So, after like 8 months of dumbphone only, I’ve given up.
It wasn’t one majorly annoying thing, but just a non-stop death by a thousand cuts. Modern life really requires at least possession of one of these stupid little rectangles, and if you don’t have one, you get slowly nibbled to death by the ducks of modernity.
So, rather than redouble my efforts to bend the world to dealing with me wanting to be a bit of a luddite weirdo, I’ve given up and just… bought an iPhone SE and paired it with an Apple Watch 8 I already had.
See, the thing I really didn’t consider is that I pretty much already had the ideal dumbphone: this AW8 is a cellular version.
It does phone calls, text messages, and has sufficient ties to modern services (music, podcasts, audiobooks, maps, etc.) that it is, by itself, a 60% solution. And just for perfect clarity: there’s a lot of things wrong with the watch that make it not an ideal device, with the biggest one being really not fantastic battery life.
For everything the watch doesn’t do, I also have the phone, but the phone isn’t strictly required, and I can simply leave it at home when I don’t want to deal with all the modern smartness and just rely on the watch.
For sure, it’s not a cheap solution since an iPhone and a cellular watch is a giant investment even if you go for the “cheapest” versions, and I’m paying for two cellular plans (though, with US Mobile it’s $96/year for each so, relatively speaking, still pretty cheap).
If I didn’t have children and a gf, I’d go dumb phone all the way.
Yeah, I really wanted to get rid of the smartphone because I waste so much time on it. I made a list of all the things I use it for and possible alternatives, and it was mostly doable, but I just can’t give up Discord. Got friends and family without cell service, especially the younger ones, and Discord is how they text.
Part of me is relieved because tracking my gym progress with pen and paper sounded like a pain. I’m always missing at least one item from my gym bag on a given day :P adding two more to rely on is a bad idea.
But still, the luddite life is so alluring…maybe someday I’ll be free of this magic rectangle that makes me sad.
Yeah that’s basically the same conclusion I reached: it’s perfectly cromulent until you run into something you need that it won’t do, and then there’s absolutely no way to make it work, period.
A lot of the final decision was based primarily around the fact that I just was not invovled in what friends and family members were doing, because I had become a pain in the ass to contact and so people just… didn’t.
bought an iPhone SE
Why note get pixel and flash it with GrapheneOS… You stop sundar Google from creeping on you while still getting 95% of use cases covered.
Mostly becasuse, well, I don’t like Android.
I’ve tried it repeatedly over quite a number of years, starting with the G1, and every time I’ve used it, my general opinion was ‘this is fine I guess, but I’d rather have an iOS device instead’. Excepting the two OnePlus devices: those were utter shit. One I was pretty sure was going to catch fire, and one that actually did catch fire. No more crap from them, seriously.
Will say the Nexus 9 tablet rates in the S-tier of all the tablets I’ve ever owned, though.
And I’m deep in the Apple ecosystem otherwise: Mac, iPad, Watch, AirPods and so on.
And, of course, I don’t think there’s a wearable smartwatch for android that integrates cellular stuff quite like the iPhone/Watch does in that it’ll share calls and messages on a single number. I know there’s a lot of stand-alone stuff, and a lot of non-cellular stuff, but the last time I looked there wasn’t really a seamless and cheap solution for leaving the phone at home and not losing any of the primary communication aspects of the phone.
You are not there yet… It is about priority, privacy is not yours
I’m thinking of getting on board with this. Is there a Pixel phone you recommend?
At this point, I think pixel 6 is oldest you can go. But really, it’s about your budget. I am hearing people still using pixel 4s.
With that being said 9 has better battery and faster charging and that has some value.
Whatever you do, consider open box, used, or refurbished because fuck Google and sundar the creep.
Ok, thank you. I’m new to the world of buying used phones. Usually I just get online through my phone plan provider, so this should be an adventure. Thanks!!
There is some risk there no doubt, so if you need 100% success and warranty something to do consider. New has best protection.
However, from personal experience and others talking, it is 95% the way to go. I am sure one day I will get a lemon but all the money savings will cover it for me as of today.
I generally start a lot of my purchases now on second hand markets, preferably local. Deny these parasites profit one transaction at a time;)
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.
What were some of the things that nibbled away at ya?
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.
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.
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.
when gramma’s house got wired for internet last summer, we were able to dump the mobile hotspot she was using at home for internet (which was practically unusable because the signal there is basically non-existent the last few years) to get our bill “down” to “only” $130. 3 handhelds and an adapter thing you can connect normal phones to. a whole 8 or 10gb of pooled data included in that. vzn is really generous here.
it’d be $46 with these guys for the same lines and gigs ($36 total a month for the handhelds, and $120 a year for the adapter), but we might have to get new gear all around except for mine (volte flipper bought at retail, unlocked and supposed to work with all three carriers). i like that new feature where we can try the carriers out and easily switch a line (or all) from one to another if one isn’t working where we need it to.
what does the cid come up as when calling a landline with name&number cid? just ‘wireless’ and number or somesuch like some cell phones, the billing name (like others–what we don’t want. we use a line as a business line), or can you customize the names that show up with the number?
what does the cid come up as when calling a landline with name&number cid? just ‘wireless’ and number or somesuch like some cell phones, the billing name (like others–what we don’t want. we use a line as a business line), or can you customize the names that show up with the number?
I have no idea, tbh.
I went to try to test, but it turns out I don’t know ANYONE with a landline phone anymore, so uh, I can’t.
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.
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.
