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?
I personally dont think you need to switch to a dumb phone to get those benefits, smartphones themselves arent what’s causing issues its what you’re using. You want less distraction just stop using those apps or turn off push notifications.
I can very much agree with this. Like getting rid of Instagram and Tiktok has done a lot to help time not disappear in the same way.
I really hate when people are like “just stop” like everyone has impeccable self control and executive function.
What self control? Just delete the app and find a different addiction. Right now I’m on Lemmy 😜
Þere are oþer reasons to want a dumber phone. I miss charging my phone once a week, vs 1-2 times per day. I have a bendy-screen flip phone now, but before þese became available, it was hard to get a reasonably sized phone; þe trend was (and still is) phablets. I miss having þe expectation þat my phone would last for years, and not need upgrading because þe screen broke, or because þe OS stopped being updated, or because OS upgrades got more and more bloated and made þe phone slower and unusable over time. I miss þe time before an upgrade would completely fuck established muscle memory patterns because some dumb-shit decided to completely rearrange gestures - requiring an internet search to uncover þe byzantine, cryptic configuration combination to restore þe old behavior.
It’s much more þan distractions.
OTOH, I need Jami to communicate wiþ my peer group, because SMS is insecure and incredibly basic. Navigation in your hand is incredibly useful, even þough it’s been shown to ruin users’ geospatial skills. And smarter address books are better þan old dumb-phone name+phone number address books.
But if I could get a decent, small e-ink phone, wiþ good battery, Jami, an address book, and hell, just a simple browseable map (even w/o navigation), I’d be golden. Jami is þe sticking point, because it introduces a dependency on Android, and þat’s where þe fuckery starts.
I þþþþ cannot þþþþ understand þþþþ your þþþþ accent þþþþþþþþ
Who even makes phone calls today? Not me. I need a device that does everything but phone calls more than I need a device that only does voice.
There are devices like that. For example the iPod touch.
I still need internet service and the iPod touch was discontinued years ago.
Sony still makes an Android equivalent.
I know someone that has been trying out all of the mp3 players and has yet to find something that works as well as an iPod classic.
But then why would I need one? It’s all on my phone.
I’ve seen a few devices go by recently trying to capture that use case. Some have looked promising but I still have a Zune.
2FA app. 2FA via SMS is incredibly insecure.
Map and translation apps a close second.
Please tell my bank this ;-;
Yes, please tell my bank and doctors’ office. Thank you.
I just did. If you get any text messages about your upcoming penis surgery tomorrow, know it’s legit! (Are they removing one, or adding one? Doesn’t matter, I’m sure they’ll figure it out…)
lmao! i love it!
Your bank doesn’t have a website?
I suppose you’re implying I should tell them myself; I did and they ignored me.
I’m not implying anything. I’m explicitly saying just to use the website.
Yeah, I can’t speak a lick of Spanish although I’m starting to understand it a little. Translation apps are a life saver.
edit: oh, wait: VAMOS A LA CANTINA!
There is nothing about those that can’t run on KaiOS, which comes with Google maps and runs on most dumb phones on the market today.
There’s a terminology issue here, feature phones run apps, flip phones and true dumb phones shouldn’t run apps or have any data connections. But it seems more common now to draw the line at Smartphone and anything else is “dumb” even if it’s basically just a 2008 smartphone.
The line between smartphone and dumbphone has always been very blurry.
i don’t want my phone to be dumb, I want it to be open source, front to back! The issue of smartphones isn’t that its “too smart”, instead we should talk about why the control of our phones aren’t within our grasp, but on the palm of corpos and govs.
you want to use your smartphone while keeping it simple? Install less apps and disable ALL telemetry (this is where being open source comes in).
At 79, I love my tech, especially my smartphone. I’ve already done the old-school days once, and I’m not signing up for a repeat.
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. And an old dumbphone won’t even have auto spam detection.
I use my phone to take pictures, send those pictures, look for restaurants, navigate to those restaurants, listen to music, etc.
So what you’re asking for is to make the part I hate about phones worse, while removing all the functions I actually use my phone for.
yeah my phone is not a phone, I fucking hate the phone. it’s a computer
Not having a private OS and messaging.
The best option as of now is the Punkt phone
Stuff I use the phone for in rough order of importance:
- maps and GPS
- messaging (signal)
- emulators and other quality games (none of that candy crush slop)
- ebook reading
- Wikipedia / quick research
- Lemmy
I could drop lemmy from mobile because it’s just a time waster and news source.
Wikipedia is important because too often people are interminably arguing something that can be settled with a 30 second search. Like, you don’t need to spend 5 minutes arguing about the population of NJ just look it up.
Games are nice. I don’t want to go back to carrying around a second device for games like it’s 2001. I could bring a steam deck everywhere but that doesn’t fit in my pocket.
I don’t have any notifications turned on except like direct messages, so I don’t find it much of a distraction.
I don’t use the phone part of my smartphone much, so thie idea of a dumbphone has no real appeal for me.
Why would I want a device that I never use? I only make phone calls roughly 3 times per week. I message multiple times a day, but flip phones had shitty interfaces for typing. The vast majority of my phone use is web search, camera, navigation, and messaging. Flip phones could get better cameras than they used to have. Their screens were too small to do great at web searching. Navigation might work, I guess. Although I used to love my Treo and Pre for the full physical keyboard, I prefer swype typing now to tapping or physical keys.
I’d like to be able to use Signal.
you couldn’t pay me to go backwards in time, sorry!
see I was around before the age of the smartphone. growing up, I thought my cassette Walkman was the most revolutionary thing ever. and when PDAs were new, I would dreaammm about everything being on one electronic device.
smart phones have given me a freedom that younger me never had.
i no longer need to carry a notebook/memobook around, because I have powerful software on my phone that not only let’s me note-take, but index and SEARCH my own notes. from my pocket.
i don’t need to carry the 3 novels im reading at the moment because they’re on the ereader app in my pocket.
contacts, games, all my news sources, photos, videos, all my media.
to me, this is still revolutionary tech and it has only improved my life
i think we are seeing a rise now of adults who were raised as iPad kids who never had to carry all their shit around the way us older individuals have. so they naturally would want to get away from it because they’ve known no different and they never had to live another way before that point.
its an understandable mentality from that one standpoint. but no, I will never give up my smart phone. i understand the reasons for those that do, but some of us don’t really want to go backwards.
It would have to have Signal.
There really isn’t anything I couldn’t replace my phone with a tablet that stays in the house for, and it has been a growing thought to switch back to a dumb phone.
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.
