I’ve been using a flip phone as my daily driver for a while now. The smartphone is still around, but it mostly sits in a drawer until bureaucracy or banking apps force me to use it.
For me, the benefits are clear: less distraction, more focus, better sleep. But I know for many people it’s not so easy. Essential apps, social pressure, work requirements… these are real blockers.
I’d like to start a discussion (almost like an informal poll):
-
If you thought about switching, what’s the single biggest thing that holds you back?
-
Is it banking? Messaging? Maps? Something else?
I’m genuinely curious because if we can identify the main pain points, maybe it’s possible to work on solutions or even start a small project around it.
So: what would need to change for you to actually give a flip phone a try?
Dumb phone features are about 5% of what I use on a daily basis on my phone.
I used a flip/dumbphone for most of my teenage and high school years.
It’s like asking what would make me go back to having a DOS computer and playing Wolf3D after being in full body virtual reality with Half Life Alyx.
I am actively avoiding calls and noone writes to me. If I were to give up a smartphone flip phone would be nearly useless to me
2FA app. 2FA via SMS is incredibly insecure.
Map and translation apps a close second.
There is nothing about those that can’t run on KaiOS, which comes with Google maps and runs on most dumb phones on the market today.
There’s a terminology issue here, feature phones run apps, flip phones and true dumb phones shouldn’t run apps or have any data connections. But it seems more common now to draw the line at Smartphone and anything else is “dumb” even if it’s basically just a 2008 smartphone.
The line between smartphone and dumbphone has always been very blurry.
Please tell my bank this ;-;
Yes, please tell my bank and doctors’ office. Thank you.
I just did. If you get any text messages about your upcoming penis surgery tomorrow, know it’s legit! (Are they removing one, or adding one? Doesn’t matter, I’m sure they’ll figure it out…)
lmao! i love it!
Your bank doesn’t have a website?
I suppose you’re implying I should tell them myself; I did and they ignored me.
Yeah, I can’t speak a lick of Spanish although I’m starting to understand it a little. Translation apps are a life saver.
I personally dont think you need to switch to a dumb phone to get those benefits, smartphones themselves arent what’s causing issues its what you’re using. You want less distraction just stop using those apps or turn off push notifications.
I wholeheartedly agree with this perspective.
I started on a privacy journey because I didn’t like that I’m being tracked (by basically everybody) and feel that the technology that I pay for should be service to me, not me as a service to it (and its related parties).
Anyways, along the way I did a few things. Namely, I turned off mail notifications (this was an inadvertent feature since my mail service couldn’t send notifications without google services that I removed). I also removed my sim and use data only via a hotspot, to which I don’t always have on. These sound like crazy things, and admittedly they aren’t for everyone, but the resulting mental shifts are exactly to this point.
Just because I have a device that let’s me be available to anybody in any place at any time, doesn’t mean I should be, or even need to be, available unless I want to be.
Now I protect my time, and the mental clarity that comes with it. I never was a doom scroller, but even now that concept is even more reduced. The phone is my tool, and I use when needed.
Right, absolutely. I use almost no apps for anything, I just use my phone’s browser for the web sites I want, and have a specific few non-privacy-invasive apps for other things (Voyager for here, Signal for messaging, password manager, etc) and have zero reason I would ever want to give up that functionality to do what, make CALLS? I don’t do that shit. Text message? Nah.
I can very much agree with this. Like getting rid of Instagram and Tiktok has done a lot to help time not disappear in the same way.
Þere are oþer reasons to want a dumber phone. I miss charging my phone once a week, vs 1-2 times per day. I have a bendy-screen flip phone now, but before þese became available, it was hard to get a reasonably sized phone; þe trend was (and still is) phablets. I miss having þe expectation þat my phone would last for years, and not need upgrading because þe screen broke, or because þe OS stopped being updated, or because OS upgrades got more and more bloated and made þe phone slower and unusable over time. I miss þe time before an upgrade would completely fuck established muscle memory patterns because some dumb-shit decided to completely rearrange gestures - requiring an internet search to uncover þe byzantine, cryptic configuration combination to restore þe old behavior.
It’s much more þan distractions.
OTOH, I need Jami to communicate wiþ my peer group, because SMS is insecure and incredibly basic. Navigation in your hand is incredibly useful, even þough it’s been shown to ruin users’ geospatial skills. And smarter address books are better þan old dumb-phone name+phone number address books.
But if I could get a decent, small e-ink phone, wiþ good battery, Jami, an address book, and hell, just a simple browseable map (even w/o navigation), I’d be golden. Jami is þe sticking point, because it introduces a dependency on Android, and þat’s where þe fuckery starts.
I þþþþ cannot þþþþ understand þþþþ your þþþþ accent þþþþþþþþ
This guy keeps posting comments with that character and most of his comments are contrarian.
Attention-whoring to the maxxxx
Yeah, alongside that. Phones also have focus mode, digital wellbeing to limit usage of distracting apps. You can even turn on super power saving mode to limit phone use further and use it for basic functions like phones, messages, web browsing, etc.
I really hate when people are like “just stop” like everyone has impeccable self control and executive function.
Agreed. Also, there are important applications that I wouldn’t do without. Like Google Maps, my Garmin watch app, My security camera app.
What self control? Just delete the app and find a different addiction. Right now I’m on Lemmy 😜
The RIF/Apollo to Voyager pipeline is real
Literally just having a hotspot built in is keeping me on android. The lappy goes where I go, and that means as long as I have internet access I’m as connected as I could ever want to be.
Basically everyone has wifi, usually available after. I might just go out and get an unlocked dumbphone this week honestly.
There really isn’t anything I couldn’t replace my phone with a tablet that stays in the house for, and it has been a growing thought to switch back to a dumb phone.
Stuff I use the phone for in rough order of importance:
- maps and GPS
- messaging (signal)
- emulators and other quality games (none of that candy crush slop)
- ebook reading
- Wikipedia / quick research
- Lemmy
I could drop lemmy from mobile because it’s just a time waster and news source.
Wikipedia is important because too often people are interminably arguing something that can be settled with a 30 second search. Like, you don’t need to spend 5 minutes arguing about the population of NJ just look it up.
Games are nice. I don’t want to go back to carrying around a second device for games like it’s 2001. I could bring a steam deck everywhere but that doesn’t fit in my pocket.
I don’t have any notifications turned on except like direct messages, so I don’t find it much of a distraction.
Who even makes phone calls today? Not me. I need a device that does everything but phone calls more than I need a device that only does voice.
Construction workers, for sure. I miss PTT from NEXTEL (Motorola radio built into the phone) that shit was awesome.
There are both open source and commercial apps that do PTT over internet. It turns phones into radio, it even has the capability to have central radio operation rooms for companies and such. It’s all automated.
I can’t get these people to use Signal instead of SMS.
But nothing internet dependent will turn a phone into a radio. We are in places where even 4G doesn’t reach sometimes and if there was a Motorola repeater onsite it’d be great. I’ve got our company trying it out and the SL300 has been a game changer for our communication on site.
My parents and all their friends used to use PTT with their Nextel phones. It was a super handy feature. I wonder why it fell out of style. Seemed more convenient and less tedious than a phone call for short communications.
Money, I think. Motorola radio communication isn’t very cheap.
There are devices like that. For example the iPod touch.
I still need internet service and the iPod touch was discontinued years ago.
Sony still makes an Android equivalent.
I know someone that has been trying out all of the mp3 players and has yet to find something that works as well as an iPod classic.
But then why would I need one? It’s all on my phone.
I’ve seen a few devices go by recently trying to capture that use case. Some have looked promising but I still have a Zune.
I’m currently in Asia and – in this country at least – you are basically required to have a smart phone to do anything. Credit cards don’t exist. And they use QR payments for most things. So that implies a camera and a banking app (for your bank). Many places don’t accept cash anymore (!) - I don’t really get how they can do that because not everyone has a smart phone (poor people (obviously) & tourists (not even allowed to get bank accounts here) come immediately to mind — of which there are millions of both). I think so far it’s not a big deal because these people just spend their money elsewhere, but I worry this will become entrenched.
Anyway, I tried “dumb phoning” my iPhone and there’s just way too many things I rely on daily that require a smart phone: paying by QR code, banking, international banking, translating, navigation, ride booking, accommodation booking, messaging on iMessage, Line, Messenger (almost everyone in this country uses the last 2). When travelling in a foreign country, these things aren’t really optional. If I can’t pay for a bus ticket or food, I could be really screwed.
Now you might say some of things in my list are doable without apps; like accommodation booking… sure. But even if you find a place old skool style, how do you contact them? Most don’t have web pages, they use Facebook pages. And the contact info is usually a Line or Messenger id. Even if somehow you managed to find a phone number, they are unlikely to speak English. I’m old enough to remember travelling before the internet and honestly it was great and worked well, but that was because everyone was on the same footing. We’ve lost that and I actually think it’s much more difficult now.
I’ve gotten rid of most social media (except fediverse) which has helped my screen time a lot, but I think going back to a feature phone is, unfortunately, impossible here. I do hope that they see how economically unfair requiring a smart phone is though and at least pass some laws that require shops to take cash payments (last I heard these laws did exist in the West).
There’s literally no point. I already use my phone for phone things, not as a second computer.
As someone who always had some kind of PDA (CASIO digital diary, Palm, Compaq iPaq) and switched onto the smartphone bandwagon pretty early (SonyEricsson P800/P910i, Qtek 9000, various Androids and various iPhones) … I don’t think I could enjoy the experience with a dumb phone. I love modern technology too much.
I once had a colleague that religiously only used a Nokia 3210 (the newer 3G/4G model). Which meant 160 character messages only. No emojis, no photos (as MMS were expensive). He was also the kind of person to use paper maps when driving - incl. stopping to look for alternative routes if some road was blocked or jammed. That’s definitely not for me.
The only way this could work for me would be to have some small PDA that can connect to the phone to use the Internet. And I appreciate that both devices have been merged into smartphones at some point.
I don’t use the phone part of my smartphone much, so thie idea of a dumbphone has no real appeal for me.
Well, I can buy a GPS map device. Cash payments are not much of a problem until the Govt. starts adding that extra tax on cash withdrawal from ATMs. I will need to wait for companies to grow a brain and stop using WhatsApp for work.
For all else, I use my computer anyway.
My first cell phone was a flip phone, and I’m not gonna lie, I’ve considered revisiting my teenage days again and getting one. But I feel like, right now, my smartphone use is very light.
I avoid Meta apps, I don’t play mobile games, my biggest vice was reddit which has now become a shithole of bots and censorship so I don’t go on there anymore. I read the news on here, chat a little on Discord, check my birdfeeder and that’s pretty much it besides occasional use of google maps as needed.
On top of that, this phone is from 2018 so it’s battery life these days is not great. I think that helps too.
Maybe for those hesitating to get a dumb phone, perhaps start with an older smartphone to whittle your time down?
