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My year with a distraction-free iPhone

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Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#71

Post by collyw »

ggreer wrote: post #24
Gracana wrote: post #11

As someone who owns a dumb flip phone, it's funny to read someone's enthusiastic account of their life-changing experience of... living exactly the way I do. But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur ) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad…

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.

Dumbphone plus a GPS device, mp3 player could so the same. I still prefer my Sansa clip to my phone for music (I never even set the phone up for music). Small, battery lasts a while, and I basically don't need to worry about it. I even put one through the washing machine and it worked after a couple of weeks.

As a side note, I find my Android phone a serious step back in usability. I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Can't I just get a physical green answer button back, rather than stupid swipe gestures.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#72

Post by dredmorbius »

baddox wrote: post #65
fjk wrote: post #6

In a similar vein, I almost always have my phone set to silent without vibrate. This small change has made a huge difference in my interaction with my phone. I reach for it less and just generally think about it less. The downside is people are sometimes annoyed at me not reacting to calls/messages immediately. I should probably experiment with the iOS Do Not Disturb feature, but it hasn't been too big of an issue so…

Why turn the ringer completely off? Surely it's worth getting "distracted" by communication from friends and family. The only reason I can see this as a good idea is if you get a lot of bogus calls, or you know people who call/text you a ton.

I remember a time when people were reachable by location. You could call me at home and reach me early mornings (but that's rude), evenings, or weekends. Or at work at my desk.

This was a time when toll charges were high enough that unsolicited calls were something of a rarity. That's definitely changed (and lack of caller-ID on landlines is all but unbearable now).

There was even a time when answering machines didn't exist -- can't reach someone? Try later or send a letter. Not email, a letter.

Amazingly, we got by.

The conceit that I've got to be reachable by every unintelligibly accented stranger on a crap VOIP line anywhere on the planet at any time has gotten old.

And yes, if I don't aggressively guard my access, I do get a lot of crap phone calls.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#73

Post by dredmorbius »

gnu8 wrote: post #51

Bloggings like these come up semi-regularly, and I sometimes wonder if they're just designed to troll people into deleting all the apps from their phone.

Taking an electronics break really does change your view on things.

Amazing how much isn't necessary.

This comment included ;-)

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#74

Post by pelario »

superasn wrote: post #59

I think the biggest problem with the smartphone are the PUSH notifications. Disable them and your life becomes instantly better. If deleting apps is a big leap for you then I think disabling all push notifications is the second best thing you can do.

The "Infinity" problem is more general. I have no notifications, but a browser is equally troublesome...

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#75

Post by iLoch »

I wanted to try a similar experiment, but more extreme in that I'd get rid of my iPhone in favour of a pager. I decided this was probably too much of a hassle and would cause me more problems than it solved. (I use my phone to gain access to accounts on my computer, etc. using two factor authentication so quitting smart phones cold turkey isn't really an option for me after all.)

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#76

Post by crapshoot101 »

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…

Heh, same bucket - I don't even try and have FB load on the phone anymore.

My primary use case is email, Twitter (When I'm bored), WhatsApp / SMS / Snapchat / Google Maps (spending summer in a new city) and listening to podcasts (plus a brief, unrequited fling with 2048 this summer). Its amazing how much Facebook drags on it, to the point that its utterly pointless to even have on the phone.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#77

Post by jackbauer »

after my samsung galaxy S3 died (DOA) I reverted to an old sony ericsson W810i. Back to when a phone was just a phone. I am absolutely loving it. My next phone will probably be an iPhone 5s, but seriously, having a phone that is just a phone is so great.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#78

Post by nicky0 »

geden wrote: post #68
_b8r0 wrote: post #66

Does anyone find it odd that the author talks about distraction free, removing things and then uses an iOS app to meditate on the bus?

No. Meditation is also about controlling distraction.

But surely you can meditate on the bus without needing an app.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#80

Post by kissickas »

dredmorbius wrote: post #69
kissickas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the phone's off, that's going to be less useful. And the tower-tracking location granularity's much lower than GPS Though I don't know what the reporting intervals are. Some smartphones (or their apps) were reporting location data every 10 seconds , with accuracy measured within a few feet. Can't find that article at the moment, though another reports that location information is logged "at least several times an…

While it is obvious that turning off the phone helps, it's good that you make that point as I cannot remove the battery from my smartphone, a problem most "dumb" phones don't have.
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