Not smart but clever? The return of 'dumbphones'

lulz:

“It appears fashion, nostalgia, and them appearing in TikTok videos, have a part to play in the dumbphone revival,” says Ernest Doku, mobiles expert at price comparison site Uswitch.com. “Many of us had a dumbphone as our first mobile phone, so it’s natural that we feel a sense of nostalgia towards these classic handsets.”

No, it’s not that people are figuring out that paying $1000+ for a smartphone that works against you is dumb and human-toxic. It’s the socials, and nostalgia! (large rolleyes goes here).

I keep seeing signs that we’re past peak smartphone, and the downslope can’t get steep enough!

I tried doing this. I opted for the lowest tier android phone w/ LineageOS & purchased a high-quality point-and-shoot camera for when on vacations or hikes.

After about a year I found point-and-shoot cameras still kind of confusing and navigation & camera quality from high-end phones were just too hard to give up.

I’m now considering switching to two phones: A Samsung S20/21 that remains off most of the day, but will turn on when I want to use social media applications or navigation. Otherwise my alarm, texting, ect. will all be through a arch-linux or lineageOS phone.

What’s confusing about them? Pick the mode and go, with the ones I use, at least. I mostly use an Olympus Tough TG5 (waterproof, shock resistant, if it gets banged around I don’t worry about it) and a Canon SX30IS (superzoom, for reaching out and pulling in the birds, planes, tractors, etc in the area, things that require more lens capability). They usually live in Auto for casual use, and P for most of my work, mostly because auto won’t let me enable fill flash. I’ll put them into sports mode (pick the maximum shutter speed you can for conditions, damn the F-stop!), and… honestly, that covers just about everything. Super macro mode for some blog stuff or bug photos.

I’ve got an ancient TomTom GPS I use, the car has (old) satnav maps, and I’ve written down directions often enough. If you rely on GPS, the bits of your brain responsible for navigation literally shrink.

It won’t work well. You’re trying to live in two tech levels of mobile simultaneously, and that leads to just defaulting to the higher level. You’ll end up with your SIM in the Samsung and default back to that.

Get a dumb phone (KaiOS is fine, it’s got basic Google Maps if you need it) for basic call/texting use, and then don’t do the other stuff on a phone. Do it on a desktop, and if you can’t do it on a desktop, well, that tells you just how valuable the “bonus data” from mobile use is. You definitely shouldn’t read papers on using accelerometer data to correlate phones near each other…

You have a solid camera. Buy a used GPS you can get new maps on, with a battery if you really need it mobile. Social media on a phone is a toxic whirlpool of behavioral collection, and it’s not much better on a desktop, though at least you can filter more of it. Get a standalone alarm clock (phones don’t belong in the room at night, put them in the other room and leave the ringer on if you need to), and a basic device for texting/etc. A “low tier” Android device is almost certainly more painful than a mid-range KaiOS device.

I don’t think there’s a valid way to detoxify a smartphone, anymore.

About the only critical things on my iPhone (2020 SE, mostly shut off, would have kept the 6S around if I’d known how soon I would abandon the SE) that I’ve not found a way around are a Signal root of identity (which I could move to signald if I cared, just… it’s a pain to do the QR code stuff on that, and I’m messing with Signal bridges a lot lately), and DJI drone ops. I need to have someone test the DJI app on a defanged Android device (Graphene or Calyx), and if it works properly, I’ll likely go that route for basic smart screen use, but still leave it shut down. Just archive the SE as a spare device.

What’s confusing about them?

I’ve never owned a camera aside from the disposable ones from CVS. I have no idea what aperture or all the other settings and icons mean. I camera I bought was a Panasonic LUMIX LX10, maybe the interface is more confusing for that camera? It was defiantly more work than simple point-and-shoot.

I’ve got an ancient TomTom GPS I use, the car has (old) satnav maps, and I’ve written down directions often enough. If you rely on GPS, the bits of your brain responsible for navigation literally shrink.

Sadly that’s where I’m at. I do have an offline navigation app that I though.

It won’t work well. You’re trying to live in two tech levels of mobile simultaneously, and that leads to just defaulting to the higher level. You’ll end up with your SIM in the Samsung and default back to that.

I find myself just opening twitter without thinking about it. Or when I need to look something up, I’ll see a notification for a different app, and I’ve completely forgotten why I opened my phone. My hope is that keeping my main phone “dumb”, and making it kind of annoying to use my smart-phone, I’ll reduce how much I use those addicting apps. You might be right, but I’m gonna give it a try.

Get a standalone alarm clock (phones don’t belong in the room at night, put them in the other room and leave the ringer on if you need to)

Do they still make those :joy: any recommendations?

A “low tier” Android device is almost certainly more painful than a mid-range KaiOS device.

One thing I like about android devices is the keyboard. Is there a touch-keyboard option (or a full tactile keyboard option) with any KaiOS devices? Didn’t seem like the banana phone offered that. I’d love a Librem 5 but they’re way to expensive ATM.

Ah, OK. I grew up on some decent 35mm film cameras, so it all makes sense to me, and I’m more likely to be annoyed when I can’t set some of that stuff for particular scenes. Fixed f-stops irritate me.

What was the problem with just setting it in auto and leaving it?

Working as intended, from their point of view. That’s why they do those things.

Yeah, I just see no reason to leave those apps as “push” apps. “Pull” apps are much easier on the humans.

Sure, just avoid the blindingly blue LEDs. We’ve purchased some dumb clock radios recently, though for style points, an old wind-up clock would be an improvement.

Lol. They don’t even have a touch screen… but not that I’m aware of.

The Librem 5 and PinePhone seem… a bit rough around the edges. I’ve got a PinePhone I keep meaning to play with, but it seems a step down in function from the flip phone.

I’ve never been much for social media anyway, but I think phones with custom (google play-less) ROMS are a feature here. I literally cannot run the apps for facebook, twitter, snapchat, etc. on GrapheneOS. Email apps are set to only sync when I tell them to. So the only push notifications I get at this point are SMS/Signal and Matrix.

I just discovered these folks, apparently a Mennonite company (?): https://sunbeamwireless.com who make fairly affordable ($195) flip-style phones with a slimmed-down OS and 4G/LTE connectivity specifically aimed at reducing distractions.

None of their phones support email, but they do offer three varieties of OS services, from no camera/sms to camera+sms, to camera+sms+maps/nav.

I’m intrigued.

I think I know someone who ordered one of those a while back - I’ll ping her and see if she has any feedback.