Today, I’m embarking on a 30 day experiment to see if I can live (and do my job) in the modern world without a smartphone.
Why?
I’ve been a tech enthusiast all my life: always had to have the latest, greatest, newest, and shiniest gadget I could afford. Here lately, it feels like the tech is taking over and just making me miserable. “Always connected”, notification fatigue, endless doom scrolling, "download our app for [super basic thing that shouldn’t require an app], etc. I love my smartphone, but I feel like it’s a “ball and chain” that’s causing me unneeded stress.
I’ve been wanting to try this for some time, but the “killer app”, so to speak, on my smartphone is hospot mode. I use that heavily for both work and personal use, and I only recently realized that modern “dumb” phones could do that now. Suddenly this experiment became possible, so I bought a cheap dumb phone and decided to give it a try.
So, can I go 30 days without a smartphone, and will I see any quality of life improvements (or perhaps the opposite)? Only one way to find out.
Conditions of the experiment:
I bought a modern-era “dumb” flip phone and moved my SIM to it yesterday evening. It’s not a true “dumb” phone, though. It runs a stripped down version of Android, so I’m able to install a few “must have” apps that I need such as my MFA and credit union app. I made a concession with the banking app since the closest branch office is 45 minutes away (I don’t consider the MFA app to be a concession since some of the dumber dumb phones had support for at least TOTP generators).
That’s it for the apps. No email, IM/chat apps, web browser, etc (though I can run all of those it seems). The only “apps” will be the ones that would be standard for a dumb phone of the mid 2000s (calendar, camera, alarm, music player, etc). I’ve already connected it over USB and loaded up era-appropriate music from my local collection 😆
Rules:
- I’ll allow myself to carry my smartphone (w/o SIM card) in my bag, powered off, in case I do need it for something urgent, but I won’t carry it on my person or use it beyond immediate need. Will connect to my “dumb” phone via its hotspot for internet.
- If I do need to break out the old smart rectangle, I should look to see if there is a way to accomplish what I need without it.
- This experiment cannot interfere with my job duties.
- I’ve setup an SMS bridge on my server to forward certain critical alerts. I used to do this back when all phones were dumb phones, so I don’t feel it’s breaking the spirit of the experiment. These will only be “the datacenter is on fire” level alerts, so I don’t anticipate many (or any).
So, here goes. I’m not sure what to expect or how this will turn out and even less sure I’ll make it the full 30 days. Wish me luck.
What make and model of cheap “dumb” phone did you choose? And how’s it running so far?
I might one day try something similar, but my experience with cheap hasn’t been good, and if it can barely turn on like a certain cheap tablet I once had, the experiment would end quickly.
Cat S22 Flip for like $65. Seems made for TMobile (which is who I have) but may work with other carriers since it’s sold unlocked. Was originally looking at the Nokia 2780 (which seems well-reviewed) but went with this one instead since it was a bit cheaper and I wasn’t sure I needed it for more than a 30 day experiment.
This one is chonky, but it’s designed for like construction workers and such, so that’s technically a feature.
Have only been using it since yesterday, but so far so good (within expectations, anyway). It’s also several years old (ca. 2021) and unsupported by the manufactuter, but for the purposes of this experiment, it’s good enough. It’s definitely a weird form factor to see Android in, but it works. Just don’t expect to do anything major with it. (i.e. treat it like a dumb phone).
It’s supports both hotspot and voice over LTE (VoLTE) and wifi calling, so that covers my main use cases as a phone and mobile internet connection.
It’s also kind of cool how quickly I got back into T9 typing. Was a bit awkward at first since it’s been nearly 2 decades since I last had to type like that, but after texting with a friend for a while yesterday, it all came back.
Thanks!
Nah, the point would be to use it as a dumb phone, but as you point out it’s still Android, a “Smart” OS compacted into a “Dumb” shell, not a purpose built dumb phone OS. My concern would be the (lack of) optimization or bloat of said OS causing poor performance that results in a bad experience navigating even the dumb functions. The tablet I mentioned for example(RCA), you could make a sandwich between basic app launches…
Either way, enjoy the experience!
Yeah, that’s definitely a check in the “con” column for sure, lol.
There are a few custom ROMs available for it (some de-googled, some not) that I’m probably going to flash once my 30 day experiment is over. The only bloatware I couldn’t remove was the TMobile app, but I neutered it by removing all of its permissions lol.
Overall, it’s still mostly a dumb phone on steroids and pretty responsive (even internet browsing wasn’t too awful before I disabled the browser). I’m hoping it can be a step toward an actual dumb phone (which is also why I chose it over the Nokia).
Hey, good luck! I keep mine silenced and out of sight and just use the wifi hotspot for internet, VOIP etc. Didn’t know dumb phones could do that, else that’s what I’d have!
Thanks!
Yeah, I tried the whole “out of sight, out of mind” thing but apparently didn’t have the self-discipline to make it stick. Kind of forcing myself with this experiment lol. Also why I drafted the rules to keep myself on task.
I think it was only 4-5 days ago that I found out modern “dumb” phones could do hotspot. At least, all the ones I saw that were running KaiOS (e.g. most of the ‘dumb’ Nokia phones) or Android Go edition have that support.
I’ve done this as well. Coming up with the technical solution to design the life you want is one thing, but a common pitfall is that you’re going to get bored shitless (which is a good thing!) and you’ll crave getting back online. It’s important to be cognisant of this fact beforehand and have a strategy for dealing with it.
Read books, take walks, find a meaningful way to spend your time. Eventually you will get rid of the itch and it will feel liberating. Good luck!
Read books, take walks, find a meaningful way to spend your time
That’s the goal :)
I’ve been living this life for a while. I initially was holding out for a FOSS smartphone but, by the time anything libre came to market, I had been living without a smartphone for so long that it made me realize how pleasant life is without carrying a mobile device around.
will I see any quality of life improvements (or perhaps the opposite)?
This depends on your outlook. If quality of life to you means integrating with society and not being the odd girl out, then expect decline. But the Kaczinski life can be pretty great… sans the bombs, of course.
I’ve done this before. Not intentionally but my phone needed repairs and the place doing the repairs kept screwing up so I went a good couple months without a phone.
Surprisingly you get used to it fast and it doesn’t become a big deal. The hardest transition was remembering phone numbers if I needed to call someone.
Also I was constantly printing out driving directions like some sort of boomer haha.
Also I was constantly printing out driving directions like some sort of boomer haha.
Haha, nice. Adapt and overcome.
This one has maps and GPS, but I haven’t used them yet other than verify they can find me sitting on my couch lol. I was able to transfer my numbers, so I’m good there. I think there are like 5 people in the world whose phone numbers I remember, and 2 of them are still correct 😆
There are standalone hotspot devices.
Does banking on a laptop ruin the experiment for you?
Does banking on a laptop ruin the experiment for you?
Academically, no, and that was the original plan. However, my banking app sometimes requires me to open it to approve a purchase during the POS transaction or I’ll need to launch it to adjust my spending limits (both fraud protection features). I could turn those off, but I’ve grown to like them. Plus, I occasionally have to deposit checks, and you have to use the app to scan the checks to deposit them remotely; there’s no equivalent in the web-based OLB portal.
Ah, so it does make a big difference to do all the banking on a laptop. Ball and chain analogy intensifies
Yeah. The way it works is if their detection algorithm feels funny about a transaction, it’ll decline it and alert you in the app. Then you can click an “approve” button and run the transaction again and it’ll succeed. Not sure if that behavior works just using the online banking (never tried).
The remote deposit I could live without. I don’t get checks that often, and I can just as easily mail them for deposit if I don’t want to drive.
Like I said, I could turn those off or call the bank when it declines and have them issue the “approve”.
If I make it to the 30 days on this experiment, maybe phase 2 will be another 30 days but without the bank app.
So kind of like me going a year strong. Who did you communicate with the most on it?
How do you even live without a cell phone number? Sign up on Google, Dicord, ChatGPT or any of the services people use? Or have like access to your bank account?
The latter for me is complicated due to things like citizenship and whatnot. If I needed to, as a business, some people offer their numbers for people to ride off of, though not everyone requires it anyways, and among those who do, for the most part, I was already on them. They aren’t there as an ID, just to put a speed bump in the process of over-joining. Mainly I use the mailing option.
There’s always the risk Google will detect some “suspicious activity” with your account. For whatever reason. They did that with my secondary Google account. I refused to give them my ID or phone number and now the account is disabled/severely restricted.
Same probably applies to a few other platforms that do these more elaborate things to protect accounts.
Nice! How’s that been a year in? I’m half a day into day 1, lol, but I’m not feeling any pangs or loss yet.
Friends, family, and work, mostly. I had all the IM / chat apps, personal email, work email, you name it. A while back I merged my work phone and my personal phone because carrying around both was pretty awful.
It was easy for me as I have so few contacts. That’s the main thing. A year later I’m doing well, it feels like it was all mentally erased. The only time it comes flooding back to me is whenever I’m at a festival and the person from the Verizon stall power-walks up to me and asks “would you like to change your plan”. Once I was like “yeah, we should change our plan and go to the ice cream stall first.”
I did the same for about 6 months, but I went with an actual dumb phone, a Nokia 225.
It was interesting, and the things I missed the most from a smartphone were def. not what I expected:
- Visual voicemail: calling a phone number and having to do voicemail like it’s 1993 was probably THE most obnoxious part of the whole experience
- SMS messaging: T9 wasn’t great in 1996, and it’s still not great in 2024.
Replaced all the media stuff with an iPod which worked shockingly well for podcasts, audiobooks, and music, though I did build a little bit of automation to download and convert youtube videos to a format the iPod would play.
Beyond that, it was just what you’d expect: no apps, and no distractions.
SMS messaging: T9 wasn’t great in 1996, and it’s still not great in 2024.
I’m feeling the opposite lol. I’m preferring the T9 (or more often, just tapping out messages letter by letter) to the on-screen keyboard I gave up. Mostly I think I just missed physical keys, lol, but I’ll take what I have. Took me a bit to get back in the swing of it (it’s been a decade and half), but the muscle memory is coming back.
The music player on here is decent enough, and I threw in a 32 GB SD card I had lying around, and that’s working pretty well (hooked right up to my car’s bluetooth).
But yeah, I’m trying to work toward true dumb phone, but for now, I’ve dumbed down a dumb smart phone to a pretty close approximation haha.
The problem I ran into was the dictionary: T9 will let me text the BF and ask him to bring home milk no problem. It’s noticeably less useful when I need to tell someone to use systemd to restart a service, and afaik there’s no good way to expand the dictionary on at least that specific phone, so it was kind of a slog half the time vs being able to just… type out what you needed to send.
It’d do media playback, but not in any format I’d reasonably want to listen to (no flac? for shame!) and rockbox on an iPod did, so that’s mostly the driver behind that choice.
So? How did it go?
Aside from forgetting to post a follow-up, lol, it went very well.
I found that I could get by with a dumb phone but also that a true dumb phone would be a little too restrictive for my lifestyle. The device I used wasn’t a true feature phone (I just disabled everything that made it “smart” with the exception of my bank app), so after the 30 days were up, I un-dumbed it back into the basic smartphone it is.
I’m really liking that as a middle ground. I still benefit from the small screen and atypical form factor by not wanting to use it to scroll endlessly but I can have the convenience connectivity apps that I want (email, Matrix, bank app, maps, weather app/widget, calendar/tasks, etc).
I used KeyMapper app to make the physical keypad much more useful (music controls, quick-access to certain apps on long press, etc) which is awesome. It’s also solar powered along with a few of my other everyday carry devices.
In two days, I will have been daily-driving it for two months and will probably continue using it for the foreseeable future. Not sure what I am going to do on my next upgrade cycle, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
I broke my phone on the first day of a music festival a few weeks ago (went without it for 6 days). The living without it part was easy - I was camping at a big multi-day event with friends, and random people were easy/nice to talk to. I made new friends that I otherwise wouldn’t have. Certainly being stimulated by the event made a difference, so I’d recommend finding new things to occupy yourself. But you might find it easier than you think.
The part I had the most trouble with was the banking, which isn’t an issue you’ll have under your conditions. I knew I had money in the bank, but I didn’t know how much was in my chequing account linked to my card. I was worried about health insurance premium etc. being taken out of my account and leaving me no money for food or party favours. The lines for food were long and while waiting I was half expecting to be declined at point of sale.
As such it seems a little bit of a cheat to have continuous access to your banking app, but I’m sure it’ll be a positive experience for you nonetheless and that concession should ensure your ability to practically function for work etc. Good luck!
Another part of this experience was driving through the Canadian Rockies and getting to really appreciate the environment. I think over time that road trip will be even more memorable just due to my attention not being diverted towards my phone. A beautiful place I look forward to visiting again!
and while waiting I was half expecting to be declined at point of sale.
I still carry the mental scars from when I was poor and still get anxious every time the card terminal takes too long (not that I’m rich now, lol, just a little above paycheck to paycheck).
But yeah, that’s basically the whole rationale for allowing that concession. The alternative would be calling the bank, but sometimes you have to sit on hold for 5-10 minutes, and I would be mortified to hold up a checkout line that long lol.
Good luck. That’s probably going to be healthy and provide some insight. I think it’s a bit lame to ultimately still carry a smartphone. I had mine break a few years ago and went like 3 days entirely without a phone in my pocket… That’s quite an experience. And my friends didn’t really sign up for that experiment. They expected to meet up with me somewhere and tell me when they’re there. Or that they’ve missed the bus. And forgot that wasn’t an option after I left the house… And of course I couldn’t book anything, scan barcodes, use 2 factor authentication etc…
But sure. No one can quit their job or not get their daily tasks done because of something like that. I think it’s going to be what people call “digital detox” for you. Being expected to be available 24/7 and getting notifications all day is part of the issue with modern life. But the real problem is doomscrolling and doing too much social media all day and alike.
So, keep us posted! My question is: What exactly made you do this? What do you do with your phone that makes you unhappy and start that experiment?
Thanks!
I think it’s going to be what people call “digital detox” for you. Being expected to be available 24/7 and getting notifications all day is part of the issue with modern life. But the real problem is doomscrolling and doing too much social media all day and alike.
Yep, I’m absolutely looking at it like kicking an addiction. If it’s like when I quit smoking, the first 4 days are gonna be rough. Luckily I’m not giving up all the doomscrolling and social media entirely, just removing them from easy, instant, always-on access in my pocket. So I’ll still get my “fix”, it will just be in more measured doses when I can sit down with my laptop. Same for after-hours work emails and such, too.
What exactly made you do this? What do you do with your phone that makes you unhappy and start that experiment?
Mostly the culmination of years upon years of notification fatigue, spending way too much time doom scrolling and reacting to various alert noises, and wanting to break out of the cycle. Like I said in the post, I’ve been wanting to try this for a good while now (probably 1-2 years) but didn’t realize until recently that I could get a “dumb” phone that could do hotspot (didn’t want to carry a dedicated hotspot and pay for a second data plan).
Wow, I’m fascinated to hear how this goes! I’m exactly the same sort of “Tech” person, and have had similar thoughts before. I can’t wait to hear how this goes for you!
Best of luck!
I always found this sort of perspective as odd to me…because I’m the opposite. I love always being able to be connected or being able to find entertainment when waiting in line or something. I have never felt like my phone is a “ball and chain”. It’s an incredibly useful tool that I don’t know how I would manage without at this point…especially when it comes to navigation.
I remember when my phone broke a few years back and I was without a phone for a few days. I was totally lost! I use my phone as a work alarm, the only other phone number I know is my mom’s, and when I tried to purchase a new phone, my bank wanted to verify it was me with a call/text but I couldn’t verify it because my phone was broken. And it was kind of boring in situations where I had to wait to do something in certain situations and the only alternative I really had to stare at the wall.
But…I have never been the type to “doomscroll”, things like TikTok don’t appeal to me, and I have limited social contacts who are not incessantly bothering me. One thing I’m also always quick to do is disable any unnecessary app notifications. So my phone hardly pings with notifications at all. And when it does, it’s usually something I care to see.
