This corroborates my suspicions about living with a smartphone. I'm not someone who has tried to avoid them, but I still think there should be options for people who don't like them. I've seen more and more things that seem to be smartphone only, and I've been wondering if they do anything for people without one, or if they're just shit out of luck.
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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I've been in the same boat, so i got myself a cheap phone (actually a hand-me-down from my mom in the form of a Redmi 6A lol), flashed lineageos and didn't install gapps. Basically as dumb as a smartphone gets. Then you get fdroid and aurora store and you're good to go. However, i use that phone only when i need to focus, so about 5-6 hours a day, so unfortunately i still have a smartphone. So maybe it would be worth it for you to look into that sorta thing, definitely has helped me regain control.
What were some of the things that nibbled away at ya?
Could you elaborate on the thousand cuts?
It's just endless little things:
- How do you do TOTP 2fa on a dumb phone? You really can't.
- I have to keep two copies of my media library, because the smart devices can play flac, and the dumb devices can't
- I also have to keep two copies of my audiobook library: the smart devices play from audiobookshelf, which wants single-file variants, and the dumb devices need to be split into small chunks
- Zero access to any of the home automation stuff on the dumb devices
- Dumb phones are limited to SMS and MMS, and that dramatically impacts your integration with people on smart devices using iMessage or RCS, and you're basically that guy with the shit that's fucking everything up for everyone else
- Calendar sync? Nope.
- Contact sync? Also nope.
- E-mail? Good luck with that - if you're expecting something important, carry your laptop.
- Wifi hotspot? Not on the phone I had, so nevermind about carrying your laptop, won't do you any good.
- Voice mail? Sure, but good lord is ye olde dial-a-thing-and-hit-7-wait-no-8-damnit-i-mean-6 voicemail shit. Visual voicemail is 10000% less horrible
Edit: Also:
- T9 texting. I kinda got okay again at it but would not say it's preferred anymore
And on and on and on. None of those are dealbreakers on their own, but it's always something that either you can't do, or can't quite do right, or is actively a problem for everyone else you're interacting with and you just.... end up with so many little annoyances you're not sure doing this makes any sense.
i've only ever had 'dumb'phones because the lowest cost is most important to me. everybody's needs are different. your issues with them are all 'non issues' for me.
i just get by as i always have. work and home for the internet (and i'm rarely far from either), a book when i'm out for extended periods instead of doom scrolling at every idle moment, and i don't do any 'personal business' online--at all. about the only thing i 'miss out' on is 'app exclusive' deals at stores and restaurants and things like that. nbd.
i do work on other people's 'smart'phones regularly (software, interoperability, configurations, etc), even though i've never had my own.
if i still lived in the city (haven't in over 20 years), i would probably have a cheap one, though--mainly for transit schedules and such. varying from your daily routine was always a pain with pocket schedules.
I have Audiobookshelf running too, and all of my audiobooks are collections of mp3 files (numbered properly by either Libation or downloaded directly from Libro.fm).
I'm not sure where this "wants single-file variants" comes from.
The Shelf works fine with separate mp3s.
And I love T9 typing so much, I've installed the Type Nine keyboard on my iPhone.
But I could never live the dumb phone life.
I’m not sure where this “wants single-file variants” comes from.
I was having issues with pirated audiobooks stopping playback, being unable to resume playback, and losing playback status and location all the damn time, though this was a while ago.
The suggestion was to take these random audiobooks and condense them into one file, instead of the 15 tracks per disk, 20 disks per book mess they were, and sure enough that completely fixed the problem.
If it's no longer an issue, cool, but for a while playback from books in lots and lots and lots of parts was flaky as fuck.
The solution to the audio files issues is to have a dedicated DAP. Get a dedicated hot spot as well.
basically that guy with the shit that's fucking everything up for everyone else
I too enjoy speaking in highly technical terms such as this
I think it’s really cool you tried it out for as long as you did.
Are you “all in” on smartphone now that you know it’s essential?
I still strongly dislike a lot of the dynamics around them.
They're still privacy nightmares, they're still running black-box software that's not auditable and doing who the fuck knows what in the basebands, and they're still covered in sensors running apps that are trying to scrape every byte of that data to profile you and sell that data to anyone who asks.
But, ultimately, I was spending too much time trying to stand on a principle that wasn't really doing anything (I still use computers, and the websites of most of the apps I was using before, and still having a huge amount of data ingested since I didn't live in a cabin in the woods) other than making my own life more complicated and causing shit like missing invites to things because my phone just didn't get the SMS, or resorted the arrival order, or failed to download a MMS message or whatever whereas everyone on a modern phone was like, fine.
So I won't say I'm all-in, or that I like them, or that I've even changed my mind that they're little spy rectangles that are making us all stupid, but uh, too much in modern life is making the assumption you have one to completely unplug without losing an awful lot.
I've considered using a cell phone mostly as a modem, and then a VoIP service being the "public" number. The VoIP service doesn't know where you are -- you could even route your communications with it to a VPN. The cell provider doesn't know what you're doing. You can use all open-source software under your control locally on your device. You can use whatever device or devices you want as a VoIP device, even a laptop, though you can't get incoming calls unless one device is on. You could use a VoIP client on the phone to mitigate those cases.
When I'm out and about, I use a de-Googled JellyStar. A very small phone that I mainly use just for messages and calls. It's not a dumbphone, it's a small smartphone that is quite hard to view or comment on social media with. Doesn't encourage anything but basic use.
I loved my Jelly Star until the screen on it failed. Trying to get it fixed under warranty seemed practically impossible so eventually I just gave up and went back to my old phone.
Sorry to hear about that. Mine so far OK but only had it 6 months.
with US Mobile
been looking at them for awhile to cut our phone costs. how do you like 'em, and which 'network' do you use?
I'm using their T-Mobile rebrand, and it's just as good as T-Mobile ever was, excepting you don't get any 5G access.
Though, tbh, I don't care, since I'm paying $5 a month for 500 minutes, 500 texts, and 500mb of data. 5G would be a total waste since, I mean, even the 4G stuff can eat all my data allocation in like 30 seconds anyways.
I posted here back in August about a 30 day dumbphone challenge. I'm still using that flip phone, though I've un-dumbed it since then. Still, it's just inconvenient enough that I don't make habit of endlessly scrolling.
It seems to me you are suffering from cognitive dissonance. You want to not use a smart phone and you deem that the "correct" way. You get frustrated with yourself because you can't live the way you think is right.
Don't beat yourself up, it's hard enough out here already. Getting by without a smart phone is hard and you aren't to blame for that. If at any point you feel addicted, identify you values and make a decision whether or not to put it away. Don't let your subconscious control what you consciously want.
Or I could have read this all wrong, I'm just some douche on the internet.
It's near impossible to live without anymore
All of our bills are paid online, our kids' teachers communicate with us through apps, the school has its own app for communicating events and closures
Even just ordering fast food is done through apps. It's still an option to order in person, but won't be able to get special deals or earn points without their app.
My TV even works best with an app instead of just a regular remote
It's never lost on me when there is an annoyingly loud commercial but I can't mute the TV because the app is updating and restarting
Never thought I would one day be telling people to "hold on my remote control is updating and restarting"
What a time to be alive