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My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

artmatsak.com

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Re: My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

#81

Post by Freak_NL »

Beltalowda wrote: post #27
gnicholas wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with getting around (public transit timing, driving directions/traffic, uber/lyft) without a smartphone?

I just write things down on a piece of paper; or just "yolo it". It works well enough, although lack of GPS can be inconvenient at times, I find it's not a huge deal – this is how almost everyone got around up to ~10 years ago. I never used taxi services anyway; bus services are pretty good here, and I cycle. A bigger issue is that a lot of services are "smartphone-only", and can't be done with a regular computer; so…

My wife and I will have to buy one soon, because it is pretty much the only way we can establish a line of communication with other parents of my young son's peers at kindergarten (he's nearing 3). Not doing so would stunt his growth on an emotional level, because we would deprive him of things like play dates and such. Not due to malice on the part of other parents, but because not having WhatsApp (here in the Netherlands) is not something other people can always grasp. We can choose who we interact with, but we can't choose my son's friends parents.

It's so incredibly silly how owning a smartphone isn't even a matter of preference any more; people just expect everyone to have one. I don't really need one, despite loving train travel and independent exploration on holidays. Paper maps work fine, preparation using a normal computer too.

Re: My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

#82

Post by m4tthumphrey »

throwawaynay wrote: post #53
pedroaraujo wrote: post #40

I don't understand these kind of posts. Can't people just use a regular smartphone phone and _not_ install Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.?

If you use a social network long enough it really becomes extremely hard to do. I honestly find it harder to quit all social networks than quit some drugs. I uninstall/reinstalled the same social networks sometime multiples times a day, I often closed a social network webpage only to instinctively retype the url seconds later. The only thing that kinda works for me is software that block all social medias. I suggest…

I've found long term success in getting off of Facebook (never used Twitter) using the following steps (I still visit Insta most days on the native app however):

* Got rid of the native apps (except for Messenger Lite) years ago

* Switched to mbasic.facebook.com in the browser

* Recently I logged out of said mobile site

Now every time my muscle memory goes to facebook.com it asks me to login and I close the tab. I don't miss it at all and have no urge to login once I see the login form. I think I may have finally quashed my FB addiction!

Re: My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

#83

Post by angus-g »

zephyr9 wrote: post #21
octoberfranklin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your phone still actually work? You must not be in the US... that is a 3G phone and the 3G networks here are either shut off or in the process of being shut off. https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_515-5663.php

I'm in Australia and I think there's a law that carriers need to keep an amount of 3G coverage. So we will likely lose 4G coverage before 3G. Regulation FTW!

I think it might only be around for another couple of years -- Telstra is switching theirs off in 2024, and Optus is pretty soon too.

Re: My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

#84

Post by epilloud »

My approach on this problem was first to use the dedicated Apple's solution, that is the time management control panel. Spoiler, that never worked as I would turn on and off the constraints based on my needs. I was consistently unsatisfied and endlessly blaming my lack of will. Thus, I really understand the point of view of the author to readily constraint himself with the hardware instead of software knobs easy to turn off.

Rather of buying a new phone, it worked for me to just live with my iPhone 6 until today. It became so slow that it achieves pretty much the same behavioral perks but still supports a wider range of useful features imho like keeping my Spotify account usable on my commute. Opposidely, my reddit addiction -- and news sites in general -- completely disappeared as the website now takes seconds to load and the panel advocating to download the app takes up half the screen making it just unusable.

Re: My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

#85

Post by alfredbez »

I also switched to a Nokia 230 ~2 years ago, first just as an experiment, haven't gone back so far.

I tried a KaiOS based phone also in that time, but that was so unbelievably unstable that I ditched it after using it for two weeks or so.

I still have a smartphone powered off in a drawer, that I pick whenever I need that (~once a month, for banking stuff, using Google Maps to drive to another city, etc). I have Telegram running on my laptop and a few other things like the app for my mowing robot.

In general, also at work, I like to mute all notifications if I need to focus, heavy Pomodoro user, too.

There are not that many downsides for me. Sometimes someone asks me to send a phone number to them, which is only possible via Bluetooth. So I need to write the number down on a piece of paper, type it back into an SMS and send it. What a waste of time - I first thought. But in reality, that dump phone saves much more time, than these little pieces of manual effort cause, so in the end, I still have more free time. I was surprised at how often I do things that I don't need to do that often, e.g. checking my bank account balance.

Re: My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

#86

Post by Voeid »

zinekeller wrote: post #77
Voeid wrote: post #71

"Out of concern for my privacy I have decided to switch to a phone that has an abandoned OS and I type messages to my wife using WhatsApp" seriously?

> to a phone that has an abandoned OS Huh, how abandoned is it really?

https://research.nccgroup.com/2020/08/24/whitepaper-explorin...

Re: My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

#87

Post by zokier »

> Apps including WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, as well as others that you can install from KaiOS Store.

> Google Assistant. It’s not deeply integrated with the device (more on this below) but it can still be useful for voice text entry and quick Google lookups.

> Ability to sync your email, contacts and calendar, or simply import your contacts from a third-party service.

What makes this a "dumb phone" then?

Re: My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

#88

Post by leto_ii »

I too am using a Nokia KaiOS phone (8110 in my case) from time to time.

Two flaws of the device that I think would make it hard to use as a primary are the short battery life (far from the fabled 10 day charge of yore) and the short key travel distance that makes it very easy to do multiple presses by mistake. The second thing is particularly annoying when entering your PIN (if you decide to use one).

Re: My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

#89

Post by chana_masala »

L0in wrote: post #46
throwaway74737 wrote: post #44

Life is too short to waste distracted by a smartphone. I prefer to use a the large screen and keyboard of a laptop for communication. I am still using a 2G phone with a B&W display for emergencies, for example if I get lost or held up meeting friends. Even then I'll have discussed a contingency with them - the old-fashioned way. I pay next to nothing to keep the account open, and the tap-texting naturally limits my d…

Can you share more advice for a 23 year old who wants to dump the "social internet?"

Best advice would be to go for it! And more practically - get phone numbers and emails of those you want to stay in touch with

Re: My first three months with a Nokia dumb phone as a daily driver

#90

Post by jabbany »

nabla9 wrote: post #76
jabbany wrote: post #13

As others have mentioned, this is not really a dumb phone. Sure it puts some more _friction_ into using modern Internet connected services, but you can still basically do everything a modern phone can do (it has a full modern browser). Heck you even get the modern experience of ads everywhere despite the limited screen and memory (the ads are all modal pages)! In fact, much of the review centers around "smart" featur…

Feature phone is the correct name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_phone

It's the blog's author that calls these dumb phones. Just trying to keep with the original post terminology.
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