I’ve been using a flip phone as my daily driver for a while now. The smartphone is still around, but it mostly sits in a drawer until bureaucracy or banking apps force me to use it.
For me, the benefits are clear: less distraction, more focus, better sleep. But I know for many people it’s not so easy. Essential apps, social pressure, work requirements… these are real blockers.
I’d like to start a discussion (almost like an informal poll):
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If you thought about switching, what’s the single biggest thing that holds you back?
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Is it banking? Messaging? Maps? Something else?
I’m genuinely curious because if we can identify the main pain points, maybe it’s possible to work on solutions or even start a small project around it.
So: what would need to change for you to actually give a flip phone a try?
You may as well ask me to throw away me phone entirely. I don’t carry a smartphone to make phone calls. I hate phone calls.
95% of that is spam.
I use my phone to take pictures, send those pictures, look for restaurants, navigate to those restaurants, listen to music, etc.
It’s solving device addiction with another device. Sure it will be very interesting to investigate phone models to pick from. Indeed we are good at tricking ourselves. Creating “windows” with no phone at all works better for me.
I’m closer to carrying around a cyberdeck than a dumbphone.
I don’t like either sms or phonecalls.
Precisely. I’d be more likely to switch to one of those pocket “hot spot” devices. Just a thing in my pocket that gives devices I control internet access and maybe has a shitty web interface I can log into for basic SMS when absolutely necessary. No microphone, no camera, no GPS, no access to my actual computing environment. Only 2 downsides are maintaining battery charge in multiple devices and the fact that those hotspots are generally hot garbage, and so unreliable.
Maybe, a flip phone if one existed that was 1) a full-time good quality internet hotspot (i.e., good battery), and 2) lacked a GPS and camera, and hardware disconnected the microphone when closed. Now that I think about it, that would be a fantastic device… if it existed.
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Pretty much because my smartphone is basically my digital Swiss army knife. Like even if I got a separate digital camera and MP3 Player, I also use it for navigation and to communicate with my parents and friends over signal, and like hell I am gonna give up signal. Add to that it’s also my portable wifi hotspot when I’m out, my train tickets, and how I pay for things when I’m sans-purse, I don’t know if I can give up my smartphone.
Would it be good for me to get off social media and to stop doomscrolling the news? Yes, but I can do that by going out and touching grass.
Keep in mind that doom scrolling while laying on grass is also an option. I will come back later for more uninteresting tips.
It would have to have Signal.
I’d like to be able to use Signal.
I don’t make phone calls and rarely use SMS. All the features I need/want from a phone would be missing.
Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I genuinely love my phone. It makes my life better.
WhatsApp is non optional
Being forced to use a stock google android or iOS would be what drives me to use a dumb phone.
As long as I can install a custom ROM like LineageOS or GrapheneOS, I’m good.
No
Whatsapp. That’s the only fucking reason I’m not using a dumbphone. In Brazil, everyone uses it. Need to talk to a company? Whatsapp. Friends and family? Wpp. Book a medical checkup? Wpp.
There’s also the problem of cell phone fees being abusive when calling/messaging people from a different company.
Dumb phones with KaiOS can have WhatsApp installed
That sounds dystopian
I haven’t thought about switching mainly because I listen to music, books from the library and podcasts on it. I don’t want to go back to carrying 2 devices. But I mostly use my phone to look stuff up, check email, and music/books etc. I don’t really use social media on it.
Well I had the displeasure of having to use a candybar style phone my mother was using cause it was ‘easier’ for her.
- Ages to write a message
- Very difficult to navigate through very similar SMSs (automated ones like electronic prescriptions) and pick the correct one based on date. Or even get an accurate broader picture of how many SMSs you received and when.
- Did not setup email but I believe it would also be horrendous
But in my case, I disagree with the base premise of this post. The biggest anxiety and distraction caused by my phone is via phone calls. Asynchronous communications like sms and email are much better for me.
Honestly, for me, it’s the one-two-three punch of easy notes taken anywhere + podcasts + camera.
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notes : before smartphones I carried a notebook in my pocket. And sometimes I still do; writing longhand is still pleasant for me, and being able to sketch and doodle with my notes is still clunky with a touchscreen, amazingly. But the experience of losing my notebook, or not having the right one with me when I need it, is disproportionately frustrating to me.
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podcasts : this is one of the few ways my ADHD brain truly focuses. Listening to a podcast while walking, biking, running, driving, doing dishes, cleaning a room, mowing the lawn, etc. is almost foolproof in getting me to pay attention to the content. I have to be in the right mood to read, and videos are background noise to me after having the Discovery Channel or Scifi Channel on 24/7 in my apartment in college. Before smartphones I had a trusty RCA Lyra that went everywhere with me; and while the form factor and experience were fantastic, I now have a backlog of over 800 podcast episodes that would not fit on that device’s 512MB internal storage. (Also, I just got a pair of noise canceling earbuds, and I have to admit I really like them)
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camera : I’ve chosen my last four smartphones based on the camera quality. I’ve got kids, and being able to take adorable pictures of them at the drop of a hat is very useful to me. I don’t need all the computational nonsense, but I do need it to be good enough and ever-present. Before smartphones, I would occasionally bring a digital camera around with me, but I can’t afford one that would give me the quality I want, and it wouldn’t fit in my pocket anyway.
Messaging, fitness tracking, and work stuff is also easier, though not in a way that I don’t think I could backfill with other things if needed.
Nostalgia aside, the experience of these big three use cases is indisputably better with a smartphone than it was in 2005. Could I live without them? Yes! Absolutely. But I’d prefer not to, and since I shook my social media addiction I don’t really feel the need to.
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