funny thing, I forgot to bring my phone today, at first I was a bit "Oh Crap!" but I've realized :-
1) I don't actually need it for anything important and I'm super connected via computers for most of the day except when commuting
2) It is a security blanket that feels a bit odd to be without, but I did live most of my life without one
3) Now that I'm forced to look at my fellow train commuters I can see that everyone is looking down at their phones and I have to look at the scenery :)
Not sure if this is different based on the culture, but I feel like commuting on a train is the time when having a phone to keep your mind occupied might actually have some of its highest usefulness. In a lot of other social situations you can hope to strike up a conversation with someone you actually might interact with again instead of constantly staring at your phone, but when commuting, people just want to work or sleep or chat or otherwise just be left alone, and the one that tries to strike up a conversation with strangers ends up looking like a weirdo way too frequently, if not being outright bothersome to those around them trying to sleep or focus.
Books are obviously fine too! I was just trying to say the phone is handy here due to the inability to socialize, not that there aren't other things that you could do.
Flip phones are also generally limiting in terms of accessibility though (unless they've changed??). Using the phone as a magnifier, or text to speech comes to mind.
I think at the end of the day it comes down to the sheer willpower of using the smartphone when you need it the most.
I think as more and more people find that they need or want to take back control over gheir time, more people will follow her in this direction.
Main question will be whether small screen flip phones will be made with modern modems to connect to modern infra wich may not support older Gen wireless nets for too long.
An old flip phone would work if it supported mainstream authenticators.
If there is a flip phone that has good audible support, I'd be tempted. If it also had decent strava support, I think I'd be hard pressed not to use it.
Yeah, it only works for people who only really need their phones for the phone calls. It doesn't make sense to get three devices (basic phone, mp3 player, fit bit [or something else]) to replace the one that served those purposes before.
Life with a smart phone is so much better than life before a smart phone. It's hard to realise how recently they came around. I've probably only had the internet on my phone for five years (I've had a smart phone for longer, but I couldn't get the data to work and data was expensive enough at the time I didn't care).
I can communicate with my fiancee even when she's in another country (international sms = fail). I can have a fiancee who's in another country. When I'm on the train I can do something meaningful to me. When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform. If I'm having a discussion with friends I can call up the information I'm missing. I can listen to music and podcasts while I go for a walk or a ride. I can plan my trips instead of listening to the boring parts of conversations. I can take nice photos when I didn't expect it.
I'm not going back to life without a phone. If you're not valuing your priorities with a phone, you won't value them without it. It might make a difference for a few weeks, but then you'll work out how to waste your time without your phone and you'll be back to square one.
> you'll work out how to waste your time without your phone and you'll be back to square one.
I had a dumb phone for a year or so until maybe half a year ago. The ways I found to waste my time without smartphone were refreshingly different. Most importantly, thinking and wandering in my own mind without the urgent need to check every new thought from the internet. Long story short, there is now nokia 8110 with 4G and wifi available, I am likely going to get one of those soon and turn my smartphone off until I really need it.
What about audiobooks, discord/slack for team communication, or sometimes reading on public transport. You can easily block/mute notifications and all that. Don't use apps like Instagram (never used but some of my friends do) or other addictive apps and you'll be fine. To be honest smartphones are you the best way to push some (25 minutes) to practice skills when you have time window (apps like brilliant, Reedy)
Phone game apps are the most addictive but if you never download them you won't get into it. Games have 4 caracteristics that makes them addictive: winnable, it has goals, novel challenge that keep you in state of flow, feedback. These things could also be used in reading books and that becomes addictive in a good way.
Tl;Dr phone apps are the best thing to aquaire skills in the future. If you block or hide notification and not download addictive apps you will be fine.
If you use discord or slack for team communication your team communication features nothing important (ie you might as well not have it) or you work at a company that doesn't do communication security well.
Or you work at a company with no significant secrets that could potentially be shared through chatting. Priorities; why spend time and effort on some on-site solution when there's really nothing to gain security wise unless you have secrets? You won't be sharing passwords through Slack or Discord in any case, that's for a password manager, so you're really left with trade secrets, and why would there be trade secrets in a Slack channel for a web development company?
> What about audiobooks, discord/slack for team communication, or sometimes reading on public transport. You can easily block/mute notifications and all that.
I can also easily take my smartphone with me when I think there is a real need. The 4g dumbphone can share the internet to my smartphone.
So it's a bar phone with a hotspot? I was hoping for something like that. I have a tablet with wifi only but I'd like to be able to listen to Spotify or audio books, use maps, etc when I'm driving. But then again, I also like to walk the dog and listen to books/music so I'd have to carry 2 phones unless it supports all Android apps.
Bought one yesterday, I have to say that KaiOS is still veeeery immature, so far very far behind series 40/60 nokias. If you can find a Nokia 208 or 515 which are the last they made with 3G+ you might be better off.
I’m not a Luddite by any stretch and I’ve had smart phones since they were quite dumb, but your reasons don’t ring for me:
> I can communicate with my fiancee even when she's in another country (international sms = fail).
It facilitates instant communications. Email across the planet has been around since day one.
> I can have a fiancee who's in another country.
I can assure you this was possible pre-smart phone.
> When I'm on the train I can do something meaningful to me.
The counter point to this is millions of man years wasted streaming mind numbing video.
> When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform.
Mass transit has had posted schedules for many years. It is nice to see an updated one with up to the minute tracking but it wasn’t that inconvenient either.
> If I'm having a discussion with friends I can call up the information I'm missing.
I’m probably showing my age but I miss having a pointless yet heated argument that couldn’t be settled in 15 seconds on a smart phone. The feeling of being right when you finally do get to confirm the answer is worth so much more.
> I can listen to music and podcasts while I go for a walk or a ride.
You don’t need internet for that, just some planning to have the content downloaded in advance.
> I can plan my trips instead of listening to the boring parts of conversations.
If you’re describing zoning out of the real world people around you to doodle on your phone that’s sad.
> I can take nice photos when I didn't expect it.
Okay this one I agree. The best camera is the one you actually have. Counterpoint is we’re approaching peak photo.
As a Gen Z-er, email for me is an opportunity to write long letters, mulling over every word to convey the emotion just right.
However, if I am with someone at the present moment, all of my attention is on him/her.
Emails are a replacement for letter writing, not a replacement for phone calls.
When they seemingly replace a phone call, its usually because the institution would have liked to use only letter writing but couldn't for some non-technical reason.
Like a company processing refunds and cancelations by phone in order to have the opportunity to convince clients not to cancel (i.e. non-technical reason), now uses email or chat systems to accomplish the same thing.
> Email does not convey the emotion of a phone call, let alone a video call.
Certainly does not, and it's a nice bonus, but when on earth do people use video calls? Since they are even better at conveying emotions, by your logic everybody carrying a smartphone should be making video calls at all times. But it's the contrary, people even prefer texting on Whatsapp over phone calls or even voice messages.
> Easy access to information fosters discussion - by ending pointless, heated debates over nothing.
They are the opposite of pointless. I feel the current/younger generation has completely lost the ability to have civilized, structured debates. If you can't solve a disagreement by a google search people freak out pretty quickly. And then we need safe spaces left and right and everybody is a victim and it's all society's fault. Those pointless debates over trifles serve a purpose, like kitten playfully fighting all day.
> Only teenagers, and I now presume, older people, fuddle with their phones instead of talking to the person in front of them.
Mostly teenagers yes, but them being the next generation of adults I doubt they'll just stop once they're into their twens. It'll just become the norm.
I actually see people using facetime in public all the time -- I think its one of those things if you aren't looking for it you won't notice. I've actually used google hangouts on my phone a few times -- recently I was in the airport w/o my computer on my Dad's birthday so we did a video call and other scenarios like that one.
Also, I lived abroad for a few years and I used video chat extensively with my parents and other friends back in the states. (TBF though a majority of the time it was on my laptop -- but sometimes I did use my phone!)
> Mostly teenagers yes, but them being the next generation of adults I doubt they'll just stop once they're into their twens. It'll just become the norm.
That one is potentially true although I'll say based off of our interns they seem to be pretty good about not being on their phones all the time when the situation calls for it. I think like most things its super individual because of my coworkers the person who is on their phone the most is actually a middle aged guy.
You must not live in a particularly populous place, if you are not seeing people making personal video calls as they walk down the street/take the bus/sit on a park bench every time you leave the house - on the way, incidentally, to my morning video conference, that people frequently join by phone from wherever they are.
Email does not convey the emotion of a phone call, let alone a video call.
I'd argue that email (and video calls, etc) have killed our ability to convey emotion via written word. What used to take time and thought has been reduced to quick blurbs given with little effort.
> Email across the planet has been around since day one.
It has been present around the globe for ages, if you could find an internet cafe on holiday. Reading email on your phone also needs a smartphone.
> Mass transit has had posted schedules for many years. It is nice to see an updated one with up to the minute tracking but it wasn’t that inconvenient either.
You must be one of the blessed multitudes that live in a country with a public transport system that works well. If you have frequent, long-term delays it is fairly essential for your sanity to be able to know which routes are not currently completely fucked.
>>Reading email on your phone also needs a smartphone.
Nokia 6310 could both read and send emails, and I'm sure the functionality arrived slightly earlier too.
>>second point
I mean, if I'm in some 3rd world country without a reliable public transport system, then I'm not sure how internet access or a smartphone for that matter helps at all. In my experience in those places the bus/train just turns up when it does, no website would help you here.
I didn't know a 6310 could read and send email, thank you. I stopped having Nokia phones after the 3310i (which I did love dearly).
There are numerous first world countries that have unreliable public transport. This is the US and also in the EU, I can't imagine you've never encountered what I mean unless you don't travel very much (there is nothing wrong with that, but then why do you discuss it like this). Sure in the situations that you talk about a smartphone would not matter, but in the ones I talk about (and that I actually meant originally) a smartphone will tell you why there is a delay (suddenly, generally) and what you can do to mitigate it. Something no PA system will tell you with any amount of reliability.
I live in EU, but in not-so-reliable public transit country.
Outside of major towns, smart phone won't help you much to get most accurate time table. Paper timetable in the station is the only source of true information. You may find multiple contradicting timetables on the web and just hope they haven't been changed since then. Nobody cares to post emergency updates on the web. Sticker in the station it is. GPS live tracking is non existent.
We do have live tracking for public transit in 2 (maybe 3?) major towns. But that came before the era of smartphones - it was displayed in displays in stops. It's kinda cool to see your bus stuck in traffic one stop from you :)
Oh ok, but good to know :) I always wanted to visit the baltic countries once, and I usually travel around with public transport, so I'd have to consider that when planning I guess.
Well, public transit between major cities and in/out of country is OK. Online timetables are reliable enough, you can get tickets online etc.. No live GPS tracking though :) But tourist attractions in smaller towns or, worst of all, in between them is kinda.. tricky. One of the reasons why hitch hiking is not dead.
Blackberries were smartphones. They had enumerable apps shoved into that tiny display, and keyboard model, but they still looked like flip-phones and lacked touch displays.
To me, the 'flip' is just a mechanical implementation detail. The real divide is smart phones versus dumb phones.
Or even between phones with app stores / web browsers / sideloading, and those without.
A phone that comes with its own apps (like old flip-phones) but doesn’t offer any other extensibility, usually only has apps written by the manufacturer to support standard protocols like email and SMS, and no support for any company’s walled-garden social superstimulus factory. Even WAP was okay, since WAP only worked to deliver information, not interactive “experiences.”
(Admittedly, one of those apps could have been an IRC client, which would have been quite immersing. Luckily we never saw such from the manufacturers—they left that sort of thing to the J2ME sideloading ecosystem.)
I can't remember the exact app name, it's been a few years, but CMU had an app for Pittsburgh Port Authority buses. They were almost always off the posted schedule. The app used people already on the bus and some other factors to determine location and give a far more accurate estimate. It saved me numerous times from missing a bus/thinking I missed a bus that ran only once an hour (54). From my experience, smart phones and technology certainly do help with unreliable public transit.
>I mean, if I'm in some 3rd world country without a reliable public transport system, then I'm not sure how internet access or a smartphone for that matter helps at all. In my experience in those places the bus/train just turns up when it does, no website would help you here.
I'm in Canada, my internet on my phone is more than good enough, yet it's not rare to see bus 10 minutes late and it happens often to need a second bus that may be 10 minutes after the first one. Traffic is not exclusive to third world country. Our bus have real time tracking so I can know 10 minutes earlier if taking another route is the right thing to do.
> I mean, if I'm in some 3rd world country without a reliable public transport system
Do you honestly think it's a binary choice? Either the public transport system is reliable, or it's a 3rd world country? This seems disingenuous.
Just to take an example: Southern Rail in the UK. It's notoriously unreliable, and journeys get cancelled or delayed all the time for various reasons, including strikes, weather, staff shortages and leaves on the tracks. I've saved countless hours from going to waste by keeping up to date on the schedule in real time. For this I need a smart phone. Is the UK a 3rd world country?
You have some valid points but it's like you feel compelled to reject all possible benefits put forward by OP. On this one you are objectively wrong.
If my train has a delay or doesn't run at all, I need to know a detour quickly. Sometimes you need to decide within the minute to take another line. Otherwise I have to wait 30 minutes for the next train, if that one even runs.
And I need to inform the person that I'm meeting with that I will arrive later (if I didn't have slack in my transit time).
Smartphones make it easier to optimize your transit lines on the fly, sure (yet I'll note the practice existed before smartphones). But there are different philosophies to traveling: some leave at the last possible minutes and ponder the optimal route choice while running to the bus stop. Others aim to be fifteen minutes early, stroll leisurely, watch the scenery and get lost in their thoughts. I suspect someone who likes a dumbphone to be the latter type.
Being a different type may change the frequency of each situation, but stuff happens so anytime can be in these situations.
Really having a smartphone does not mean you need to use it for much. IMO, the jump to cellphone vs not having one is a bigger downside as someone can call ar any time interrupting your thoughts. But even you can just turn them off, while still benefiting in an emergency.
There were iPods before there were smartphones, and that completely revolutionised my listening habits. I don't stream music or listen to podcasts so that need was already a solved problem for me.
> The point is that phones have added little value.
... to you.
My phone doesn't always have to be solving a problem or completing a task. The other day I was waiting for something and happened to look up the weather. I ended up going down a rabbit hole and re-discovering https://earth.nullschool.net - it was fascinating! It enriched my life, to no particular end. That sort of stuff happens all the time and immensely valuable to me.
"waiting" isn't an actual action. You either read something, or think, or look around while thinking, and so on, but nobody just "waits". Being aware is an action. Thinking is an action. If people around you gossip, tell them that gossip is lame and shift the conversation.
And what does it even mean to say something is subjective? Contrary to what? And what does judgemental mean? That you can be whatever you want, and think of yourself however you want, but others may not see you how they see you? What's wrong with judgement?
semantics. you feel like you can only be critical of action, while inaction gets a pass? 'thinking' quietly is not inherently more valuable than being entertained. And while we are at it, nobody is just 'entertained' we learn, process, and yes 'think' at the same time
>to say something is subjective
In this context subjective means only applies to you Contrary to something that is a universal truth, something koolba seemed to be claiming.
>What's wrong with judgement[al]?
Its a weak argument, to say someone has 'failed' by your standards is to say they have failed by an arbitrary measure that may not have anything to do with their goals.
i feel like you missed the major point there. in every other point you talked about, you actually mention the major advantage of smartphones which is convenience.
everything smartphones can do was already being done, and of course communication has been around since "day one".
smartphones enable you to channel a lot of your time to other things instead of "having to download podcasts in advance" or "check posted transit schedules".
My 23 year old girlfriend lives in Japan, she is not reading hackernews. If I told her that we can't talk on whatsapp or LINE anymore because I want to get a flip phone because 'the good old day', and we need to switch to email, I don't think she would be very enthusiastic about the next 2.5 months I am away.
>> I can communicate with my fiancee even when she's in another country (international sms = fail).
> It facilitates instant communications. Email across the planet has been around since day one.
Do you even need instant communication in that case? It's not like you're going to have a quick unexpected meetup or some "hey I'm quite busy can you go get the kids?" Not to mention time zone issues.
>> When I'm on the train I can do something meaningful to me.
People didn't die of boredom before. Read a book, magazine, work on something on your laptop if you must. Also people seem to lose the ability to just take a short timeout from everything, just to think about your life for a bit, remember some good old times with friends or family you might have lost, and so on.
>> When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform.
There will we information displayed at the platform and inside the station. Plus announcements on the speaker system, which are faster, more accurate, and I don't have to pull out my phone. Fun fact: at least in Germany, it's not that the train company is obliged to adhere to the prognosed delay. So if your smartphone tells you the train is an hour late and you decide to visit the nearest paintball establishment for an hour you might find yourself missing the train since it only arrived 45 minutes late in the end.
> Do you even need instant communication in that case? It's not like you're going to have a quick unexpected meetup or some "hey I'm quite busy can you go get the kids?" Not to mention time zone issues.
"help, I'm being detained in Paris!"
"I was mugged and need a passport!"
"My plane was late so I missed my connecting flight, so I am spending another night in Berlin."
etc.
>People didn't die of boredom before. Read a book, magazine, work on something on your laptop if you must. Also people seem to lose the ability to just take a short timeout from everything, just to think about your life for a bit, remember some good old times with friends or family you might have lost, and so on.
I actually agree with you totally here, but a counterpoint would be that I can get mundane stuff done while doing mundane stuff (riding a bus, taxi, etc.) so that when I get home I get more family time instead of "not now, I have to see why Comcast/Verizon/Etc. screwed up our bill again."
> "help, I'm being detained in Paris!" "I was mugged and need a passport!"
And they conveniently let you keep your 1000$ iPhone ;). But these are all situations where I could just make a regular call with my dumb phone as well. Sure roaming costs will kick in, but that's even worse for data. My current provider charges 2€/min for calls outside the EU and 1€ per 50kb (yes that's not a typo). In all seriousness though, sure, there's always situations where having a smartphone is beneficial, I won't deny that. Especially working in tech it might even be that suddenly shit hits the fan at your company and you'd desperately take a wonky ssh connection on a bus ride since every seconds counts.
And if you really have that level of self control, as the OP of this discussion suggests, that you won't distract yourself more than you actually benefit than that's fine. I found myself barely managing to do that and switched to a dumb phone again in 2015ish. On trains and buses I'd mindlessly skim through HN or reddit or random tech sites, I eventually configured my work mail on my phone since sometimes it's more convenient, but then found myself reading mails in the evening during family time etc. Most colleagues confirm that they have similar patterns, but they're almost all single or childless so they probably don't care that much.
I still use it occasionally on the go and frequently at home as a laptop replacement when I'm just about to catch up on the news or post on HN. But I pretty much wiped all apps except the browser. I could not manage to do that when I used it as my main phone for almost 2 years.
You can buy a cheap prepaid sim, and save yourself from data roaming tariffs. And it is the moment when smartphones shine - you'll have the same IDs/handles/usernames in messengers. With a feature phone your identity (your number) will change.
True, unfortunately depending on country it can be quite involved to buy a sim card. Here in Germany a year ago they changed it so it's required the seller validates your identity. Since this is a somewhat involved process pretty much all discount brands chose not to do this in the store but require postal or video ident, the latter being the only viable option if you only stay a week or two, but you need to find some place to make that video call in the first place, have all the documents at hand, hope the call center worker speaks some English which is less likely the cheaper the provider... I observed the same in China. 8 years ago I could walk into some tiny store in an alley, point at a sim card without knowing what I'm doing and after some back and forth with mostly gestures and writing down numbers I was all set. Last year they required my passport and proof that I stay at a hotel that registered me with the local police station. I couldn't possibly manage that without the help from a local.
Since this drifted somewhat away from the original topic let me add that I'm quite curious about KaiOS devices as it seems it might offer a suiting compromise for my needs. It got most popular messenger apps so I could take advantage of improved connectivity with people but the experience is still limited enough to prevent information overload and playing around with it too much. The selection of devices is just too limited at the moment.
You might not be a Luddite, but you are being very dismissive. The convenience and opportunity aspects of having an always connected computer in your pocket might not appeal to you, but I can assure you that it's a huge deal for the rest of us.
You counterpoints all seem to distill down to some variation of being opposed to people having options or embracing convenience.
Being in a very long distance relationship for a few years now I can be confident in saying that email would not be a great replacement. If you haven’t been in the situation it’s easy to say the opposite but being able to talk in real time is incredibly helpful in making the distance disappear.
FaceTime / video calls always available at your fingertips while you are waiting somewhere is also something I wouldn’t want to miss.
Its about 10PM here. I got back from work 3-4 hours ago and my phone just beeped and I could read the email with simply a flick of a finger and saw that it was a work related email though I was having dinner at that time. Now, though I am at home that's running on a thread at the background in my head since then.
This is perhaps just one use case but it's hardly surprising that people now want to go back to way it was before. I still use my smart phone because it makes my life a lot more convenient in many other ways but I definitely understand if someone would find it compelling enough to stop using a smart phone.
But, it does make me think, if I just want to connect to the internet, play music/podcasts, click a pic once a while etc. do I really need a device that's GPS enabled, bluetooth enabled, has NFC, accelorometers, face recognition, multicore processors etc. and costs a fortune ;)
In Finland at least, most employers provide your phone and contract. Of course you can take a separate one but then you’re carrying two phones.
I’ve been dying for gmail and workplace (fb for work) to add a feature so I can stop work related notifications after 17. Having this at iOS level would be great also.
Xiaomi phones (not sure about others) allow you to have two separate "spaces". Not sure how it works under the hood, but it's basically like rebooting into another Android instance - even the Google account is not shared, apps are not shared, nothing. You can switch between these spaces from lock screen simply by entering a correct password for the one you want, you can configure what notifications and when can "bubble up" to the primary space, etc. It's an awesome feature.
When I start at a company I bring my own phone and own data plan. The dev team gets my phone number and nobody else. No work email on my phone, only the work calendar so I know how early to start the day.
That way you don't have to carry two phones, be tied to a dual-sim phone or have troubles when you leave the company (in case you use the company phone number for private calls too).
My employer provides a work phone and subscription, and I am free to use it privately. I've chosen to keep that phone work-only, so I have bought my own private phone+subscription, and never the twain shall meet.
The work phone gets left in a locker at work along with my work laptop, I refuse to bring it home with me until I have agreed in advance to work from home for some specific task. I know a lot of employers expect their employees to be available at odd hours, but I refuse to participate in that.
I made this decision after suffering under a boss who would call and email at 22:00 and expect results to be ready on his table next morning by 8:00.
Only a very select trusted few of my colleagues have my private phone number, and they will only ever use it in a dire emergency.
No, not really. I do have some "favorite colleagues" who I enjoy working with and chatting about this and that over lunch, but they're colleagues, not friends.
My circle of friends is entirely separate from work, there is no overlap, which is just fine by me. I prefer keeping work and my personal life separate.
It depends on the particulars, but my preferred approach is actually to turn all work email notifications off (even unread badges).
I check my mail a couple times a day during work hours, usually when I arrive in the morning, after our standup, after my lunch break, sometime during the afternoon and before I leave (but not right when I want to leave, at least a couple of minutes beforehand).
I always pay close attention to immediately deal with all mail I receive, i.e. complete the task immediately (usually if less than five to ten minutes are required), write a to-do item or (my favorite option) archive the mail. The important part is to get it out of your brain and besides archiving or doing it, the best other way is to write it down.
This obviously only works if real time critical information is not usually sent via email (unexpected, action required immediately and minutes to hours required, depending on the complexity) and if no one expects email to be used for time critical information. Luckily we have policies in place to both ensure that email is used for non time-critical information and other more direct channels (Slack, phone, coming over in person) are used for actual time critical information.
I know that this culture part is often the actual hard one. If people expect you to immediately react to email then there is not much you can do inside the expectations and you probably have to turn notifications on.
Even if you leave notifications on, dealing with email immediately (picking doing it immediately, writing a to-do, archiving it) is still a time-management basic and extremely helpful, but it doesn’t work very well if you have that notification gnawing your nerves somewhere in your brain. Dealing with email immediately actually has to mean dealing with it immediately, i.e. the first time you take notice of it.
(This is a very German perspective, though. My probably biased and also very limited experience in communicating with people in the US was one of general hyperactivity and I had the impression that many treated email sort of like a real time communications channel with weird expectations about response times.)
As for the German perspective: There are several big time companies around here who had to institute regulations so that you can't even access your work emails beyond your office hours (BMW, Telekom). So the employees themselves would check them more and the company had to limit that.
Granted, I don't know how much the "Betriebsrat" was prompting that, but I doubt that people themselves are that much different, despite German Gemütlichkeit.
I found that both IT workers and MBAs are IT/MBA first, nationals second.
I had my employer buy me a separate phone. Work people ask me why I would rather carry two phones but they don't see the flip side when I'm only carrying one phone at home with nothing work related on it.
Why would you check your email (or even have it beep) during dinner time (or at all when you are off work)? Even if you live alone it should be a big warning flag for an unhealthy work-life balance.
I have work email notifications off when I don't work. If they don't pay me to be available anytime then of course I won't check my work email after work.
So this is not a reason not to have a smartphone it's only a matter of setting up the phone properly, so notifications reach me only when they should be checked.
> If you're not valuing your priorities with a phone, you won't value them without it. It might make a difference for a few weeks, but then you'll work out how to waste your time without your phone and you'll be back to square one.
Or, as someone below puts it
> I'm mystified by the number of people who think that they've solved the fundamental problem by getting rid of their phone: being that unable to control one's immediate impulses, is worthy of attention.
Maybe getting rid of a smart phone means "lack of impulse control", okay. The cited study claims the average American looking at their phone every six minutes on average, so it's not exactly cool to ignore that bit and berate the person who took the time writing an article citing that study.
And maybe it's not even a lack of impulse control, but a singular act of will? Would people also be "concerned" for someone who stops smoking but doesn't keep cigarettes around the house? Or hey, what if someone were to say that Linters are for people who don't get it right the first place, and that itself deserves attention? We know humans are imperfect, and find it sensible to guard ourselves against making mistakes in all sorts of ways. Why are smartphones different to you?
A portable mini computer with internet access is useful for a lot of cool things, no doubt. Though to the usefulness on the internet it's like putting a low table on a huge mountain, makes no overall difference to me. None of the upsides you mentioned seem smartphone specific, and you address none of the smartphone specific issues mentioned in the article, other than with a sweeping "I'm not going back".
> When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform.
Partly (or depending on where you are, rather) that's because thanks to smartphones, they don't display it in many places where they used to. Just like you can't buy a ticket from a person anymore. This cam be a huge problem for elderly people or those with disabilities. If a smartphone saves one so much time, that time should also be used to help one's fellow citizens by noticing and criticzing such things, to help remove barriers even though they are no barriers to you.
Smartphones were ceded their initial social acceptance solely on being optional. If this turned out to be a lie, the acceptance should likewise be withdrawn, and we can save the the discussion about the mass surveillance and marketing aspects I see completely not mentioned here as a bonus, too.
> I can plan my trips instead of listening to the boring parts of conversations.
This probably sounds more rude to me as you are in practice, but it conjure up nothing good in my mind, honestly. The first thing that comes to mind is a Mitchell and Webb sketch about a guy in a pub interrupting the others because their conversation isn't good enough for them, but also not contributing to make it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKJ5w-HQ9b0
I have noticed this multiple times - shaming people for recognizing they are not perfect and taking active logical steps to overcome effects of non-perfection. Re-framing the original minor and pretty normal problem as some kind of sinister all encompassing personal fault that makes you lesser.
As if everyone was expected to pretend they are super perfect in totally everything and admission of some completely normal fault that needs to be worked around or fixed deserved punishment and shame.
Sometimes people get compulsive habit and if buying flip phone or whatever helps them, it is legit to talk about it.
> Life with a smart phone is so much better than life before a smart phone.
But at what cost?
The software and OS is a locked-down ecosystem for most consumers. The hardware even more so. Such mass adoption forces one to conform in order to participate, meaning even for the privacy-conscious, consumer trends dictate all. Just a couple months ago US carriers were found to be selling realtime customer location data. Whether or not they're selling, they can track your phone via cellular triangulation. The baseband is a proprietary black box that runs its own privileges OS, can read memory and disk, and basically transmits at all times (mandated by law in some countries, for emergency network connectivity) to whoever picks up the signal, and this includes a unique IMEI. No removable batteries, and no hardware switches means masses of phones are being tracked at all times from point A to B, whether or not for nefarious purposes. Add the ever-growing trend of cashless transactions, OS-level third-party GPS tracking, and the reality becomes a slippery slope nightmare.
I feel that sentiments like yours, one's where "life" and "phone" are nearly synonymous, are fostering a dangerous future where one is obligated to own a phone else be left in the dust. This is already nearly the case socially, and in some careers also. Literature classics warn of mass surveillance and control, of chip implants under the scalp, but why go there when the populace already wear a tracking device willingly of their own accord, and grow to depend on it ever more?
Nothing, besides refusing to succumb to the idea that a mobile device is a necessity of modern life. The benefits don't outweigh the immediate concerns, but of course many disagree.
If the trend moves towards a total societal reliance on smartphones as tools of everyday life, and a couple decades down the path it becomes impossible to opt out while still retaining a normal lifestyle and career, then it matters. It matters even more so that the average person is making this push, because, as you bring up, it's ripe for exploit (e.g. recent events in China with state-sponsored malware installed on phones).
>The average person has decided that life is better for him like this...
Indeed, I do. You want to track the stores I drive by and what websites I visit? In exchange I can have real-time commnuication with friends all over the world without having to align scheduled to make phone calls of varying connection quality, I can get step by step directions on how to do just about anything including get from point A to B, I can take photos and share them, I can read, I can consume video and audio, I can track my macros, I can get immediate weather alerts, track ODB-II data for my car, get curated news, get raw news, augment my memory with drive/dropbox/evernote, I can track my finances? DEAL!
If you don't take your phone with you, you're not being tracked. It isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. We have the choice of not taking our phone with us.
Also, PTSN can be easily eavesdropped as well, and paying by the minute isn't attractive. The phone companies squeezed us long enough.
That depends. Generally, sure, but that doesn't mean one cannot lead by example. If not just for the fact that you finally got some rest and finally are not reachable by phone/WhatsApp/e-mail/etc.
We're discussing mostly location tracking here (GPS etc), but we also shouldn't neglect the impact of cameras or mics. Nor the way GPS coordinates are embedded in pictures we ourselves take and we ourselves share on Instagram.
Yesterday on TV there was a talkshow about the decline on Facebook due to privacy reasons (with which they seemingly agreed), and someone went how Instagram was the next hottest thing (owned by the same parent company). I wanted to bash my head...
Right now I'm watching Tour de France and the 24/7 in-ears/mics and cameras make it a vastly different game than how it was before the TV era and during the TV but not yet everyone having ears.
> If you're not valuing your priorities with a phone, you won't value them without it.
Exactly right. I hear more and more people complaining about the internet, their smartphones or tech in general. If you listen to those people long enough you realize what they are actually talking about is social media and to a lesser degree gaming. I just don't get it. If you don't like those services, don't use them. Have some self restraint, for crying out loud.
100% agree, even for those who are not addicts, we're not always perfectly aware of/or in control of our actions, and social media platforms are designed to take advantage of this. When I deleted facebook on my phone I'd often find myself in a quiet moment idly scrolling through my apps looking to open it again.
Each person needs to set their own limits. For me this barrier was enough, but some may need more drastic barriers. I wouldn't judge people for trying to effect positive change in their life.
I think the challenge that people like myself see in these phones is captured in at least half of the actions you listed. They can be categorized under "my phone helps me avoid spending time with myself and whatever my immediate surroundings are presenting to me." Perhaps my biggest beef with phones is most people's instinct to avoid any slight dis-ease or innocent boredom by throwing up a screen filled with (often) nonsense. That's a real problem that will have negative impact downstream.
Boredom is good. Waiting is good. Not having what you want every second of the day is good.
There were things to read on trains before phones. There were small portable cameras before phones. You could listen to music on your walkman before phones. People carried books, newspapers, sketch books, journals, and music before phones. We even played games before phones - when I was growing up, everybody knew how to play at least a few card games, and there was always a deck of cards to be found.
Life before phones was in many ways totally different than life now. But in others ways, we're still the same people, doing the same things, with newer tools. Everyone can make their own decisions on what tools they want to use, but I'm just not buying the argument that life is better or worse. It is different.
While on the train, I've started knitting instead of futzing around on my phone that I had been doing before. For me, it's been a very therapeutic exercise - a good time to deliberately shut out the noise of the internet and social media in general.
Now that I'm becoming more comfortable with the new hobby, I've started listening to audiobooks or streaming music while I knit - it seems to strike a nice balance.
Certainly the phone has enriched my life - it enables me to stream music and listen to audiobooks easily, but in my experience it's a dangerous tool as well, since it enables you to check social media more than is healthy. Everything in moderation I suppose.
Taking a walk to the park without the iPhone takes longer, because you are forced to spend attention on everything but the phone. Distance = speed x time. If perceived time goes up; distances are greater. Ergo - world around you expands.
Smart phones are great but also a great source of distraction. It has taken me a lot of practice and discipline to not use it to zone out on various social media or political news.
I don't see why you can't just control your cell phone habits. Swearing technology off is like cutting off the nose to spite the face.
The optimal setup for me is the basic apps installed (mail, messenger, uber/lyft, finances) with all notifications turned off. Less distraction while retaining the utility of having a smartphone.
Alcohol does not provide the massive utility that comes with modern smartphones.
There are ways to reduce cell phone usage without going to a flip phone.
But, if this is what works for the author then I support it. Removing certain apps and disabling notifications will work wonders for most people though.
It shouldn't surprise us that Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/Reddit are more widely addictive than alcohol. They are designed to be addictive, because it's good for business.
Sometimes less is more. Consider with a dumb phone you don't have to turn off notifications and disable apps (some are not even possible btw) ootb. Or don't have to do this again when an update changes it on a whim.
I do the same thing. Only install the absolutely necessary apps, do everything else non-essential in a browser. If it doesn't work in a mobile browser, wait until I get home.
All notifications are turned off, except for instant messaging apps and calls.
I stress a lot less about Facebook and social media in general now.
I had a similar feeling when I removed all social media apps and games from my smart phone.
Whenever there's a lull in activity (like waiting for a bus, at the doctor's office, etc) I used to mindlessly swipe and scroll away. Now I pay more attention to the physical world around me (the bus stop has a map, what kind of magazines does the doctor like, etc)
But I wonder if the author could get the same benefit by cancelling her mobile data plan.
See, I'm OK bringing a book or sketchbook to the doctors office. I'm also fine with mindlessly playing a game.
This sort of thing keeps me from getting irritated while waiting in a place like a doctor's office. It makes me a more agreeable person overall.
The bus stop isn't as bad - they have a schedule and are usually on-time. There is only so often I can stand to look at a bus stop map, after all. That novelty wears off after using buses as primary transportation.
I obliterated one of my smartphones last year after dropping it on concrete while getting off the bus. I freaked out, had no clue what to do since I was low income and couldn't afford anything for quite awhile.
For a few days it was like I was an addict, constantly feeling my back pocket vibrating, constantly reaching to check my phone. After a few more days, I felt very liberated. I felt very free. I started enjoying life more. I started noticing how much the world (at least USA) depends on their phones for everything. I would go out to Reddit meetups without my phone and notice times where everyone would have their heads down, checking various social media platforms and not talking to each other. People would ask how I lived without a phone. I noticed how dangerous the distraction is with people doing simple things like walking crosswalks with their heads down staring at their phones. I noticed a lot of the time the entire bus full of people were looking down at their phones, most doing nothing of any real meaning.
After a week or so I learned how to cope without. I would look up directions and bus routes on my computer before I left. I would check my bank account before I left to do anything that cost money. I brought a notebook with me to keep notes of things I thought about and wanted to look further into when I got home. I noticed new things I've never noticed and learned more about the city I live in, especially the streets and landmarks so I could get around without GPS. It noticeably helped my anxiety and gave me a viewpoint of the world that I feel I hadn't been a part of since the first iPhone was released.
I'm not saying smartphones aren't useful, but I strongly recommend to anyone to take a break from their phone. It really is eye opening in very beneficial ways.
that reminded me of how I decided to play Zelda BoTW.
Zelda has a 'Pro' mode where it hides all UI but the health. I was fully decided on using it through the whole game and I think it is the best way to play the game.
The absence of minimap is the biggest change. When you have your minimap is like when you drive with gps. You only wait til the map says you to turn, and after some turns staring at the minimap you get to your destination missing all that was in between. If you don't have the minimap you actually need to understand the map, know more or less where you are, where the landmarks are, and how to get through to your destination. In the end, the absence of minimap makes you learn better the world and the map, instead of relying on the digested info that the minimap gives you.
That is how I accidentally played the first 20-odd hours of Oblivion. I thought the compass at the bottom of the screen was it for nav, and didn't look at the keymappings and notice the 'map' key until well in to the game.
And after the initial wave of feeling dumb passed once I noticed my mistake, I also realized that I was actually having quite a lot of fun playing it that way. Although navigation was confusing at first, I learned my way around the map quite well, and by being forced to just look around instead of relying on, as you put it, GPS nav (a very apt analogy) I had a more immersive, enjoyable experience. There were times walking around where I would just stop and think, 'wow, this is really pretty'. And I am not completely sure I would have had that thought if I hadn't been forced to actually pay attention to where I was going in those early hours of play.
That's the only good way of playing The Witcher 3. They put lots of ui customization, but the defaults are overbearing, you watch ui not the world.
At least disable the "?" signs on unexplored areas and the path to next quest objective, game is much more enjoyable without them and not too inconvenient.
I left most stuff on, just disabled quest compass (arrows on minimap), gps (paths on minimap), and the question marks on the map/minimap (IMHO it's the most obviously bad setting - it changes exploration from "this looks interesting I go there" to "there's a question mark, let's see what's it about, oh just another smugglers' cache").
When I get a new quest phase I look it up on the fullscreen map and then just go there, it's playable enough. The dialogs describe places where you need to go usually, but not always well enough to get there without looking at the map at all.
I've seen people play with all ui disabled, even the health bar, but it wasn't convenient for me.
The game is very heavy on plot and characters, it has small tutorial in the castle, and then like 10 hours long bigger tutorial area before the world opens up for real, and you have to understand what's happening and who's who at least a little to enjoy it. Game introduces characters reasonably well, but there's so many of them it's easy to lose track.
Also, bonus tip - in some update few months after the premiere they added "alternative movement controls" - be sure to enable that in the settings if you play with keyboard and mouse. It's much more convenient than the default. It makes the animation of movement look less natural, but much more responsive (you can turn instantly instead of making a circle for example).
Hollow Knight drops you into the world with no maps at all, and it's very disorienting. It's hard to find save points, and when you die it's extremely tough to know where your soul (to get your coins/geo back) is located. You do learn some landmarks, but once you figure out how to get the maps, the game becomes a whole lot easier. Every new area throws you into it without a map.
SMS is like having someone shout your second factor off of a rooftop a few streets away, loud enough that you can hear it. There is 0 security on it and anyone with even a modicum of motivation can intercept it without you noticing (ever). This is bad advice.
Email is bad for similar reasons (although slightly less in terms of exposure if you use a good provider).
I thought bad guys could get your SMS only if they manage to clone your SIM or call provider to change the SIM by social engineering. In both cases service on my SIM will stop. Unless they are state sponsored, in which case they can just arm twist telecom provider to give them texts.
Could you please tell how they can sniff SMS without user ever noticing?
SMS interception is hardly a low bar for attackers. If you are being targeted by someone with these capabilities then there is a lot more you have to worry about. Many other 2FA mechanisms would be similarly vulnerable to an attacker with that amount of money and technology...
That'd be a great answer. Sadly, it's not the one people I've met who've abandoned their smartphone go for. They don't use 2FA, or they use SMS where they don't have a choice.
I'm all for people taking control of their life, but having a smartphone can have a material impact on the security of the services you use, and abandoning that in order to stop yourself using Facebook as much is a Bad Idea.
Nothing makes me sadder than 2-factor that supports a phone but not my Yubikey. Yubikey is so much more convenient.
At my last job, I begged IT to turn on the U2F feature of our SSO product. Sadly, they did not, even though it was literally a checkbox in the service’s UI. I even sent them a link to the knowledge-base article.
You are lucky that your bank still issues physical tokens. My bank started to require its app for authentication a few years ago, but it still offered tokens for presumambly elderly or "luddite" clients. Now it has announced that physical tokens will be phased out in 2019.
Variously: SMS; the "call my landline and speak the code to me" options some systems have; 2FA app on an android tablet; special purpose just-shows-a-number dongle. None of this is great, though. I believe you can run 2-factor-auth clients on a Linux box somehow, but I've never investigated that.
I just by accident and not trying, held onto my hard token and no one has noticed for my main user acct. But my other tokens for different domain accounts administrator accts are on my smart phone. I have it for only that reason. I much prefer candy bar nokia's.
I don't log in to secure websites on my mobile device. When I'm on my computer, I have a TOTP generator available. I do still receive some 2fa via sms, but if available, I always use email or TOTP.
This was really my only problem with not having my phone, but most if not all of what I use will send you an SMS with your 2FA so this could be easily replaced with a $9 flip phone, at least for me, but YMMV.
For work I use Winauth. I am a hourly corporate tech employee with no on-call duties currently so I don't have work Slack or any work 2FA on my personal devices.
I am looking into a yubikey or similar for the future.
I had the same experience years ago when I had to scrap my car. Felt lost without it for a week or two. But then I felt free. It was no longer my responsibility to ensure that a vehicle had fuel, that the tyres were inflated, oil filled. No one could ask me to run an errand that needed a car. I walked more and got more exercise, took the bus more and took a nap on the way home.
If you need it for the GPS, then that's just how it is -- there's no point in stressing out to find a basic phone that has GPS. Now that I just have a basic phone, I print directions before I leave. That doesn't work for everyone though.
From the few reviews I managed to find it seems like hot garbage. Shame, I had high hopes for it to be my daily driver. Looking into Punkt Phone and/or Light Phone 2
With 2G going away everywhere finding a usable feature phone to use on new networks has become a desperate question. One problem is that display technology seems to have actually regressed. The original transflective monochrome displays were viewable under any light conditions and consumed very little power. So backlit colour displays require a flip phone form factor just to protect the keys from being pressed and turning on the display all the time. The Nokia 3310 3G is a good example of getting this wrong.
My wife and I have a rule - minimal phone use around one another. We hold each other to it, unless both of us agree to look something up. Perhaps it's because we both think it's rude, I don't know..
Now, although that works generally - my wife will often spend hours pouring over Instagram a week. She too, has mixed feelings about it and on the one hand wants to delete it, and on the other feels she needs it to connect to people. When discussing this with her (she wanted to talk about the struggle she was having), she realized everyone she was worried about leaving behind on Instagram were people we knew from high school - a decade ago.
As soon as she realized that, she deleted it. I think the fact that phones connected us across time and places, make it difficult to recognize we don't need it in many cases. The addiction comes from wanting to be included, but in reality - we're just segregating ourselves; behind the facade of happy photos. The truth we all know is that everyone on Instagram works for those shots, those happy moments, to share with... well, their collective of "friends". Many of whom they will never see again in their lifetimes.
For me, I only install functional apps on my phone, never user it for fun, and already have blocked all news sites outside of HN, Reddit, and a few other niche forums. I can access my investments, bank account(s), flash cards, w.e. - that I don't find addictive. If my phone died, I'd be frustrated (how do we decide who's picking up the kids), but I wouldn't go through withdrawal (I often leave it at home by accident).
Perhaps a healthy approach to the phone is looking at it as a tool, not as a way to be friends. Honestly, it's the social networking aspect of it, that's the issue for people. Life is meant to be fluid and limited - spend time where it counts, building deep relationships.
I'm in a similar position, since I only download libre apps unless it's for work or something, I realised after I got rid of my proprietary apps (Instagram being the main one) I didn't get as distracted and became miles more productive. While I have stuff like Telegram and Mastodon I either end up paying attention to a few notifications and moving on or just seeing so much content that I'm too lazy to go through and I feel like that's because neither feature algorithmic timelines, discover pages etc.
I've got a Windows phone, and sometimes I feel like the gradual decay of its ecosystem is a blessing in disguise. Since app support is spotty, I'm relegated to sticking to the core features only (Edge, maps, music player, texting, camera, Office), which are good enough for most of my needs. (At least for however long until Edge falls behind the other browsers, or maps/traffic gets shuttered, or...) It's already distracting enough with a browser.. it'd be worse with more game support.. :)
That's precisely the reason I stick with Windows Phone as well. Even with a flagship-level phone Windows Phone is super slow, so, on top of what you mention, it makes me not want to use it as much.
> Even with a flagship-level phone Windows Phone is super slow
This hasn't been my experience at all. I have the absolute bargain basement Lumia 640 as a backup phone and it feels positively snappy. Perhaps it's because I have barely anything running on there?
My Lumia 640 actually feels snappier than my Lumia 950 in some ways. I dont understand that, its been the same with all of the Lumia 950s I've used. The 950 has a nice camera though, and that display is great reading books.
There are new feature phones available in the market, with the benefits of modern technology such as better display, keyboard, battery.. Its probably not advertised much, but it is still there, and very much available.
I'm mystified by the number of people who think that they've solved the fundamental problem by getting rid of their phone:
being that unable to control one's immediate impulses, is worthy of attention.
Sure, but if you're using it only to fill a gap of time because it's there, it's worth evaluating whether you really need all the enrichment smartphones offer.
Re : increasingly at odds : I'm not sure this is true. I guess it's hypothetically possible that, say, card payments will be replaced by phone-facilitated payments, but for the foreseeable future, it seems to me that absence of smartphone distraction [provided one has easy access to internet elsewhere] promotes greater, not lesser, connection with one's surroundings. [Except, of course, that 'Minority Report'-type targeted advertising and other commercial tracking functions aren't available[?] to the non-smartphone-user]
You wouldn't tell a smoker not to bother quitting because they'll only pick up some other addiction. There are also very few people who can smoke just a cigarette every few weeks; most people who start smoking become addicted and smoke daily.
Smartphones, or more specifically, the addictive patterns used by pretty much every popular 'app' (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) are hard to defeat for a lot of people. This is an inherent feature of how our brain works, not a personal weakness — despite personal variations. For some not using smartphones (opting for 'dumb' phones instead) may be a very sensible thing to do.
> Moreover, you are going to be increasingly at odds with your surroundings: the world is becoming more smartphone-like, not less.
Everybody used to smoke too. There are plenty of folk who believe that you shouldn't be required to walk around with a computer on your person at all times.
You don't throw out your entire purse because it has cigarettes in it. Throw out the cigarettes and keep the purse. Uninstall the addictive apps and keep the smartphone if you want it for its utility.
As a child, sure. That's part and parcel of growing up. But I would expect healthy adults to be able to control their impulses when it comes to things like wasting time on their phone. If someone genuinely can't, they're in trouble, and tossing the phone aside is treating the symptom at best.
Impulse control is really hard. But more importantly, it’s a losing battle, even for adults, if you use many popular services today. The reason is simple. Most of these services have highly paid and intelligent folks, whose sole purpose is to use the unprecedented private data they have on you, to hack into deep biological impulses embedded in every human built over millennia, to have you use their service more.
Its frankly not possible and anyone who believes otherwise is likely fooling themselves.
Possible. Not fooling myself. And the ad tech industry doesn't have the technology to control your mind, or steal your soul. Their efforts remain overwhelmingly wasteful and ineffective.
I would reiterate my recommendation of investigating why you feel such lack of self-control.
People are usually able to control their impulses. But controlling an impulse is not free: it consumes energy and willpower; it's a fight. I think people getting rid of their smartphones are making that move: getting rid of the struggle against their impulses so they can use the saved energy in other things.
There are veritable armies of psychologists trying to make this stuff as addictive as they know how to. It the same with advertising, you can consciously try to fight every ad that you are exposed to, but the simplest solution is to cut off the exposure altogether.
You too have immediate impulses that you are unable to control, you too are affected by marketing and advertising.
I feel like I've seen a number of these kind of posts pop up recently. It reminds me of 10 to 15 years ago when there was article after article about people getting rid of their TVs, and how liberated they felt. Both topics always feel like a mix of genuine feeling mixed with a bit of validation seeking. I don't know, I guess I've never found either argument particularly compelling.
I agree. I feel the same way when people talk about quitting Facebook. No one really needs to know.
FWIW, I got a basic phone because I was tired of having to charge my smart phone every day. It's nice having a phone that will hold its charge for several days.
I just always select “Dont allow” when prompted for notification unless its a messaging/finance app, I get less distracted a LOT compared to all those useless notifications like
“You’ve been away for x hours heres what you missed”
Am on the way of unscribing a lot of promo emails to currently.
Exactly! Turn off all notifications, unless the app is specifically a communications app (calls, messages). I switched off notifications for emails as well, they can wait until I check manually.
Facebook/Instagram/Parking/Maps/whatever apps just spam you with notifications that don't matter.
I feel like if I could have one device that lets me take really nice pictures (like portrait mode on iphone) and only do texting and phone calls and maps, I would be a pretty happy person. Maybe airline apps for boarding passes and stuff. I can survive without email/slack/all the other bullshit.
Life goes on, if it's an emergency I'm sure someone will get a hold of me somehow. But I want to take pictures of my wife and dogs, I want to text her and my friends, and I don't want to get lost. Music streaming is nice too. That's about it.
I guess I am just bitching about social media to be honest...
Social media apps are easy to uninstall, and that's what I've done. For the occasional Facebook event / messenger use case I need (some people insist on communicating through these), I use mbasic.facebook.com, which I think is the mobile web FB for the developing world. It's very fast, very barebones, but has all the features you really need.
I don't travel much, but when I do, having the ability to not give a flip about knowing directions ahead of time is mentally quite relaxing.
Anyone else remember the days of printing out map quest directions only to find that they were out of date or really really wrong?
Everything else that comes with a smart phone is an added bonus.
EDIT: As far as notification anxiety. I mean, there's a simple way to deal with that without handicapping yourself: Turn off notifications except for the most crucial items.
Printing out maps sucked. Usually the only way I could manage a long journey would be to stick a summary of the major routes somewhere where it could be glanced at safely, e.g. whilst stopped at traffic lights. I'd make it within a few miles of the destination then get lost and have to pull over to read the map. This was better than the alternative of having the traditional map-reading conversation* whilst driving, though.
I tried dedicated satnavs but they always seemed to be quite expensive, not always reliable and a bit of a hassle to keep updated. The iPhone 3G (inc. S) was OK but its GPS wasn't sensitive enough and it usually resorted to shouting out random directions when in a city centre. Later iOS devices seem better, as do Android phones even of the same era as the iPhone mentioned above. Google maps has been very good, though the reporting of my position to Google isn't something I care for.
*
- Which turn should I take at this junction?
- How am I supposed to know?
- You have the map.
- How should I know where we are on it? It doesn't make any sense!
etc. etc.
I’ve felt a similar urge recently to turn off the noise. I was feeling especially burned out by the never-ending work pings over email and slack. Deleting a few apps I couldn’t moderate and disabling ALL app notifications except Messenger (which I use with close friends and family only) has provides a huge improvement in my mental health. There’s also an app called Moment I’ve been using to track my phone use and try to move toward more intentional ways of usint devices; I had pretty shocking numbers when I first started tracking. We should use the technology, not let the technology use us.
Dumbphone user since 2006 here. Non-Luddite. Main reasons for avoiding the switch :
1) When not using computers for work [or chess] purposes, I want to spend as little time as practical staring at a screen. I have lots of non-computer activities to attend to [gardening, studying, home maintenance, etc etc] and a family to look after.
2) I am a strong adherent to the notion that one is well-advised to maintain awareness of one's surroundings -- what I'd call commonsense alertness -- and my observations of folks using smartphones in public suggest to me that their use diminishes situational awareness because they are a distraction.
2.5) Corollary to the above : I want to set a good example of prudent behavior for my kids, which to me includes limiting recreational computer / phone use [I realize this sounds snobby, but you should see the kids in my neighborhood -- like elementary-school kids -- constantly with their faces buried in phone];
3) Last and also least : expense and durability : decent dumbphones are nearly indestructible and if I distruct one, a replacement is less than $50. Smartphones, on the other hand, tend to be fragile and expensive.
Haha, zing! I guess it'd be fairly considered as self-deception, but HN kind of gets rolled into the 'work' category, like reading an industry periodical or something
I'm of the opinion that one can set a good example for their children and limit screen time while not regulating themselves to a dumbphone. It teaches your children self-control by example, after all.
I tend to keep internet turned off when I'm out in public, but that phone is still a tool. Clock, phone, notebook, grocery list, map, music, etc. I don't have to buy all those things or keep them on me any longer. That's worth the screen. I do tend to travel with a book or sketchpad, though - which honestly, gives the same distraction. So does daydreaming.
I live in a safe enough area to not worry about a lot of things, which probably helps.
Then again, I don't think I use the phone like most folks do either.
Ha, funny that you mention chess, because I've had to delete the Lichess app from my phone, as I realised I'd always be making correspondence moves or trying to play blitz to fill gaps in my day, playing _terribly_ because I wasn't concentrating, and feeling bad all day because I lost.
^ this rings true for me all right! I suffer from the same concentration / feels-bad-man syndrome if I don't follow my self-imposed restrictions [no chess unless I'm not working and especially no chess after 11pm!].
In fact, I did it to myself Wednesday evening, 'sneaking in' a quick game' while waiting for a long install to finish at about midnight, and WHOOPS blundered my queen. Felt like a moron the rest of the night.
You're in a gloomy waiting room. You arrived early, so could be waiting awhile. Nothing to read except a few old Vogue magazines. You're by yourself, you didn't bring a book. Your inventory is a wallet, keys, and flip phone. What is your next move?
Just sit and think. Watch other people. Read the old Vogue magazines. Listen to the conversations between employees. A lot of the time there will be a TV on or some music playing.
It's really not that bad if you're not used to the constant stimulation that smartphones (and to a lesser extent, all internet connected computers) provide.
^ this is what I do in the above scenario. Also, I usually carry a notepad and pen with me, so I'll often make notes about something that's on my mind or that I'm working on. Or, you know, doodle.
> Watch other people. Read the old Vogue magazines
I said "you're by yourself". Forget the magazines, they are the crappiest magazines ever. The pages are sticky, they are awful.
"Sit and think". No, I feel like reading some poetry or philosophy or an interesting article, or listening to music, or playing a puzzle game. I don't want to sit there thinking about the upcoming doctor's appointment.
I'll have my still time later, when I choose, not when a doctor's waiting room circumstance dictates it.
Your problem is you never took control of your smartphone. They can be set to be just an innocent little screen with interesting words or whatever on it. My own smartphone doesn't annoy me, it does exactly what I want it to do. Zero notifications, internet data is off until I need it etc.
> I said "you're by yourself". Forget the magazines, they are the crappiest magazines ever. The pages are sticky, they are awful.
I assumed you meant "by myself" as in "not with anyone you know". I've actually never sat in a waiting room that was entirely devoid of human life before, but I'm sure it happens in less populated areas.
> Your problem is you never took control of your smartphone.
I don't know where you got this impression. I'm not the person your original comment was responding to - I have a smartphone that I use and like.
> "Sit and think". No, I feel like reading some poetry or philosophy or an interesting article, or listening to music, or playing a puzzle game. I don't want to sit there thinking about the upcoming doctor's appointment.
Those are all valid ways to pass time - so is just sitting and thinking and everything else I said. Being able to do any of those things you listed with the swipe of a finger, even though they are not the usual suspects of Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter, is still a form of instant gratification and still has an effect on you. A negative effect, some (myself included) think.
Also, there are plenty of other things to think about aside from the upcoming doctor's appointment.
> They can be set to be just an innocent little screen with interesting words or whatever on it. My own smartphone doesn't annoy me, it does exactly what I want it to do. Zero notifications, internet data is off until I need it etc.
Yes, they can be used like this. I use my own smartphone in a similar manner.
I read something recently (I can't remember what) but it had a quote that I liked.
"You can choose not to use a TV, but you can't choose to live in a world where the TV doesn't exist"
In a similar sense, a person can choose to use a smartphone in a responsible manner or not to use one at all, but they can't choose to live in a culture that wasn't affected by smartphones. They can't choose to live in a world where endless distractions aren't always a few swipes away.
The closest they can get is ditching the smartphone, so that's what they do. It's not just a matter of configuring away the parts of a smartphone you don't like.
I would say that your example scenario isn’t necessarily an argument for having a smartphone, it is a reason to always have a Kindle with you that contains a few hundred books. (You can leave the Kindle in airplane mode at all times and get everything you want to read from pirated ebook websites, no need to deal with Amazon's ecosystem and DRM).
"Never leave home without my flip-phone and kindle" said nobody ever. Your smartphone might have the kindle app or e-reader app or something. You can put it on flight mode, and enjoy.
> "Never leave home without my flip-phone and kindle" said nobody ever.
You ought to get out more. Carrying around a Kindle and leaving the phone behind (or, perhaps, getting a dumbphone), so that you are forced to consume more “serious” content during waiting times and to avoid social media, is recommended fairly often on these kind of threads.
> Your smartphone might have the kindle app or e-reader app or something.
The reason for the Kindle’s popularity in its niche is the e-ink screen. Some people may find reading ebooks on their phone to be acceptable, while others find the more limited dimensions and LCD glare and brightness of a smartphone to be annoying.
It sounds like your solution to "Didn't remember to bring X {the book you're reading}" is "Remember to always bring Y {your smartphone}".
This isn't an argument for X or Y. This is why you shouldn't go somewhere you know you'll need to sit in a waiting room, without anything to do. From as early as I can remember, my mom would tell me "Bring a book!"
It worked. I'm more likely to remember to bring a book than my phone.
Besides, what would you do on your smartphone? If I have some specific work that needs doing, I'll bring my laptop, because that's more effective.
The point is obviously that you already carry a phone everywhere. If you're arguing that we should always carry a book too because our phone is only a phone, then you've lost me. Simply take control of your smartphone and configure it so it doesn't do all those nasty things you don't want it to do.
I don't have a phone. At all. Whenever government things or banks ask me for a phone number, I just say none. Persistent computer forms that won't take no for an answer are fed the phone number of the company that is asking for a phone.
Most people find this utterly unthinkable and seem to project their anxiety of not having a phone on to me. What about emergencies? How do you do this? How do you do that? What if this happens?
Truth is, most of those things don't happen and I get along just fine. I talk to people in my life via email or in person. I use videochat on my laptop to talk to people if we need a more intimate and immediate communication than email. I schedule things ahead of time and request that others please do their best to keep to that scheduled appointment. I'm ready to handle a few minutes of uncertainty if they're slightly late or be outright stood up in the case of genuine emergencies. Or I just tell people that I'll be available whenever and that they can come at their convenience between this hour and that hour.
I like my life this way. It's not bad. It's pretty okay.
Do you have any family? My parents live in a different country, a phone is a particularly good way of keeping in touch. Ever been ill? How do you get in touch with your GP? Ever had an accident, or witnessed an accident? Ever been a victim of bank fraud, or had to contact the police? I can understand dodging a smartphone, but a phone (cell or landline) of some sort is pretty much a requirement these days.
I don't have a GP. If I'm ill, I just go to a walk-in clinic. I can also schedule appointments online. When I was too sick to go out at all and due to a particular situation I didn't have web access either, I asked a neighbour to make a phone call for me. I live in a city where I can rely on the help of others.
For some official business, I use the landline at work to talk to banks or government. Most of the time I can use the web, though.
It is not a requirement for me to have a personal phone.
It seems complicated to explain, but it's not something that really impacts me much. It really is an okay way to live and the benefits of not having a phone really outweigh the drawbacks for me. It's super-valuable for me to be truly and completely jacked out.
As youve mentioned in your post, you rely on other people having a personal phone so that you don't need to carry one.
Regarding the GP, this is presumably dependent on the country you live in. In the UK you have a specific clinic you sign up with. None of the 4 clinics I've used have taken walk in appointments, all have required phoning that morning to get a scheduled appointment that day.
I don't really have to rely on others to carry a phone. And when I do ask for help; I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Relying on each other is why we have society at all. There are also public phones that I have used on occasion. Also, it's usually just a convenience. If I am truly and completely alone, I am willing to bear the risk of being unable to use a phone to contact someone.
There's no shame in relying on the help of others and there's no hypocrisy either. I'm prepared to being unable to get a neighbour to let me use a phone. I can accept that. If I'm able to get help, that's great, and if not that's also something I can accept. I have only done this once ever, anyway. Such a rare occasion does not outweigh the happiness and peace of mind that I get by being without a phone.
I have a phone for practical reasons (I rarely need to use a phone). But I can clearly see that most of these are solvable by the internet or by old-fashioned solutions.
Getting in touch with a GP? I can use the internet.
Bank fraud? Same, or just go to a branch.
As far as accidents and emergencies are concerned, these are no different than the solutions pre-smart phone or when your phone has broken, out of power, or if you forgot it elsewhere. You go to the nearest house. Landlines wouldn't call 911 for you if you dind't have phone service. Besides, folks can keep a cheap non-smartphone with no service in their house which allows you to call 911 in an emergency. Everything else can be worked around.
All it would really take is a knock on the neighbor's door and ask them to call the cops for you. The vast majority of folks won't turn you down. If all else fails, go to the nearest gas station or fast food establishment. Chances are they'll happily call for you.
> Getting in touch with a GP? I can use the internet. Bank fraud? Same, or just go to a branch.
Lucky you. My GPs website has phone number and an address on it. My bank are equally as unhelpful. They have internet banking, but there is no way to suspend a card or re order a new one without phoning them. Last time I had an issue with my card I was out of the country so visiting the branch was out of the question (not to mention the branch is almost 2 miles from my home, has no parking and is only open 9:30 to 5 Monday to Friday, when I'm working). There's no technical reason they can't do this online, they just don't currently.
As much as I'd like to not have an active phone, it's not really feasible to live todays world without one. You're relying on other people to have phones so that you don't have to carry one. Your suggestion to keep a cheap non smartphone defeats the purpose of not having a phone.
You are mistaken. I have an active phone. A smartphone even. I don't have any hangups on using it myself. I just realise the possibilities and enjoy that I can carry less stuff, play games while waiting, and have a map on me most of the time. mine is prepaid because my use is too low to bother with a monthly contract. As a bonus, the time doesn't expire nearly as quickly as prepaid phones in the states did and I can buy a modern phone.
But I was alive before the smartphones were available and didn't always have money for phone service and rent. So were a lot of folks I knew. And i simply understand the ways folks can get around having phone service... even if I think it is personally weird to do so out of choice instead of necessity.
I have also been in situations where I don't have the phone for a variety of reasons: Not working, for got it, spotty service, and so on. Of course you have to rely on others in these situations, the same as before everyone had such things. Actually being in an emergency has been a pretty rare thing, with or without cell phones. I've called 911 a few times, but only twice when not at work. Once for a car accident outside the house (a pretty bad one, lifeline helicopter and all), and one for someone's suicide attempt.
As a side note, it is a shame that the doctors offices do not have it. Most of them have it around here that I have seen. I avoid calling unless absolutely have to. As a bonus, the phones here are such that if I've run out of money on my prepaid phone, folks can still call me.
I do have a smartphone (only because I use the GPS/maps function a lot) but effectively I do the some thing, I only ever answer if it's a number that I know and I feel like it. I hate phones, I hate being interrupted out of the blue, I even hate listening to voice messages (I don't even do that anymore). If it's important they'll send an email or a text that I'll be able to read when I want and that'll be easy to reference later if need be.
> Most people find this utterly unthinkable and seem to project their anxiety of not having a phone on to me. What about emergencies? How do you do this? How do you do that? What if this happens?
I think the problem is if people have come to expect to be able to join you by phone and you suddenly stop answering they will get worried and/or frustrated, you changed the rules. I know a guy whose wife freaks out if he doesn't answer the phone and doesn't call her back within the hour even if she knows he's in front of his desk at work and is very unlikely to spontaneously combust. It's because he's built the expectation that he would always answer the phone.
Has it become your trademark? Maybe you kind of want to get a phone now but since you've gone this long without one, it's like a streak or a reputation you don't want to ruin?
I'm not famous or important enough to have a streak or reputation worth preserving. I have considered some situations in which I may reconsider owning a mobile phone. Besides not wanting to have a source of distraction always on and always on me, I also do not want a device that I cannot control and cannot ever fully trust.
A phone without internet connexion that I can completely trust (i.e. free all the way down to the baseband) is something that I would consider owning.
273 comments
[ 6.7 ms ] story [ 186 ms ] thread1) I don't actually need it for anything important and I'm super connected via computers for most of the day except when commuting
2) It is a security blanket that feels a bit odd to be without, but I did live most of my life without one
3) Now that I'm forced to look at my fellow train commuters I can see that everyone is looking down at their phones and I have to look at the scenery :)
I think at the end of the day it comes down to the sheer willpower of using the smartphone when you need it the most.
Main question will be whether small screen flip phones will be made with modern modems to connect to modern infra wich may not support older Gen wireless nets for too long.
An old flip phone would work if it supported mainstream authenticators.
https://www.kyoceramobile.com/duraxv-lte/
https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_3310_4g-9046.php
https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_8110_4g-9089.php
I can communicate with my fiancee even when she's in another country (international sms = fail). I can have a fiancee who's in another country. When I'm on the train I can do something meaningful to me. When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform. If I'm having a discussion with friends I can call up the information I'm missing. I can listen to music and podcasts while I go for a walk or a ride. I can plan my trips instead of listening to the boring parts of conversations. I can take nice photos when I didn't expect it.
I'm not going back to life without a phone. If you're not valuing your priorities with a phone, you won't value them without it. It might make a difference for a few weeks, but then you'll work out how to waste your time without your phone and you'll be back to square one.
I had a dumb phone for a year or so until maybe half a year ago. The ways I found to waste my time without smartphone were refreshingly different. Most importantly, thinking and wandering in my own mind without the urgent need to check every new thought from the internet. Long story short, there is now nokia 8110 with 4G and wifi available, I am likely going to get one of those soon and turn my smartphone off until I really need it.
Phone game apps are the most addictive but if you never download them you won't get into it. Games have 4 caracteristics that makes them addictive: winnable, it has goals, novel challenge that keep you in state of flow, feedback. These things could also be used in reading books and that becomes addictive in a good way.
Tl;Dr phone apps are the best thing to aquaire skills in the future. If you block or hide notification and not download addictive apps you will be fine.
In that case, why not communicate via Twitter or the Blockchain (tm)? Do you post pictures of yourself naked on Instagram as well?
Every person and every company has significant secrets.
I can also easily take my smartphone with me when I think there is a real need. The 4g dumbphone can share the internet to my smartphone.
Bought one yesterday, I have to say that KaiOS is still veeeery immature, so far very far behind series 40/60 nokias. If you can find a Nokia 208 or 515 which are the last they made with 3G+ you might be better off.
> I can communicate with my fiancee even when she's in another country (international sms = fail).
It facilitates instant communications. Email across the planet has been around since day one.
> I can have a fiancee who's in another country.
I can assure you this was possible pre-smart phone.
> When I'm on the train I can do something meaningful to me.
The counter point to this is millions of man years wasted streaming mind numbing video.
> When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform.
Mass transit has had posted schedules for many years. It is nice to see an updated one with up to the minute tracking but it wasn’t that inconvenient either.
> If I'm having a discussion with friends I can call up the information I'm missing.
I’m probably showing my age but I miss having a pointless yet heated argument that couldn’t be settled in 15 seconds on a smart phone. The feeling of being right when you finally do get to confirm the answer is worth so much more.
> I can listen to music and podcasts while I go for a walk or a ride.
You don’t need internet for that, just some planning to have the content downloaded in advance.
> I can plan my trips instead of listening to the boring parts of conversations.
If you’re describing zoning out of the real world people around you to doodle on your phone that’s sad.
> I can take nice photos when I didn't expect it.
Okay this one I agree. The best camera is the one you actually have. Counterpoint is we’re approaching peak photo.
IMNSHO, the parent is simply behaving reactively to the threat of new paradigms.
Email does not convey the emotion of a phone call, let alone a video call.
Easy access to information fosters discussion - by ending pointless, heated debates over nothing.
Only teenagers, and I now presume, older people, fuddle with their phones instead of talking to the person in front of them.
One hit on google and that's you! Nice!
When they seemingly replace a phone call, its usually because the institution would have liked to use only letter writing but couldn't for some non-technical reason.
Like a company processing refunds and cancelations by phone in order to have the opportunity to convince clients not to cancel (i.e. non-technical reason), now uses email or chat systems to accomplish the same thing.
Certainly does not, and it's a nice bonus, but when on earth do people use video calls? Since they are even better at conveying emotions, by your logic everybody carrying a smartphone should be making video calls at all times. But it's the contrary, people even prefer texting on Whatsapp over phone calls or even voice messages.
> Easy access to information fosters discussion - by ending pointless, heated debates over nothing.
They are the opposite of pointless. I feel the current/younger generation has completely lost the ability to have civilized, structured debates. If you can't solve a disagreement by a google search people freak out pretty quickly. And then we need safe spaces left and right and everybody is a victim and it's all society's fault. Those pointless debates over trifles serve a purpose, like kitten playfully fighting all day.
> Only teenagers, and I now presume, older people, fuddle with their phones instead of talking to the person in front of them.
Mostly teenagers yes, but them being the next generation of adults I doubt they'll just stop once they're into their twens. It'll just become the norm.
I actually see people using facetime in public all the time -- I think its one of those things if you aren't looking for it you won't notice. I've actually used google hangouts on my phone a few times -- recently I was in the airport w/o my computer on my Dad's birthday so we did a video call and other scenarios like that one. Also, I lived abroad for a few years and I used video chat extensively with my parents and other friends back in the states. (TBF though a majority of the time it was on my laptop -- but sometimes I did use my phone!)
> Mostly teenagers yes, but them being the next generation of adults I doubt they'll just stop once they're into their twens. It'll just become the norm.
That one is potentially true although I'll say based off of our interns they seem to be pretty good about not being on their phones all the time when the situation calls for it. I think like most things its super individual because of my coworkers the person who is on their phone the most is actually a middle aged guy.
I'd argue that email (and video calls, etc) have killed our ability to convey emotion via written word. What used to take time and thought has been reduced to quick blurbs given with little effort.
Get off my lawn! <shakes cane>
It has been present around the globe for ages, if you could find an internet cafe on holiday. Reading email on your phone also needs a smartphone.
> Mass transit has had posted schedules for many years. It is nice to see an updated one with up to the minute tracking but it wasn’t that inconvenient either.
You must be one of the blessed multitudes that live in a country with a public transport system that works well. If you have frequent, long-term delays it is fairly essential for your sanity to be able to know which routes are not currently completely fucked.
Nokia 6310 could both read and send emails, and I'm sure the functionality arrived slightly earlier too.
>>second point
I mean, if I'm in some 3rd world country without a reliable public transport system, then I'm not sure how internet access or a smartphone for that matter helps at all. In my experience in those places the bus/train just turns up when it does, no website would help you here.
There are numerous first world countries that have unreliable public transport. This is the US and also in the EU, I can't imagine you've never encountered what I mean unless you don't travel very much (there is nothing wrong with that, but then why do you discuss it like this). Sure in the situations that you talk about a smartphone would not matter, but in the ones I talk about (and that I actually meant originally) a smartphone will tell you why there is a delay (suddenly, generally) and what you can do to mitigate it. Something no PA system will tell you with any amount of reliability.
Outside of major towns, smart phone won't help you much to get most accurate time table. Paper timetable in the station is the only source of true information. You may find multiple contradicting timetables on the web and just hope they haven't been changed since then. Nobody cares to post emergency updates on the web. Sticker in the station it is. GPS live tracking is non existent.
We do have live tracking for public transit in 2 (maybe 3?) major towns. But that came before the era of smartphones - it was displayed in displays in stops. It's kinda cool to see your bus stuck in traffic one stop from you :)
Blackberries were smartphones. They had enumerable apps shoved into that tiny display, and keyboard model, but they still looked like flip-phones and lacked touch displays.
To me, the 'flip' is just a mechanical implementation detail. The real divide is smart phones versus dumb phones.
A phone that comes with its own apps (like old flip-phones) but doesn’t offer any other extensibility, usually only has apps written by the manufacturer to support standard protocols like email and SMS, and no support for any company’s walled-garden social superstimulus factory. Even WAP was okay, since WAP only worked to deliver information, not interactive “experiences.”
(Admittedly, one of those apps could have been an IRC client, which would have been quite immersing. Luckily we never saw such from the manufacturers—they left that sort of thing to the J2ME sideloading ecosystem.)
I'm in Canada, my internet on my phone is more than good enough, yet it's not rare to see bus 10 minutes late and it happens often to need a second bus that may be 10 minutes after the first one. Traffic is not exclusive to third world country. Our bus have real time tracking so I can know 10 minutes earlier if taking another route is the right thing to do.
Do you honestly think it's a binary choice? Either the public transport system is reliable, or it's a 3rd world country? This seems disingenuous.
Just to take an example: Southern Rail in the UK. It's notoriously unreliable, and journeys get cancelled or delayed all the time for various reasons, including strikes, weather, staff shortages and leaves on the tracks. I've saved countless hours from going to waste by keeping up to date on the schedule in real time. For this I need a smart phone. Is the UK a 3rd world country?
You have some valid points but it's like you feel compelled to reject all possible benefits put forward by OP. On this one you are objectively wrong.
Tell that to the Japanese, or the Indians.
Oh Simulation Creator, shudder I just remembered when Sears installed an internet cafe haha.
And I need to inform the person that I'm meeting with that I will arrive later (if I didn't have slack in my transit time).
Really having a smartphone does not mean you need to use it for much. IMO, the jump to cellphone vs not having one is a bigger downside as someone can call ar any time interrupting your thoughts. But even you can just turn them off, while still benefiting in an emergency.
..millions of man years wasted waiting.
>zoning out of the real world people around you to doodle on your phone that’s sad.
..humoring pointless gossip so people will like you, that's sad.
My point is that these seem very subjective and judgmental.
Except. Now I only carry one device. vOv
... to you.
My phone doesn't always have to be solving a problem or completing a task. The other day I was waiting for something and happened to look up the weather. I ended up going down a rabbit hole and re-discovering https://earth.nullschool.net - it was fascinating! It enriched my life, to no particular end. That sort of stuff happens all the time and immensely valuable to me.
And what does it even mean to say something is subjective? Contrary to what? And what does judgemental mean? That you can be whatever you want, and think of yourself however you want, but others may not see you how they see you? What's wrong with judgement?
semantics. you feel like you can only be critical of action, while inaction gets a pass? 'thinking' quietly is not inherently more valuable than being entertained. And while we are at it, nobody is just 'entertained' we learn, process, and yes 'think' at the same time
>to say something is subjective
In this context subjective means only applies to you Contrary to something that is a universal truth, something koolba seemed to be claiming.
>What's wrong with judgement[al]?
Its a weak argument, to say someone has 'failed' by your standards is to say they have failed by an arbitrary measure that may not have anything to do with their goals.
smartphones enable you to channel a lot of your time to other things instead of "having to download podcasts in advance" or "check posted transit schedules".
I agree about WhatsApp issue.
>> I can communicate with my fiancee even when she's in another country (international sms = fail).
> It facilitates instant communications. Email across the planet has been around since day one.
Do you even need instant communication in that case? It's not like you're going to have a quick unexpected meetup or some "hey I'm quite busy can you go get the kids?" Not to mention time zone issues.
>> When I'm on the train I can do something meaningful to me.
People didn't die of boredom before. Read a book, magazine, work on something on your laptop if you must. Also people seem to lose the ability to just take a short timeout from everything, just to think about your life for a bit, remember some good old times with friends or family you might have lost, and so on.
>> When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform.
There will we information displayed at the platform and inside the station. Plus announcements on the speaker system, which are faster, more accurate, and I don't have to pull out my phone. Fun fact: at least in Germany, it's not that the train company is obliged to adhere to the prognosed delay. So if your smartphone tells you the train is an hour late and you decide to visit the nearest paintball establishment for an hour you might find yourself missing the train since it only arrived 45 minutes late in the end.
"help, I'm being detained in Paris!" "I was mugged and need a passport!" "My plane was late so I missed my connecting flight, so I am spending another night in Berlin."
etc.
>People didn't die of boredom before. Read a book, magazine, work on something on your laptop if you must. Also people seem to lose the ability to just take a short timeout from everything, just to think about your life for a bit, remember some good old times with friends or family you might have lost, and so on.
I actually agree with you totally here, but a counterpoint would be that I can get mundane stuff done while doing mundane stuff (riding a bus, taxi, etc.) so that when I get home I get more family time instead of "not now, I have to see why Comcast/Verizon/Etc. screwed up our bill again."
And they conveniently let you keep your 1000$ iPhone ;). But these are all situations where I could just make a regular call with my dumb phone as well. Sure roaming costs will kick in, but that's even worse for data. My current provider charges 2€/min for calls outside the EU and 1€ per 50kb (yes that's not a typo). In all seriousness though, sure, there's always situations where having a smartphone is beneficial, I won't deny that. Especially working in tech it might even be that suddenly shit hits the fan at your company and you'd desperately take a wonky ssh connection on a bus ride since every seconds counts.
And if you really have that level of self control, as the OP of this discussion suggests, that you won't distract yourself more than you actually benefit than that's fine. I found myself barely managing to do that and switched to a dumb phone again in 2015ish. On trains and buses I'd mindlessly skim through HN or reddit or random tech sites, I eventually configured my work mail on my phone since sometimes it's more convenient, but then found myself reading mails in the evening during family time etc. Most colleagues confirm that they have similar patterns, but they're almost all single or childless so they probably don't care that much.
I still use it occasionally on the go and frequently at home as a laptop replacement when I'm just about to catch up on the news or post on HN. But I pretty much wiped all apps except the browser. I could not manage to do that when I used it as my main phone for almost 2 years.
Since this drifted somewhat away from the original topic let me add that I'm quite curious about KaiOS devices as it seems it might offer a suiting compromise for my needs. It got most popular messenger apps so I could take advantage of improved connectivity with people but the experience is still limited enough to prevent information overload and playing around with it too much. The selection of devices is just too limited at the moment.
You counterpoints all seem to distill down to some variation of being opposed to people having options or embracing convenience.
FaceTime / video calls always available at your fingertips while you are waiting somewhere is also something I wouldn’t want to miss.
By all means, speak for everyone.
I happen to agree with the principle though. But I think, ultimately, you therefore have to take a stand on what true meaning is.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is perhaps just one use case but it's hardly surprising that people now want to go back to way it was before. I still use my smart phone because it makes my life a lot more convenient in many other ways but I definitely understand if someone would find it compelling enough to stop using a smart phone.
But, it does make me think, if I just want to connect to the internet, play music/podcasts, click a pic once a while etc. do I really need a device that's GPS enabled, bluetooth enabled, has NFC, accelorometers, face recognition, multicore processors etc. and costs a fortune ;)
I’ve been dying for gmail and workplace (fb for work) to add a feature so I can stop work related notifications after 17. Having this at iOS level would be great also.
That way you don't have to carry two phones, be tied to a dual-sim phone or have troubles when you leave the company (in case you use the company phone number for private calls too).
The work phone gets left in a locker at work along with my work laptop, I refuse to bring it home with me until I have agreed in advance to work from home for some specific task. I know a lot of employers expect their employees to be available at odd hours, but I refuse to participate in that.
I made this decision after suffering under a boss who would call and email at 22:00 and expect results to be ready on his table next morning by 8:00.
Only a very select trusted few of my colleagues have my private phone number, and they will only ever use it in a dire emergency.
My circle of friends is entirely separate from work, there is no overlap, which is just fine by me. I prefer keeping work and my personal life separate.
I check my mail a couple times a day during work hours, usually when I arrive in the morning, after our standup, after my lunch break, sometime during the afternoon and before I leave (but not right when I want to leave, at least a couple of minutes beforehand).
I always pay close attention to immediately deal with all mail I receive, i.e. complete the task immediately (usually if less than five to ten minutes are required), write a to-do item or (my favorite option) archive the mail. The important part is to get it out of your brain and besides archiving or doing it, the best other way is to write it down.
This obviously only works if real time critical information is not usually sent via email (unexpected, action required immediately and minutes to hours required, depending on the complexity) and if no one expects email to be used for time critical information. Luckily we have policies in place to both ensure that email is used for non time-critical information and other more direct channels (Slack, phone, coming over in person) are used for actual time critical information.
I know that this culture part is often the actual hard one. If people expect you to immediately react to email then there is not much you can do inside the expectations and you probably have to turn notifications on.
Even if you leave notifications on, dealing with email immediately (picking doing it immediately, writing a to-do, archiving it) is still a time-management basic and extremely helpful, but it doesn’t work very well if you have that notification gnawing your nerves somewhere in your brain. Dealing with email immediately actually has to mean dealing with it immediately, i.e. the first time you take notice of it.
(This is a very German perspective, though. My probably biased and also very limited experience in communicating with people in the US was one of general hyperactivity and I had the impression that many treated email sort of like a real time communications channel with weird expectations about response times.)
Granted, I don't know how much the "Betriebsrat" was prompting that, but I doubt that people themselves are that much different, despite German Gemütlichkeit.
I found that both IT workers and MBAs are IT/MBA first, nationals second.
So this is not a reason not to have a smartphone it's only a matter of setting up the phone properly, so notifications reach me only when they should be checked.
Or, as someone below puts it
> I'm mystified by the number of people who think that they've solved the fundamental problem by getting rid of their phone: being that unable to control one's immediate impulses, is worthy of attention.
Maybe getting rid of a smart phone means "lack of impulse control", okay. The cited study claims the average American looking at their phone every six minutes on average, so it's not exactly cool to ignore that bit and berate the person who took the time writing an article citing that study.
And maybe it's not even a lack of impulse control, but a singular act of will? Would people also be "concerned" for someone who stops smoking but doesn't keep cigarettes around the house? Or hey, what if someone were to say that Linters are for people who don't get it right the first place, and that itself deserves attention? We know humans are imperfect, and find it sensible to guard ourselves against making mistakes in all sorts of ways. Why are smartphones different to you?
A portable mini computer with internet access is useful for a lot of cool things, no doubt. Though to the usefulness on the internet it's like putting a low table on a huge mountain, makes no overall difference to me. None of the upsides you mentioned seem smartphone specific, and you address none of the smartphone specific issues mentioned in the article, other than with a sweeping "I'm not going back".
> When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform.
Partly (or depending on where you are, rather) that's because thanks to smartphones, they don't display it in many places where they used to. Just like you can't buy a ticket from a person anymore. This cam be a huge problem for elderly people or those with disabilities. If a smartphone saves one so much time, that time should also be used to help one's fellow citizens by noticing and criticzing such things, to help remove barriers even though they are no barriers to you.
Smartphones were ceded their initial social acceptance solely on being optional. If this turned out to be a lie, the acceptance should likewise be withdrawn, and we can save the the discussion about the mass surveillance and marketing aspects I see completely not mentioned here as a bonus, too.
> I can plan my trips instead of listening to the boring parts of conversations.
This probably sounds more rude to me as you are in practice, but it conjure up nothing good in my mind, honestly. The first thing that comes to mind is a Mitchell and Webb sketch about a guy in a pub interrupting the others because their conversation isn't good enough for them, but also not contributing to make it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKJ5w-HQ9b0
As if everyone was expected to pretend they are super perfect in totally everything and admission of some completely normal fault that needs to be worked around or fixed deserved punishment and shame.
Sometimes people get compulsive habit and if buying flip phone or whatever helps them, it is legit to talk about it.
But at what cost? The software and OS is a locked-down ecosystem for most consumers. The hardware even more so. Such mass adoption forces one to conform in order to participate, meaning even for the privacy-conscious, consumer trends dictate all. Just a couple months ago US carriers were found to be selling realtime customer location data. Whether or not they're selling, they can track your phone via cellular triangulation. The baseband is a proprietary black box that runs its own privileges OS, can read memory and disk, and basically transmits at all times (mandated by law in some countries, for emergency network connectivity) to whoever picks up the signal, and this includes a unique IMEI. No removable batteries, and no hardware switches means masses of phones are being tracked at all times from point A to B, whether or not for nefarious purposes. Add the ever-growing trend of cashless transactions, OS-level third-party GPS tracking, and the reality becomes a slippery slope nightmare.
I feel that sentiments like yours, one's where "life" and "phone" are nearly synonymous, are fostering a dangerous future where one is obligated to own a phone else be left in the dust. This is already nearly the case socially, and in some careers also. Literature classics warn of mass surveillance and control, of chip implants under the scalp, but why go there when the populace already wear a tracking device willingly of their own accord, and grow to depend on it ever more?
* vote into power people that actually care about privacy
* or to only buy products that protect their privacy
what makes you think all this matters?
The average person has decided that life is better for him like this...
The most dystopian tools ever imagined can be perfectly harmless if the people using them don't want to use them for dystopian purposes.
It's only moving towards a dystopy because people don't care or know enough. That's what has to be fixed.
Indeed, I do. You want to track the stores I drive by and what websites I visit? In exchange I can have real-time commnuication with friends all over the world without having to align scheduled to make phone calls of varying connection quality, I can get step by step directions on how to do just about anything including get from point A to B, I can take photos and share them, I can read, I can consume video and audio, I can track my macros, I can get immediate weather alerts, track ODB-II data for my car, get curated news, get raw news, augment my memory with drive/dropbox/evernote, I can track my finances? DEAL!
Also, PTSN can be easily eavesdropped as well, and paying by the minute isn't attractive. The phone companies squeezed us long enough.
We're discussing mostly location tracking here (GPS etc), but we also shouldn't neglect the impact of cameras or mics. Nor the way GPS coordinates are embedded in pictures we ourselves take and we ourselves share on Instagram.
Yesterday on TV there was a talkshow about the decline on Facebook due to privacy reasons (with which they seemingly agreed), and someone went how Instagram was the next hottest thing (owned by the same parent company). I wanted to bash my head...
Right now I'm watching Tour de France and the 24/7 in-ears/mics and cameras make it a vastly different game than how it was before the TV era and during the TV but not yet everyone having ears.
Exactly right. I hear more and more people complaining about the internet, their smartphones or tech in general. If you listen to those people long enough you realize what they are actually talking about is social media and to a lesser degree gaming. I just don't get it. If you don't like those services, don't use them. Have some self restraint, for crying out loud.
- Have some self restraint for crying out loud.
Might be a good idea to read a bit on psychology. Your experience != everyone else's experience.
Boredom is good. Waiting is good. Not having what you want every second of the day is good.
Life before phones was in many ways totally different than life now. But in others ways, we're still the same people, doing the same things, with newer tools. Everyone can make their own decisions on what tools they want to use, but I'm just not buying the argument that life is better or worse. It is different.
Now that I'm becoming more comfortable with the new hobby, I've started listening to audiobooks or streaming music while I knit - it seems to strike a nice balance.
Certainly the phone has enriched my life - it enables me to stream music and listen to audiobooks easily, but in my experience it's a dangerous tool as well, since it enables you to check social media more than is healthy. Everything in moderation I suppose.
1. Purchased an iPhone1 10 years ago - changed my career & life.
2 Purchased a Nokia 3310 1 month ago - suddenly, the physical world around me has expanded. I feel I just woke up after 10 years.
The optimal setup for me is the basic apps installed (mail, messenger, uber/lyft, finances) with all notifications turned off. Less distraction while retaining the utility of having a smartphone.
There are ways to reduce cell phone usage without going to a flip phone.
But, if this is what works for the author then I support it. Removing certain apps and disabling notifications will work wonders for most people though.
All notifications are turned off, except for instant messaging apps and calls.
I stress a lot less about Facebook and social media in general now.
Whenever there's a lull in activity (like waiting for a bus, at the doctor's office, etc) I used to mindlessly swipe and scroll away. Now I pay more attention to the physical world around me (the bus stop has a map, what kind of magazines does the doctor like, etc)
But I wonder if the author could get the same benefit by cancelling her mobile data plan.
This sort of thing keeps me from getting irritated while waiting in a place like a doctor's office. It makes me a more agreeable person overall.
The bus stop isn't as bad - they have a schedule and are usually on-time. There is only so often I can stand to look at a bus stop map, after all. That novelty wears off after using buses as primary transportation.
For a few days it was like I was an addict, constantly feeling my back pocket vibrating, constantly reaching to check my phone. After a few more days, I felt very liberated. I felt very free. I started enjoying life more. I started noticing how much the world (at least USA) depends on their phones for everything. I would go out to Reddit meetups without my phone and notice times where everyone would have their heads down, checking various social media platforms and not talking to each other. People would ask how I lived without a phone. I noticed how dangerous the distraction is with people doing simple things like walking crosswalks with their heads down staring at their phones. I noticed a lot of the time the entire bus full of people were looking down at their phones, most doing nothing of any real meaning.
After a week or so I learned how to cope without. I would look up directions and bus routes on my computer before I left. I would check my bank account before I left to do anything that cost money. I brought a notebook with me to keep notes of things I thought about and wanted to look further into when I got home. I noticed new things I've never noticed and learned more about the city I live in, especially the streets and landmarks so I could get around without GPS. It noticeably helped my anxiety and gave me a viewpoint of the world that I feel I hadn't been a part of since the first iPhone was released.
I'm not saying smartphones aren't useful, but I strongly recommend to anyone to take a break from their phone. It really is eye opening in very beneficial ways.
Zelda has a 'Pro' mode where it hides all UI but the health. I was fully decided on using it through the whole game and I think it is the best way to play the game.
The absence of minimap is the biggest change. When you have your minimap is like when you drive with gps. You only wait til the map says you to turn, and after some turns staring at the minimap you get to your destination missing all that was in between. If you don't have the minimap you actually need to understand the map, know more or less where you are, where the landmarks are, and how to get through to your destination. In the end, the absence of minimap makes you learn better the world and the map, instead of relying on the digested info that the minimap gives you.
And after the initial wave of feeling dumb passed once I noticed my mistake, I also realized that I was actually having quite a lot of fun playing it that way. Although navigation was confusing at first, I learned my way around the map quite well, and by being forced to just look around instead of relying on, as you put it, GPS nav (a very apt analogy) I had a more immersive, enjoyable experience. There were times walking around where I would just stop and think, 'wow, this is really pretty'. And I am not completely sure I would have had that thought if I hadn't been forced to actually pay attention to where I was going in those early hours of play.
At least disable the "?" signs on unexplored areas and the path to next quest objective, game is much more enjoyable without them and not too inconvenient.
I might give it another go, how did you go on about it ? did you just disable most UI stuff ? and is it still acutally playable ?
When I get a new quest phase I look it up on the fullscreen map and then just go there, it's playable enough. The dialogs describe places where you need to go usually, but not always well enough to get there without looking at the map at all.
I've seen people play with all ui disabled, even the health bar, but it wasn't convenient for me.
The game is very heavy on plot and characters, it has small tutorial in the castle, and then like 10 hours long bigger tutorial area before the world opens up for real, and you have to understand what's happening and who's who at least a little to enjoy it. Game introduces characters reasonably well, but there's so many of them it's easy to lose track.
Also, bonus tip - in some update few months after the premiere they added "alternative movement controls" - be sure to enable that in the settings if you play with keyboard and mouse. It's much more convenient than the default. It makes the animation of movement look less natural, but much more responsive (you can turn instantly instead of making a circle for example).
Email is bad for similar reasons (although slightly less in terms of exposure if you use a good provider).
Could you please tell how they can sniff SMS without user ever noticing?
I'm all for people taking control of their life, but having a smartphone can have a material impact on the security of the services you use, and abandoning that in order to stop yourself using Facebook as much is a Bad Idea.
At my last job, I begged IT to turn on the U2F feature of our SSO product. Sadly, they did not, even though it was literally a checkbox in the service’s UI. I even sent them a link to the knowledge-base article.
For work I use Winauth. I am a hourly corporate tech employee with no on-call duties currently so I don't have work Slack or any work 2FA on my personal devices.
I am looking into a yubikey or similar for the future.
If you need it for the GPS, then that's just how it is -- there's no point in stressing out to find a basic phone that has GPS. Now that I just have a basic phone, I print directions before I leave. That doesn't work for everyone though.
The phone specs list A-GPS but it is not clear if you can actually use it without getting an app off a store that doesn't seem to exist yet.
Not a flip phone, but also not a smart phone.
My wife and I have a rule - minimal phone use around one another. We hold each other to it, unless both of us agree to look something up. Perhaps it's because we both think it's rude, I don't know..
Now, although that works generally - my wife will often spend hours pouring over Instagram a week. She too, has mixed feelings about it and on the one hand wants to delete it, and on the other feels she needs it to connect to people. When discussing this with her (she wanted to talk about the struggle she was having), she realized everyone she was worried about leaving behind on Instagram were people we knew from high school - a decade ago.
As soon as she realized that, she deleted it. I think the fact that phones connected us across time and places, make it difficult to recognize we don't need it in many cases. The addiction comes from wanting to be included, but in reality - we're just segregating ourselves; behind the facade of happy photos. The truth we all know is that everyone on Instagram works for those shots, those happy moments, to share with... well, their collective of "friends". Many of whom they will never see again in their lifetimes.
For me, I only install functional apps on my phone, never user it for fun, and already have blocked all news sites outside of HN, Reddit, and a few other niche forums. I can access my investments, bank account(s), flash cards, w.e. - that I don't find addictive. If my phone died, I'd be frustrated (how do we decide who's picking up the kids), but I wouldn't go through withdrawal (I often leave it at home by accident).
Perhaps a healthy approach to the phone is looking at it as a tool, not as a way to be friends. Honestly, it's the social networking aspect of it, that's the issue for people. Life is meant to be fluid and limited - spend time where it counts, building deep relationships.
Being so limited is rather freeing.
This hasn't been my experience at all. I have the absolute bargain basement Lumia 640 as a backup phone and it feels positively snappy. Perhaps it's because I have barely anything running on there?
The only feature WP has was super snappy on the cheapest one.
Screen is great, camera is great, Sat-Nav is almost Google Maps standard, Spotify works. I can type emails on it when I really need to.
Beyond that, all shiny new social apps don't work, so temptation eliminated.
It seems an ideal half way house between proper smartphone and 2000's brick.
If you need to give it up to put it down, then your problem isn't smartphones, and you will fill it with something else in short order.
Moreover, you are going to be increasingly at odds with your surroundings: the world is becoming more smartphone-like, not less.
Smartphones, or more specifically, the addictive patterns used by pretty much every popular 'app' (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) are hard to defeat for a lot of people. This is an inherent feature of how our brain works, not a personal weakness — despite personal variations. For some not using smartphones (opting for 'dumb' phones instead) may be a very sensible thing to do.
> Moreover, you are going to be increasingly at odds with your surroundings: the world is becoming more smartphone-like, not less.
Everybody used to smoke too. There are plenty of folk who believe that you shouldn't be required to walk around with a computer on your person at all times.
Its frankly not possible and anyone who believes otherwise is likely fooling themselves.
I would reiterate my recommendation of investigating why you feel such lack of self-control.
You too have immediate impulses that you are unable to control, you too are affected by marketing and advertising.
I agree. I feel the same way when people talk about quitting Facebook. No one really needs to know.
FWIW, I got a basic phone because I was tired of having to charge my smart phone every day. It's nice having a phone that will hold its charge for several days.
Facebook/Instagram/Parking/Maps/whatever apps just spam you with notifications that don't matter.
Life goes on, if it's an emergency I'm sure someone will get a hold of me somehow. But I want to take pictures of my wife and dogs, I want to text her and my friends, and I don't want to get lost. Music streaming is nice too. That's about it.
I guess I am just bitching about social media to be honest...
They're also easy to reinstall, and often times have good enough mobile web clients. Can't uninstall the browser, unfortunately.
Anyone else remember the days of printing out map quest directions only to find that they were out of date or really really wrong?
Everything else that comes with a smart phone is an added bonus.
EDIT: As far as notification anxiety. I mean, there's a simple way to deal with that without handicapping yourself: Turn off notifications except for the most crucial items.
I tried dedicated satnavs but they always seemed to be quite expensive, not always reliable and a bit of a hassle to keep updated. The iPhone 3G (inc. S) was OK but its GPS wasn't sensitive enough and it usually resorted to shouting out random directions when in a city centre. Later iOS devices seem better, as do Android phones even of the same era as the iPhone mentioned above. Google maps has been very good, though the reporting of my position to Google isn't something I care for.
* - Which turn should I take at this junction? - How am I supposed to know? - You have the map. - How should I know where we are on it? It doesn't make any sense! etc. etc.
1) When not using computers for work [or chess] purposes, I want to spend as little time as practical staring at a screen. I have lots of non-computer activities to attend to [gardening, studying, home maintenance, etc etc] and a family to look after.
2) I am a strong adherent to the notion that one is well-advised to maintain awareness of one's surroundings -- what I'd call commonsense alertness -- and my observations of folks using smartphones in public suggest to me that their use diminishes situational awareness because they are a distraction.
2.5) Corollary to the above : I want to set a good example of prudent behavior for my kids, which to me includes limiting recreational computer / phone use [I realize this sounds snobby, but you should see the kids in my neighborhood -- like elementary-school kids -- constantly with their faces buried in phone];
3) Last and also least : expense and durability : decent dumbphones are nearly indestructible and if I distruct one, a replacement is less than $50. Smartphones, on the other hand, tend to be fragile and expensive.
Is HN an exception of this? ;-)
5) Probably phone home less data about you and your connections
6) Don't fuel your FOMO and don't feel like you are on pager duty
...
I tend to keep internet turned off when I'm out in public, but that phone is still a tool. Clock, phone, notebook, grocery list, map, music, etc. I don't have to buy all those things or keep them on me any longer. That's worth the screen. I do tend to travel with a book or sketchpad, though - which honestly, gives the same distraction. So does daydreaming.
I live in a safe enough area to not worry about a lot of things, which probably helps.
Then again, I don't think I use the phone like most folks do either.
In fact, I did it to myself Wednesday evening, 'sneaking in' a quick game' while waiting for a long install to finish at about midnight, and WHOOPS blundered my queen. Felt like a moron the rest of the night.
It's really not that bad if you're not used to the constant stimulation that smartphones (and to a lesser extent, all internet connected computers) provide.
I said "you're by yourself". Forget the magazines, they are the crappiest magazines ever. The pages are sticky, they are awful.
"Sit and think". No, I feel like reading some poetry or philosophy or an interesting article, or listening to music, or playing a puzzle game. I don't want to sit there thinking about the upcoming doctor's appointment.
I'll have my still time later, when I choose, not when a doctor's waiting room circumstance dictates it.
Your problem is you never took control of your smartphone. They can be set to be just an innocent little screen with interesting words or whatever on it. My own smartphone doesn't annoy me, it does exactly what I want it to do. Zero notifications, internet data is off until I need it etc.
I assumed you meant "by myself" as in "not with anyone you know". I've actually never sat in a waiting room that was entirely devoid of human life before, but I'm sure it happens in less populated areas.
> Your problem is you never took control of your smartphone.
I don't know where you got this impression. I'm not the person your original comment was responding to - I have a smartphone that I use and like.
> "Sit and think". No, I feel like reading some poetry or philosophy or an interesting article, or listening to music, or playing a puzzle game. I don't want to sit there thinking about the upcoming doctor's appointment.
Those are all valid ways to pass time - so is just sitting and thinking and everything else I said. Being able to do any of those things you listed with the swipe of a finger, even though they are not the usual suspects of Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter, is still a form of instant gratification and still has an effect on you. A negative effect, some (myself included) think.
Also, there are plenty of other things to think about aside from the upcoming doctor's appointment.
> They can be set to be just an innocent little screen with interesting words or whatever on it. My own smartphone doesn't annoy me, it does exactly what I want it to do. Zero notifications, internet data is off until I need it etc.
Yes, they can be used like this. I use my own smartphone in a similar manner.
I read something recently (I can't remember what) but it had a quote that I liked.
"You can choose not to use a TV, but you can't choose to live in a world where the TV doesn't exist"
In a similar sense, a person can choose to use a smartphone in a responsible manner or not to use one at all, but they can't choose to live in a culture that wasn't affected by smartphones. They can't choose to live in a world where endless distractions aren't always a few swipes away.
The closest they can get is ditching the smartphone, so that's what they do. It's not just a matter of configuring away the parts of a smartphone you don't like.
You ought to get out more. Carrying around a Kindle and leaving the phone behind (or, perhaps, getting a dumbphone), so that you are forced to consume more “serious” content during waiting times and to avoid social media, is recommended fairly often on these kind of threads.
> Your smartphone might have the kindle app or e-reader app or something.
The reason for the Kindle’s popularity in its niche is the e-ink screen. Some people may find reading ebooks on their phone to be acceptable, while others find the more limited dimensions and LCD glare and brightness of a smartphone to be annoying.
I’m that way, as are more than a few people I know if you freely substitute “book” or some other e-reader for Kindle.
This isn't an argument for X or Y. This is why you shouldn't go somewhere you know you'll need to sit in a waiting room, without anything to do. From as early as I can remember, my mom would tell me "Bring a book!"
It worked. I'm more likely to remember to bring a book than my phone.
Besides, what would you do on your smartphone? If I have some specific work that needs doing, I'll bring my laptop, because that's more effective.
Most people find this utterly unthinkable and seem to project their anxiety of not having a phone on to me. What about emergencies? How do you do this? How do you do that? What if this happens?
Truth is, most of those things don't happen and I get along just fine. I talk to people in my life via email or in person. I use videochat on my laptop to talk to people if we need a more intimate and immediate communication than email. I schedule things ahead of time and request that others please do their best to keep to that scheduled appointment. I'm ready to handle a few minutes of uncertainty if they're slightly late or be outright stood up in the case of genuine emergencies. Or I just tell people that I'll be available whenever and that they can come at their convenience between this hour and that hour.
I like my life this way. It's not bad. It's pretty okay.
I don't have a GP. If I'm ill, I just go to a walk-in clinic. I can also schedule appointments online. When I was too sick to go out at all and due to a particular situation I didn't have web access either, I asked a neighbour to make a phone call for me. I live in a city where I can rely on the help of others.
For some official business, I use the landline at work to talk to banks or government. Most of the time I can use the web, though.
It is not a requirement for me to have a personal phone.
Regarding the GP, this is presumably dependent on the country you live in. In the UK you have a specific clinic you sign up with. None of the 4 clinics I've used have taken walk in appointments, all have required phoning that morning to get a scheduled appointment that day.
But whenever we went somewhere they suddenly needed a ride.
Getting in touch with a GP? I can use the internet. Bank fraud? Same, or just go to a branch.
As far as accidents and emergencies are concerned, these are no different than the solutions pre-smart phone or when your phone has broken, out of power, or if you forgot it elsewhere. You go to the nearest house. Landlines wouldn't call 911 for you if you dind't have phone service. Besides, folks can keep a cheap non-smartphone with no service in their house which allows you to call 911 in an emergency. Everything else can be worked around.
All it would really take is a knock on the neighbor's door and ask them to call the cops for you. The vast majority of folks won't turn you down. If all else fails, go to the nearest gas station or fast food establishment. Chances are they'll happily call for you.
Lucky you. My GPs website has phone number and an address on it. My bank are equally as unhelpful. They have internet banking, but there is no way to suspend a card or re order a new one without phoning them. Last time I had an issue with my card I was out of the country so visiting the branch was out of the question (not to mention the branch is almost 2 miles from my home, has no parking and is only open 9:30 to 5 Monday to Friday, when I'm working). There's no technical reason they can't do this online, they just don't currently.
As much as I'd like to not have an active phone, it's not really feasible to live todays world without one. You're relying on other people to have phones so that you don't have to carry one. Your suggestion to keep a cheap non smartphone defeats the purpose of not having a phone.
But I was alive before the smartphones were available and didn't always have money for phone service and rent. So were a lot of folks I knew. And i simply understand the ways folks can get around having phone service... even if I think it is personally weird to do so out of choice instead of necessity.
I have also been in situations where I don't have the phone for a variety of reasons: Not working, for got it, spotty service, and so on. Of course you have to rely on others in these situations, the same as before everyone had such things. Actually being in an emergency has been a pretty rare thing, with or without cell phones. I've called 911 a few times, but only twice when not at work. Once for a car accident outside the house (a pretty bad one, lifeline helicopter and all), and one for someone's suicide attempt.
As a side note, it is a shame that the doctors offices do not have it. Most of them have it around here that I have seen. I avoid calling unless absolutely have to. As a bonus, the phones here are such that if I've run out of money on my prepaid phone, folks can still call me.
> Most people find this utterly unthinkable and seem to project their anxiety of not having a phone on to me. What about emergencies? How do you do this? How do you do that? What if this happens?
I think the problem is if people have come to expect to be able to join you by phone and you suddenly stop answering they will get worried and/or frustrated, you changed the rules. I know a guy whose wife freaks out if he doesn't answer the phone and doesn't call her back within the hour even if she knows he's in front of his desk at work and is very unlikely to spontaneously combust. It's because he's built the expectation that he would always answer the phone.
Has it become your trademark? Maybe you kind of want to get a phone now but since you've gone this long without one, it's like a streak or a reputation you don't want to ruin?
A phone without internet connexion that I can completely trust (i.e. free all the way down to the baseband) is something that I would consider owning.
A simple phone for calling is enough for me. Plus the nostalgia.