most people now borrow money to pay for their phone)

* You drive or do other dangerous things (like use heavy machines) while you are on your phone. (People yammering on their phones in traffic has a lot more to do with a poor understanding of attention than it does this increasingly tenuous drug analogy. Besides, phone use while driving was a safety issue long before smartphones proliferated.)

* You hide some phone use or the effect it is having on you from others. (Only when the specter of Ludditism creeps through and I'd rather not be moralized to about my use of technology.)

----

Let's not even talk about the bare equation of all games to addiction (seriously?).

If you feel you're addicted to your smartphone, by all means, do whatever works for you, but if you intend on presenting that to the world, please keep the crappy logic to a minimum.

Re: Dumber phone

#24

This is already being built from a company with a similar vision : Lite Phone https://www.thelightphone.com/ Lite Phone 2: Campaign https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/light-phone-2-design#/

Several previous threads on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=light%20phone&sort=byPopularit...

Re: Dumber phone

#25
Extensively, if now your phone is only filled w/ tools and you are more prone to roaming around the internet through a browser, you may restrict and hide the Safari application on iPhone: Settings > General > Restrictions.

Re: Dumber phone

#26
Also, for any apps that have group chats, I like to disable notifications for them. If someone really needs to contact me, they can send a direct message, or @ me, otherwise I will only check the group chat when I have the time or patience to do so. Or maybe I'm just getting old and stressed.

Re: Dumber phone

#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-notification basis with my best interests in mind, but that doesn't seem to be a realistic option at my income level.

Another thing I do to limit my phone's dopamine rush is to delete all of the social media apps from my phone and only access them via a browser. mbasic.facebook.com is significantly less addictive that the app, while still being useful. Sometimes when I really need a break, I'll create a block list in the "Restrictions" settings on my iPhone and block Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and HN completely. I wish that there was a way for someone else to be able to remotely manage those restrictions for me, so I could uninstall all of the time-suck apps from my phone and only re-install them by getting permission from a friend who could help me honor my intentions.

Re: Dumber phone

#28
post #4

Way ahead of you here. I've upgraded to the original Nokia 3310 years ago, and it does the trick.

> I've upgraded to the original Nokia 3310 years ago, and it does the trick. I wish there was a "dumbphone" that supported and extremely small number of utility apps, like Signal.

That's sort of what Java-supporting feature phones are meant to do, but I don't think there are many apps available and supported (WhatsApp probably still is). I got by with Opera Mini on a feature phone for years, it was painful to use but still handy.

Re: Dumber phone

#30

Personally, I would love a flip phone with a removable battery and a physical button on the side to turn WiFi hotspot functionality on/off -- with OFF being the default. Having a phone that you only need to charge once a week is a great feature!

You are describing new Nokia 8110 4G (aka "the matrix phone" reincarnated)

* 25 days on standby, 8.5 hours LTE voice calls

* removable battery

* WiFi hotspot functionality

* 4G network connectivity

* KaiOS will have basic apps (Google maps, FB, Google assistant and reportetly WhatsApp in near future)

https://www.nokia.com/en_in/phones/nokia-8110-4g

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