I'm usually at my desk at home or the office, or in bed, or some other place with a real computer, or doing something I actually want to be doing, or driving. In none of those situations do I want my phone.
In the remaining cases of "waiting for something but not equipped with a full sized computer", I'm quite happy to use the phone.
The greater problem is "spending time doing less-productive stuff on the Internet" -- I just prefer doing so with a real computer.
I haven't gone as far as this guy, but I recently removed Facebook and Twitter from my Android phone and it's been a breath of fresh air.
I still use both apps via their websites when I've got my laptop out, but not having them in my pocket all the time is really freeing. You don't realise how much of a slave you are to these things until you force yourself to let them go. I waste a lot less time on my phone now. Wouldn't go back.
One of the reasons I refused to get a smartphone a few years back, was because all I saw people do was use them as a distraction. Facebook at the bus stop. Facebook in a seminar.
I now own a smartphone. Refused to put Facebook on it. I also make a point when going on holiday not to use internet, unless I need to. I have been to some stunning places in the Hymalayas, with scenery like nowhere else, and you see the internet cafes full of westerners, updating their facebook status. Did you really need to pay for the flight to do that?
Maybe not. But having maps in unfamiliar territory (like Bangkok Chinatown) which also works as a camera and can replace sketchy internet cafes for booking tickets and contact people home ...
As with fire, smartphone is a great servant but terrible master.
I think going so far as to disable Safari outright and deleting email accounts is too extreme but I definitely agree that most Apps are counterproductive.
It's important to moderate use of addictive services that provide a stream of instant gratification like facebook, twitter, reddit, 9gag, pinterest, etc. The first step is being conscious of excessive use.
It doesn't work for me - I've tried. Self-control works really well for me when the task at hand is really interesting and I want to give my everything to it. I don't know about you but so far those tasks haven't come to me at a regular pace. And I tend to seek out these online distractions as a diversion tactic when the task I'm supposed to be working on is really boring or uninteresting. So it's all about one's personality.
It sounds like even if you removed these distractions, you'd simply seek out others. As in replace one addiction with another, a very common behavioural characteristic.
The only way to deal with this is to better understand your own personality and try to learn how to get self control. There are lots of cognitive therapy based behavioural modification techniques. Self control only when it's interesting isn't really self control.
In a similar vein, I almost always have my phone set to silent without vibrate. This small change has made a huge difference in my interaction with my phone. I reach for it less and just generally think about it less.
The downside is people are sometimes annoyed at me not reacting to calls/messages immediately. I should probably experiment with the iOS Do Not Disturb feature, but it hasn't been too big of an issue so I've put it on the back burner.
I used Do Not Disturb a lot during the peak hours of my dissertation writing. It was pretty helpful. That of course means I would miss new emails and phone calls but those could be responded to later
Same here. I set my main ringtone to silence and only a few contacts can actually ring my phone. I disable almost all notifications and my phone's on do-not-disturb from 10-7 every night.
Maybe my laptop needs a hosts file to block "infinite" sites. Of course, I'm on one right now...
The inability to selectively enable (rather than individually blacklist) contacts, and specify a do-not-disturb block, are two of the most significant disadvantages of going to a flip phone I've encountered.
My compromise is to simply leave it off much of the time.
Why turn the ringer completely off? Surely it's worth getting "distracted" by communication from friends and family. The only reason I can see this as a good idea is if you get a lot of bogus calls, or you know people who call/text you a ton.
I remember a time when people were reachable by location. You could call me at home and reach me early mornings (but that's rude), evenings, or weekends. Or at work at my desk.
This was a time when toll charges were high enough that unsolicited calls were something of a rarity. That's definitely changed (and lack of caller-ID on landlines is all but unbearable now).
There was even a time when answering machines didn't exist -- can't reach someone? Try later or send a letter. Not email, a letter.
Amazingly, we got by.
The conceit that I've got to be reachable by every unintelligibly accented stranger on a crap VOIP line anywhere on the planet at any time has gotten old.
And yes, if I don't aggressively guard my access, I do get a lot of crap phone calls.
Perhaps I've just gotten lucky with sales calls, and either have few friends or courteous friends. I get one sales call a month, from my university alumni association, which I ignore. I talk on the phone or FaceTime with family approximately weekly, but that's on the weekend, and planned casually through email or SMS before hand. The vast majority of my communication with friends is asynchronous through email/Facebook/Twitter or semi-asynchronous through instant messaging, neither of which provide real-time distraction.
If you've signed on to the Do Not Call registry and/or have a cell phone, it's not so bad.
An established residence over time (a few decades) and various other marketing-database-entry events, and it's a pretty constant annoyance, in my experience.
Problem I've got with chat over phones is that the keyboards stink.
Totally agree. The most egregious violators of such calls are recruiters. Put your phone number on a resume and submit it to a few sites, assuming you work in IT, and they will call non-stop. Sometimes, I refuse the call and they keep calling back a few more times. Nowadays, I only pick up calls from people I recognize. Google has started to provide "caller ID" for many businesses that don't have it now, which helps also.
Worst was the guy who called, I dismissed him with "not interested <click>". He called back. And chewed me out.
SRSLY?!!!
I patiently (?) explained that his first call was a waste of both our time. And the second far worse than that. But I'd be more than happy to spread his and his employer's name over teh Intarnets.
My issue lies with the content weight on hacker news - a lot of posts require 3 mins+ to read and grok, potentially explore related concepts/sites, and maybe even try out a product. I'd say about 50% of the posts on HN interest me enough to warrant this kind of attention. Then of course you have to read the comments ;) This can eat away a serious amount of time!
It also doesn't help that this time can be labelled as "productive" in my mind (as opposed to Facebook etc), when in reality there are more productive things to be doing in these moments.
HN does have the cryptic 'noprocrast/minaway/maxaway' settings in your profile that can help with this. I haven't tried them yet, though maybe I should.
As someone who owns a dumb flip phone, it's funny to read someone's enthusiastic account of their life-changing experience of... living exactly the way I do.
But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad for me, no way around it, but the amusing little bits keep pulling me back. imgur is the worst one for me... the community is unmoderated and uncoordinated, it's a pile of least-common-denominator bs that's as bad as anything on reddit ever was, and yet the only way I've been able to break away from it is to block myself from viewing it.
A stripped-down smartphone has quite a few advantages over a dumbphone. Notice which apps are installed: Google Maps, subway maps, Rdio, Uber, Instacart. As he says, these things are like living in the future.
It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS and for which I can completely control the OS and environment. CyanogenMod seems to be as close as I'm likely to get to that at present.
If the phone's off, that's going to be less useful. And the tower-tracking location granularity's much lower than GPS Though I don't know what the reporting intervals are. Some smartphones (or their apps) were reporting location data every 10 seconds, with accuracy measured within a few feet.
Can't find that article at the moment, though another reports that location information is logged "at least several times an hour":
Here: "In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times."
While it is obvious that turning off the phone helps, it's good that you make that point as I cannot remove the battery from my smartphone, a problem most "dumb" phones don't have.
Except in certain situations when you're probably pretty lucky to have it on.
I had a friend who ran off the side of a mountain in Colorado. He called 911, but had no idea where he was (he was from the Midwest). Within about 40 minutes, they had triangulated his location and had a tow truck and emergency vehicles routed to get him out.
Without his phone and the ability to locate him, he was pretty sure he wouldn't have made.
If he's called 911 then ipso facto 1) his phone is on and 2) all location features are activated (on pretty much any phone of recent memory), as dialing 911 enables just this.
The fact that the exception proves useful doesn't mean my phone should transmit and the telco provider, app manufacturers, and others record, possibly indefinitely my location data every few seconds.
If you haven't read Maciej Cegłowski "The Internet with a Human Face", do. It's quite simply one of the best and most completely cogent arguments against the advertising-supported services model I've seen ever and anywhere. He's "idlewords" here on HN.
Richard Stallman, as usual, was quite ahead of the curve on this topic when he noted that he didn't carry a cell phone of any kind because of the privacy considerations associated with logging your location, accurately with triangulation, against cell towers.
The instant you start using a cell phone consistently, you've effectively handed over a log of your location history to whoever can convince the sysadmin in your cellular carriers NOC to to give them the data. And that's a pretty big list.
- When people want to point out that "Stallman predicted this X years ago," they phase it as, "Richard Stallman was right, as usual." Richard Stallman is not infallible. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends.
- There are many of Stallman's "followers" that are very aggressive at promoting the GPLv3 over all other open source licenses. While this might not be Stallman's personal position on the matter, if definitely doesn't win many people over (and probably pushes many away).
- Richard Stallman isn't necessarily the most lovable and charismatic figure. While people shouldn't factor that in to things when evaluating his message, they do.
When people take the phrase: " Stallman was right, as usual." and suggest that this is a claim of infallibility. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends.
The claim is that on these issues Stallman is more usually right than wrong. Do you have anything that suggests otherwise?
'As usual' is unnecessary unless you're trying to passively aggressively say "I told you so," or imply that people should blindly accept everything that Stallman says.
I would hardly tell anyone to blindly accept everything or anything Stallman (or for the matter, any charismatic leader) says.
However, "I told you so" is a phrase much needed these days... specially directed towards people that insist on making the same kind of mistakes that drove us to the mess we're right now.
Look. Coming from someone that already "drinks the kool-aid" I find those people off-putting. Do you really think that people who currently disbelieve are going to suddenly "see the light" from them? It comes across to me as a massive circle-jerk. "Look! I^HStallman was right!"
Think about it this way. What would make you consider a vegan diet/lifestyle? A person calmly having a reasoned discussion with you, presenting you with facts, and chatting about your concerns? Or the 'angry vegan' on the street corner screaming "Meat is Murder" and "Shame on you" to everyone passing by?
> However, "I told you so" is a phrase much needed these days... specially directed towards people that insist on making the same kind of mistakes that drove us to the mess we're right now.
"I told you so" is the opposite of constructive. If you feel that it is constructive, I suggest that you re-evaluate your methods for dealing with other people.
But in a corner of the world where predictions are a dime a gross, Stallman's made many, and his record of hits is considerable.
Adding to his credibility and significance are the fact that:
⚫ He's not commercially vested in his predictions. Unlike virtually everyone else in the space, whose "technology forecaster" title is followed by some company name.
⚫ His logic is Talmudic in its rigor. If Stallman has a position on something, it's virtually always because he's thought it through very thoroughly. Even if you don't agree with the conclusions (or if it turns out he was wrong), you're almost always better off knowing why he came to that conclusion.
⚫ He gores sacred cows. Much of the antipathy toward Stallman comes from those whose business model he's just invalidated. Or worse, proven to be utterly and completely socially and morally indefensible.
If you wonder why people don't listen to you, phrasing like this comes across as condescending, and that you have some sort of belief that Richard Stallman is infallible.
It's a trope (Richard Stallman was right, as usual), that I was intentionally paying homage to. Genuinely sorry if it annoyed you that much, certainly wasn't my attention. I really have no feelings one way or another towards Stallman, other than being amused at his hit rate on these type of predictions that people mock him for.
>It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS...
I have only ever wished for the opposite, an app/feature that will log my location, frequently. I don't particularly care if it's stored in the cloud, as long as it's also stored on something of mine in a portable format (CSV, etc). I am thinking of this in terms of potentially catastrophic events where proving my location at some given time would be incredibly helpful, say, when the spouse/boss/police need to know, and the stakes are risking my marriage/job/freedom. Even more helpful would be if the app integrated with the fingerprint reader, to help prove that not only was my phone at this location, but with very high probability, so was I.
Why are people so interested in destroying this information about themselves? Is it "because freedom"? Or is there a real, practical threat that we open ourselves to when this information is out there? I am genuinely interested in knowing.
Dumbphone plus a GPS device, mp3 player could so the same. I still prefer my Sansa clip to my phone for music (I never even set the phone up for music). Small, battery lasts a while, and I basically don't need to worry about it. I even put one through the washing machine and it worked after a couple of weeks.
As a side note, I find my Android phone a serious step back in usability. I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Can't I just get a physical green answer button back, rather than stupid swipe gestures.
That's terribly awkward to carry around. Also, a GPS device doesn't tell me when my next bus is due (there's about 45 minutes between my buses). I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. I can also look at cat pictures on the bus.
> I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls.
Then you're an outlier. Through common sense, it should be obvious that the vast majority of people don't run into such problems, or it would be a much more widely talked about problem. Hell, people made a huge fuss about "antennagate" when it was really only encountered by a fraction of iPhone 4 users.
The Sansa Clip is a great mp3 player. All it does is play music (which is a big plus in my book), it's really small so it's great for running or other similar things, and the physical buttons make it really easy to use one-handed without looking at the screen.
When I got my first good-quality smartphone, I had planned on moving all my music over to it, but stopped when I found that the Clip was really a better device for music.
"Do the same" - if you're now using 3 devices to do something that 1 can do, you're not doing the same. This is important to some.
Also, the Sansa doesn't stream, so it's not really "doing the same". Some like their own curated music and for that an on-device music player is fine. Some others (me, for example), want a radio style stream where I don't know what's coming.
> I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls.
I get you might not like gestures, but HALF of the time you mess it up? Let's not resort to hyperbole.
There are other callers/dialers on the market too that might have controls that work better for you also.
So, yeah, you might be able to make do with your use case and tolerances, but your needs are not everyones.
How do you know how many times I have pulled the phone out of my pocket and fat fingered a hang up? Lets not resort to speculation because it doesn't happen to you.
Interesting sidenote that while 2 sibling comments praised their Sansa music player, we had one from audible for audio books and it's been so frustrating that I think of it as the worst mp3 player I ever used.
Regarding maps: is there an app that lets you save out Google Map info offline? I'd like to be able to type in a city and have it save all the data.
I was thinking of having my setup just be a dumbphone plus a wifi-only tablet. The tablet would have utility apps, including this offline-map app. I'd just need it when I'm lost or need to find something nice to eat. It should also have Yelp data on it, and have the ability to update the map and Yelp data when I'm wifi connected.
If I'm travelling to somewhere, I can preload the tablet with the new city info at home.
I've rightgraded from smartphone to flipphone, and am mostly happier for it. There are a few exceptions, the principle one of which is transit apps -- NextBus and its kin are life changers when it comes to using and really being able to rely on public transit (and that's even though the apps and their interfaces still suck in many, many ways).
It turns out that there is a minimal Web interface to the one transit app I've used to date that works with my flip-phone's very minimal Web browser. I'm not sure if that's sufficient for me or not (I'm starting to think that it would be really cool for local stores and such to post pending arrival times for nearby stops).
I've also still got my old Android device which as a WiFi mini-tablet is still somewhat useful. Though I'm strongly favoring replacing that with a Nexus tablet. The ability to carry around the several thousand texts I'm currently researching would be a bit of a bonus.
I am glad you're spending time on HN to discuss this. For me it's about finding the right balance between isolation and being part of communities. Take for example phinished.org. It is a completely anonymous community for stressed out phd students, that seem to be perfect for those day when you're just to stressed out or to damn bored to do anything really useful. Sometimes it can be extremely useful to be part of a community like that. Sometimes you need distraction free days.
Smartphones, like iPhone, are only 7 years old. It will take more years for people to learn how to live with it. Smartphones have already been coined "the new cigarette", used by stressed out people to calm down on café's and public places. In the future we'll probably have professional help for people who want to quit fiddling with their phone all the time.
To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world. At least, hacker news is informative and the comments are of high-quality. However, I wish I was able to read some articles more thoroughly rather that passively browse.
Agreed, I'm actually grateful that I stumbled upon HN last year. At first, I thought the content posted here would not suite my taste and then I checked HN comments on each post and I knew immediately that this would be my homepage.
What I like about HN is the built in procrastination tool.The fact that the community knows that HN can be a distraction and they actually built a procrastination tool is awesome. You won't see Facebook, Instagram or Twitter give you an option to stop procrastinating.
I stopped reading regular news and the comments, at most I will read articles from well informed media websites. Also over the years, the quality of articles from news sites has dropped massively. I feel like they are writing just to get hits on their websites. Add a misleading, controversial heading in the mix and it just makes the whole experience worse.
> To me, the worst one are the regular news, especially if there are comments. Not only you don't learn anything, but it leads to bitterness and anxiety and give you a wrong perception of the world
This is known as Mean World Syndrome, and it's a real thing[0].
I am on a computer all day long, I still have a flip phone, and people look at me like I am crazy. They all know I am a tech type guy, but question why I have a flip phone. Thing is, when I am off the computer. I dont want to think about more computer things. Glad others are finally realizing how terrible this is. You go out in public and everyone is sitting down at dinner with their friends surfing the biggest social media site at the moment.
The common factor in all these time-sinks is not the phone, but it's the internet. I have a smartphone and although I could definitely live without it, the only thing I've done is disable data. Rather, I'm too cheap to pay for data. What difference does that make, you ask?
One, on messaging, people would use text to contact me or each other if they notice that WhatsApp/Talk message hasn't reached for a couple of minutes. And a call is very helpful to transmit high density info in short time.
Two, I can still use my very nice phone with a large screen to watch videos, read ebooks on the go like if I'm in a bus or something. The difference here is that these things are not infinity-sinks in my experience - I can go 1 hour or so reading a book on a cellphone but then need to take a break which is when you look up and around. Also, subconsciously, the permanence of the book/video prioritizes real world interrupts (in an embedded programming context) rather than blocking them.
Then, you always have music that you can copy to the phone and listen to if you don't want to put your face to the screen. This enables you to move your head around everywhere and still not be all that bored because you still have that music going on.
If I absolutely want, which is almost never, I play games but I find that mobile games are not something that I like so it never comes up at all.
But a lot of time, I've just noticed myself looking around, just absorbing the world around me and being in my own thoughts rather than a forced stimulus and I find that relaxing unless I'm stuck in a very noisy environment in which case the earphone doubles up as a noise blocker.
And the general trend I've heard here is that you need to be on email. But work already has wifi and if you're at work your computer is right in front of you. Secondly, aren't you making a big mistake by configuring work email on your phone?
Maybe I'm the second coming of RMS but I do not install Facebook and Twitter apps on my phone for privacy reasons. Checking at most once everyday seems to be enough for me but I know that's not the case with everyone. It seems a lot of plans are made over fb for you guys, which is understandable - we use hangouts and whatsapp over here, but primarily whatsapp. But more importantly, for immediate plans we generally use SMS and phone calls which might be why we're not as reliant on facebook. FB is considered more of a public 'show-off' billboard than a private friend group.
So yeah, maybe this was worthy of its own blog-post but my gist here is that turning off the data does wonders. You still get to retain those handy unit converters, two factor authenticators, password wallets and other things that are yours without the Skinner box annoyances of the infinity-sinks.
Of course, before someone rants "You don't know how important it is to have internet on my phone", I'd say you're obviously right. However, maybe after reading my post, you realize that it isn't all that important then kudos to you. You should atleast try it once before knocking it right? A lot of times we think "It's impossible to get through without X" but humans are surprisingly adaptive and can cope without X just fine.
I'm just sharing my experience, hoping that it's useful to you.
Why doesn't this guy (or anyone else like him) get a non-smartphone. I have a BlackBerry10 device and rarely use apps. Partly because the platform was missing many big name apps, but mostly because I don't want or need such things. I really don't understand why this guy has an iPhone.
As another commenter said, look at the apps he has Google Maps, Uber, Rdio etc... The only thing I'd be completely lost without would be Google Maps, but I had that on S60.
Sometimes I end up completely lost because of Google Maps. Or like the other night, the phone decides to run so frustratingly slow its hardly worth using.
Now there was a time in the distant past where we didn't have smartphones for directions. People used maps. Here in Barcelona, every bus stop has a big map of the whole city on it.
I would have commented on this but I made my iPad distration free and now its only good for serving coffe anymore! So I am not really using it right now for reading this blogpost and I am not really commenting on this right now, sorry :(
I have a now 4 year old iPhone 4. It is incredibly slow, crippled by ios 7.1, so slow that Facebook is useless and I only use safari when I really need to look up something. I call it my Comm, because that is what I use it for, communication. iMessages, Whatsapp, FB messenger, hangouts all work relatively well. My iPhone is essential distraction free because it is too slow to distract me, ill look up while waiting, talk to someone, even meditate while waiting for my iPhone to load.
How is your battery? I figure at four years it's got to be pretty bad. I have an old iPhone 5 and my biggest blocker is the fact that the battery can only last a few hours at most with minimal usage, which makes it an absolutely pain to travel as one is away from charger most of the time. In fact, the only reason why I'd upgrade to a new phone is because I can't stand having it die so easily.
No clue about the iPhone 5. But I replaced the battery in my 4 and it was ten bucks for a new battery and about as many minutes. Pretty much two screws and my key to my apartment.
I have a iPhone 4 too that is all I use. Also running 7.1.2. No real problems. It isn't super fast but it works well enough for a four year old phone that is running the OS that runs on phones sold today.
Heh, same bucket - I don't even try and have FB load on the phone anymore.
My primary use case is email, Twitter (When I'm bored), WhatsApp / SMS / Snapchat / Google Maps (spending summer in a new city) and listening to podcasts (plus a brief, unrequited fling with 2048 this summer). Its amazing how much Facebook drags on it, to the point that its utterly pointless to even have on the phone.
A tip I got from Perry Marshall was to put productive apps on your home screen, and throw apps like Facebook, Instagram etc at the back of your phone.
For example, by only leaving apps like Kindle, Audible, or Bible on my home screen, I'm much more likely to do something productive when I'm looking to fill in a few minutes waiting somewhere, rather than checking Facebook which will be a waste of time.
I take a harder tract - I used to force myself stay away from my cellphone and put social interactions first. I also stay away from installing many apps intentionally. My phone is always on silent out of politeness - no call/email/etc. is important enough to mandate my attention if I am already preoccupied.
I think it's a good way to live. Your friends/acquaintances/etc. that you are with should be the most important people in your life at that moment. When at work, your work is your most important point of focus (unless it's your wife/kids/etc. - family or friends of great significance). It also is generally good to try to control addictions.
In a way, it's about controlling your life, and not letting the phone control you.
I have some eye complications like dry eyes and due to this my doctor advised me cut down use of smartphone as much as I can. My first thought was to just get a feature phone and dump smartphone altogether. But there are few things about smartphone that I can not really give up now.
1. Maps - maps come in very handy at times when you are stuck in some unknown area and want to find way home.
2. Browser - to be able to check anything on the web is also very important to me.
3. Access to online storage and email.
Basically I gave up all social media, all smartphone gaming and other unwanted apps and use smartphone for basic internet access device. I have cut down my smartphone usage from 3 hours a day to about half an hour a day.
So I've gone the other way: everything that is distracting (fb, twitter, reddit, ideally HN but android apps suck for this) is on my phone.
Then, my computer is for work, and my phone is for being bored. That way (in theory) there is no reason to be logged into timesinks on my computer, so I can use it without distraction.
I think this also makes a great use case for an iPad. I have hosts-blocked all time sinks on my Mac, and unlike on my iPhone, I don't even have much time to use my iPad.
I do miss the convenience of a physical keyboard in FB discussions, though...
This is the best thing I ever did. On my work PC there are precisely zero 'leisure surf' items in my browser history. If I am working with someone then that autocomplete is never going to suggest anything other than work related. Switch to any tab, same again - work.
I go for a walk at lunchtime rather than read clickbait. Even if I work s-l-o-w-l-y, at least I am working rather than brazenly procrastinating. I never take my work home, I just get in early and get it done.
This 'regime' is like freedom, it does not require any discipline, now that I am set into it I see no reason to change. The news will still be there when I get home, as will sports results, HN and anything else. I have no need to read any of this trivia at work. If I want to read I have plenty of time for that outside of work where I can read something more substantial on my own clock.
We had a bright intern with us recently, he needed little help, however, I was most keen to stress to him how liberating it was to not recreationally surf at work and to have a phone for personal emails.
I was away at a friends cabin about a month ago. Sitting on a lawn chair on their dock I shifted and my Nexus 4 fell out of my pocket, bounced off the dock, and into the lake.
When I got back home I popped the SIM card into my old iPhone 3GS and have been experiencing a similar smartphone underload. I updated the apps I needed to, mostly 2-factor software tokens for VPN and my Google account, and realized that I wasn't missing much of my Nexus 4.
I did try to save the phone with a couple handfuls of dessicant packets but it never successfully got past the bootloader screen. But that's fine with me, I am in no hurry to replace it.
I acquired a Nexus 4 from a friend after it had fallen into a (clean) toilet. She sent it to me to attempt to fix, and I too started with silica gel, moved onto placing it near the boiler, and eventually set it beside a dehumidifier. After a couple of weeks the phone appeared bone dry, but I couldn't get past the boot screen.
Fast forward six months of the Nexus 4 sitting in a drawer forgotten about. I took it out and charged it. Amazingly, the phone now works 100%.
Tried this, and one of the big difficulties is that I send email to my todo list manager to create todos ("pick up milk", "Email person about important_thing").
I don't want to give this up, but can't find an app that only sends email. So when I opened Mail to send a todo email, I'd see all the new emails that were begging to be read. I could create a new email account that I use for sending only, but that seems like a pain.
Anybody seen an iOS app that sends email, but doesn't check it?
I use Goodtodo but emailing in todos is faster than using the native app.
Couldn't find any apps that worked so ended up creating a receive-only account that gets no email and using that as my incoming account. My outgoing account is my normal Gmail account. Will be interesting to see how things go without email on my phone.
Just go with OmniROM (Android community build) and don't install the Google Apps. BAM. Useful phone, as free as reasonable doable, useful stuff from F-Droid, but no ginormous bunch of every latest gizmo and you get more freedom and privacy.
Bloggings like these come up semi-regularly, and I sometimes wonder if they're just designed to troll people into deleting all the apps from their phone.
I rather think they are from people who finally realized living for your phone is a worse living experience than just living and using it when needed - or in other words, don't stretch the meaning of 'needed'
188 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadIn the remaining cases of "waiting for something but not equipped with a full sized computer", I'm quite happy to use the phone.
The greater problem is "spending time doing less-productive stuff on the Internet" -- I just prefer doing so with a real computer.
I still use both apps via their websites when I've got my laptop out, but not having them in my pocket all the time is really freeing. You don't realise how much of a slave you are to these things until you force yourself to let them go. I waste a lot less time on my phone now. Wouldn't go back.
I now own a smartphone. Refused to put Facebook on it. I also make a point when going on holiday not to use internet, unless I need to. I have been to some stunning places in the Hymalayas, with scenery like nowhere else, and you see the internet cafes full of westerners, updating their facebook status. Did you really need to pay for the flight to do that?
As with fire, smartphone is a great servant but terrible master.
It's important to moderate use of addictive services that provide a stream of instant gratification like facebook, twitter, reddit, 9gag, pinterest, etc. The first step is being conscious of excessive use.
Restriction -> Websites -> Specific Websites Only
I would rather be able to change the hosts file tho and while I'm blacklisting sites I'd also get rid of ads.
That depends on the icon:
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131127043932/marvelmovi...
The only way to deal with this is to better understand your own personality and try to learn how to get self control. There are lots of cognitive therapy based behavioural modification techniques. Self control only when it's interesting isn't really self control.
The downside is people are sometimes annoyed at me not reacting to calls/messages immediately. I should probably experiment with the iOS Do Not Disturb feature, but it hasn't been too big of an issue so I've put it on the back burner.
Maybe my laptop needs a hosts file to block "infinite" sites. Of course, I'm on one right now...
My compromise is to simply leave it off much of the time.
This was a time when toll charges were high enough that unsolicited calls were something of a rarity. That's definitely changed (and lack of caller-ID on landlines is all but unbearable now).
There was even a time when answering machines didn't exist -- can't reach someone? Try later or send a letter. Not email, a letter.
Amazingly, we got by.
The conceit that I've got to be reachable by every unintelligibly accented stranger on a crap VOIP line anywhere on the planet at any time has gotten old.
And yes, if I don't aggressively guard my access, I do get a lot of crap phone calls.
An established residence over time (a few decades) and various other marketing-database-entry events, and it's a pretty constant annoyance, in my experience.
Problem I've got with chat over phones is that the keyboards stink.
SRSLY?!!!
I patiently (?) explained that his first call was a waste of both our time. And the second far worse than that. But I'd be more than happy to spread his and his employer's name over teh Intarnets.
He didn't call back.
It also doesn't help that this time can be labelled as "productive" in my mind (as opposed to Facebook etc), when in reality there are more productive things to be doing in these moments.
All I had to do was use a Blackberry 9900 as my primary phone.
I did not have to disable anything. I primarily use it for emails, calls and SMS. Those are also the only things that seem to work.
When travelling out of town I usually carry my backup devices as well(iPhone/Nexus)to find directions etc.
But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad for me, no way around it, but the amusing little bits keep pulling me back. imgur is the worst one for me... the community is unmoderated and uncoordinated, it's a pile of least-common-denominator bs that's as bad as anything on reddit ever was, and yet the only way I've been able to break away from it is to block myself from viewing it.
Can't find that article at the moment, though another reports that location information is logged "at least several times an hour":
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870398370...
Here: "In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.h...
That's every 7.5 minutes.
I only wish I knew who I was hiding from ;-)
One "feature" of the HTC Incredible (my earlier smartphone) is that the battery is also fairly accessible and can be removed if desired.
I had a friend who ran off the side of a mountain in Colorado. He called 911, but had no idea where he was (he was from the Midwest). Within about 40 minutes, they had triangulated his location and had a tow truck and emergency vehicles routed to get him out.
Without his phone and the ability to locate him, he was pretty sure he wouldn't have made.
The fact that the exception proves useful doesn't mean my phone should transmit and the telco provider, app manufacturers, and others record, possibly indefinitely my location data every few seconds.
If you haven't read Maciej Cegłowski "The Internet with a Human Face", do. It's quite simply one of the best and most completely cogent arguments against the advertising-supported services model I've seen ever and anywhere. He's "idlewords" here on HN.
http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm
The instant you start using a cell phone consistently, you've effectively handed over a log of your location history to whoever can convince the sysadmin in your cellular carriers NOC to to give them the data. And that's a pretty big list.
- When people want to point out that "Stallman predicted this X years ago," they phase it as, "Richard Stallman was right, as usual." Richard Stallman is not infallible. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends.
- There are many of Stallman's "followers" that are very aggressive at promoting the GPLv3 over all other open source licenses. While this might not be Stallman's personal position on the matter, if definitely doesn't win many people over (and probably pushes many away).
- Richard Stallman isn't necessarily the most lovable and charismatic figure. While people shouldn't factor that in to things when evaluating his message, they do.
The claim is that on these issues Stallman is more usually right than wrong. Do you have anything that suggests otherwise?
However, "I told you so" is a phrase much needed these days... specially directed towards people that insist on making the same kind of mistakes that drove us to the mess we're right now.
Think about it this way. What would make you consider a vegan diet/lifestyle? A person calmly having a reasoned discussion with you, presenting you with facts, and chatting about your concerns? Or the 'angry vegan' on the street corner screaming "Meat is Murder" and "Shame on you" to everyone passing by?
> However, "I told you so" is a phrase much needed these days... specially directed towards people that insist on making the same kind of mistakes that drove us to the mess we're right now.
"I told you so" is the opposite of constructive. If you feel that it is constructive, I suggest that you re-evaluate your methods for dealing with other people.
But in a corner of the world where predictions are a dime a gross, Stallman's made many, and his record of hits is considerable.
Adding to his credibility and significance are the fact that:
⚫ He's not commercially vested in his predictions. Unlike virtually everyone else in the space, whose "technology forecaster" title is followed by some company name.
⚫ His logic is Talmudic in its rigor. If Stallman has a position on something, it's virtually always because he's thought it through very thoroughly. Even if you don't agree with the conclusions (or if it turns out he was wrong), you're almost always better off knowing why he came to that conclusion.
⚫ He gores sacred cows. Much of the antipathy toward Stallman comes from those whose business model he's just invalidated. Or worse, proven to be utterly and completely socially and morally indefensible.
If you wonder why people don't listen to you, phrasing like this comes across as condescending, and that you have some sort of belief that Richard Stallman is infallible.
I have only ever wished for the opposite, an app/feature that will log my location, frequently. I don't particularly care if it's stored in the cloud, as long as it's also stored on something of mine in a portable format (CSV, etc). I am thinking of this in terms of potentially catastrophic events where proving my location at some given time would be incredibly helpful, say, when the spouse/boss/police need to know, and the stakes are risking my marriage/job/freedom. Even more helpful would be if the app integrated with the fingerprint reader, to help prove that not only was my phone at this location, but with very high probability, so was I.
Why are people so interested in destroying this information about themselves? Is it "because freedom"? Or is there a real, practical threat that we open ourselves to when this information is out there? I am genuinely interested in knowing.
As a side note, I find my Android phone a serious step back in usability. I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Can't I just get a physical green answer button back, rather than stupid swipe gestures.
microUSB?
Then you're an outlier. Through common sense, it should be obvious that the vast majority of people don't run into such problems, or it would be a much more widely talked about problem. Hell, people made a huge fuss about "antennagate" when it was really only encountered by a fraction of iPhone 4 users.
When I got my first good-quality smartphone, I had planned on moving all my music over to it, but stopped when I found that the Clip was really a better device for music.
Also, the Sansa doesn't stream, so it's not really "doing the same". Some like their own curated music and for that an on-device music player is fine. Some others (me, for example), want a radio style stream where I don't know what's coming.
> I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls.
I get you might not like gestures, but HALF of the time you mess it up? Let's not resort to hyperbole.
There are other callers/dialers on the market too that might have controls that work better for you also.
So, yeah, you might be able to make do with your use case and tolerances, but your needs are not everyones.
I'm just playing the odds. Seriously, if you can't pick up a call much more than half the time, get a different dialer.
And I think you and I both know you're carrying this too far.
I was thinking of having my setup just be a dumbphone plus a wifi-only tablet. The tablet would have utility apps, including this offline-map app. I'd just need it when I'm lost or need to find something nice to eat. It should also have Yelp data on it, and have the ability to update the map and Yelp data when I'm wifi connected.
If I'm travelling to somewhere, I can preload the tablet with the new city info at home.
https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en&rd=1
It turns out that there is a minimal Web interface to the one transit app I've used to date that works with my flip-phone's very minimal Web browser. I'm not sure if that's sufficient for me or not (I'm starting to think that it would be really cool for local stores and such to post pending arrival times for nearby stops).
I've also still got my old Android device which as a WiFi mini-tablet is still somewhat useful. Though I'm strongly favoring replacing that with a Nexus tablet. The ability to carry around the several thousand texts I'm currently researching would be a bit of a bonus.
http://www.nextbus.com/wirelessConfig/sms.jsp
Smartphones, like iPhone, are only 7 years old. It will take more years for people to learn how to live with it. Smartphones have already been coined "the new cigarette", used by stressed out people to calm down on café's and public places. In the future we'll probably have professional help for people who want to quit fiddling with their phone all the time.
What I like about HN is the built in procrastination tool.The fact that the community knows that HN can be a distraction and they actually built a procrastination tool is awesome. You won't see Facebook, Instagram or Twitter give you an option to stop procrastinating.
I stopped reading regular news and the comments, at most I will read articles from well informed media websites. Also over the years, the quality of articles from news sites has dropped massively. I feel like they are writing just to get hits on their websites. Add a misleading, controversial heading in the mix and it just makes the whole experience worse.
This is known as Mean World Syndrome, and it's a real thing[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome
One, on messaging, people would use text to contact me or each other if they notice that WhatsApp/Talk message hasn't reached for a couple of minutes. And a call is very helpful to transmit high density info in short time.
Two, I can still use my very nice phone with a large screen to watch videos, read ebooks on the go like if I'm in a bus or something. The difference here is that these things are not infinity-sinks in my experience - I can go 1 hour or so reading a book on a cellphone but then need to take a break which is when you look up and around. Also, subconsciously, the permanence of the book/video prioritizes real world interrupts (in an embedded programming context) rather than blocking them.
Then, you always have music that you can copy to the phone and listen to if you don't want to put your face to the screen. This enables you to move your head around everywhere and still not be all that bored because you still have that music going on.
If I absolutely want, which is almost never, I play games but I find that mobile games are not something that I like so it never comes up at all.
But a lot of time, I've just noticed myself looking around, just absorbing the world around me and being in my own thoughts rather than a forced stimulus and I find that relaxing unless I'm stuck in a very noisy environment in which case the earphone doubles up as a noise blocker.
And the general trend I've heard here is that you need to be on email. But work already has wifi and if you're at work your computer is right in front of you. Secondly, aren't you making a big mistake by configuring work email on your phone?
Maybe I'm the second coming of RMS but I do not install Facebook and Twitter apps on my phone for privacy reasons. Checking at most once everyday seems to be enough for me but I know that's not the case with everyone. It seems a lot of plans are made over fb for you guys, which is understandable - we use hangouts and whatsapp over here, but primarily whatsapp. But more importantly, for immediate plans we generally use SMS and phone calls which might be why we're not as reliant on facebook. FB is considered more of a public 'show-off' billboard than a private friend group.
So yeah, maybe this was worthy of its own blog-post but my gist here is that turning off the data does wonders. You still get to retain those handy unit converters, two factor authenticators, password wallets and other things that are yours without the Skinner box annoyances of the infinity-sinks.
Of course, before someone rants "You don't know how important it is to have internet on my phone", I'd say you're obviously right. However, maybe after reading my post, you realize that it isn't all that important then kudos to you. You should atleast try it once before knocking it right? A lot of times we think "It's impossible to get through without X" but humans are surprisingly adaptive and can cope without X just fine.
I'm just sharing my experience, hoping that it's useful to you.
Now there was a time in the distant past where we didn't have smartphones for directions. People used maps. Here in Barcelona, every bus stop has a big map of the whole city on it.
Both mine and my daughter's were covered. Our run time had suffered and our battery gauges had become mostly insane.
My primary use case is email, Twitter (When I'm bored), WhatsApp / SMS / Snapchat / Google Maps (spending summer in a new city) and listening to podcasts (plus a brief, unrequited fling with 2048 this summer). Its amazing how much Facebook drags on it, to the point that its utterly pointless to even have on the phone.
For example, by only leaving apps like Kindle, Audible, or Bible on my home screen, I'm much more likely to do something productive when I'm looking to fill in a few minutes waiting somewhere, rather than checking Facebook which will be a waste of time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-screen_writing_program
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/write-peace-distractionfree-edi...
I've found Readability and my own nearly 1200 local CSS hacks for more distraction-free Web browsing are also somewhat useful.
I think it's a good way to live. Your friends/acquaintances/etc. that you are with should be the most important people in your life at that moment. When at work, your work is your most important point of focus (unless it's your wife/kids/etc. - family or friends of great significance). It also is generally good to try to control addictions.
In a way, it's about controlling your life, and not letting the phone control you.
1. Maps - maps come in very handy at times when you are stuck in some unknown area and want to find way home. 2. Browser - to be able to check anything on the web is also very important to me. 3. Access to online storage and email.
Basically I gave up all social media, all smartphone gaming and other unwanted apps and use smartphone for basic internet access device. I have cut down my smartphone usage from 3 hours a day to about half an hour a day.
I have a script that runs at 5:30 pm and then at 6 am that disables email and enables email again in the morning before work.
The script uses phantomjs to log into my webmail and change my password, then changes it back again to enable email.
I actually had a flip phone before that, but I prefer the iPhone with distractions disabled.
Then, my computer is for work, and my phone is for being bored. That way (in theory) there is no reason to be logged into timesinks on my computer, so I can use it without distraction.
I do miss the convenience of a physical keyboard in FB discussions, though...
I go for a walk at lunchtime rather than read clickbait. Even if I work s-l-o-w-l-y, at least I am working rather than brazenly procrastinating. I never take my work home, I just get in early and get it done.
This 'regime' is like freedom, it does not require any discipline, now that I am set into it I see no reason to change. The news will still be there when I get home, as will sports results, HN and anything else. I have no need to read any of this trivia at work. If I want to read I have plenty of time for that outside of work where I can read something more substantial on my own clock.
We had a bright intern with us recently, he needed little help, however, I was most keen to stress to him how liberating it was to not recreationally surf at work and to have a phone for personal emails.
When I got back home I popped the SIM card into my old iPhone 3GS and have been experiencing a similar smartphone underload. I updated the apps I needed to, mostly 2-factor software tokens for VPN and my Google account, and realized that I wasn't missing much of my Nexus 4.
I did try to save the phone with a couple handfuls of dessicant packets but it never successfully got past the bootloader screen. But that's fine with me, I am in no hurry to replace it.
Fast forward six months of the Nexus 4 sitting in a drawer forgotten about. I took it out and charged it. Amazingly, the phone now works 100%.
I don't want to give this up, but can't find an app that only sends email. So when I opened Mail to send a todo email, I'd see all the new emails that were begging to be read. I could create a new email account that I use for sending only, but that seems like a pain.
Anybody seen an iOS app that sends email, but doesn't check it?
https://support.google.com/voice/answer/160203?hl=en
Couldn't find any apps that worked so ended up creating a receive-only account that gets no email and using that as my incoming account. My outgoing account is my normal Gmail account. Will be interesting to see how things go without email on my phone.
Amazing how much isn't necessary.
This comment included ;-)