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Comment by BuckRogers | Hacker News Reader

A few tips or best practices I've learned along the way. They would probably increase battery life and sanity.

1) Only allow notifications for texts, calls and maybe email.

2) Only allow yourself 1 screen/page for your apps. Extraneous stuff should be in folders. I have my most-used apps and 4 folders on a single iPhone homescreen (Shopping/banking; Food; Extras; Games).

I'm the last of GenX and remember many years without cell phones. But I feel bad for Millenials who never knew anything else and will probably never learn to really get control over these devices.

If I could get a T9 cellphone with voice dictated mapping built-in, I'd dump traditional smartphones altogether. Having your devices work for you rather than work you over is a huge part of the 21st century. So says grandpa.

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I've also disabled all notifications except texts and calls. I can look up for messages myself if I have time and I want to. A silent phone means a happy user.

Further, I've used the weirdly named "Wifi/Data Auto Off/On" application¹ to disconnect mobile data and wifi except when the display is on. This helps me get days of battery if I don't do much with the phone. It also makes it easy to ration the battery: when I do something with the phone, I use the battery; when I don't do anything with the phone, the battery drains very, very slowly. Thus, I don't get surprises as the charge will be depleted only when I decide it's all right to use it. And nicely enough I don't get a zillion notifications all the time which would urge me to look at the phone again and again, further consuming the battery.

¹) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whueric.da...

Yup, the key is to take back control and make the phone for your convenience. Rather than the convenience of others and apps.

Limiting social media accounts is helpful in this too. I have FB and Twitter but receive no emails or notifications from either and don't even have any FB-related apps on my phone at all. They sit there waiting for me to visit at my convenience. I check FB maybe once every 3 months at my desk. When I do look, I always realize I'm missing out on nothing.

If people need to reach me, I check my email a few times a day on my phone/desktop and can get immediate access through my cellphone number if they have it.

I like to allow notification for email, but no vibration or sound, only the status bar icon. It's rare emails actually need instant attention, and if you really have to, you can set up a custom notification for emails meeting certain rules.

I've only enabled email notifications for short periods of time when I knew something critical was coming in via email that could be time sensitive.

But you're right, email is so great because you can check it when it's convenient.

T9 cellphone + voice dictated mapping + anything else?

There's no other feature that I really need. As long as my wife can reach me and I can get directions to some place while we're out and about.

I wouldn't ask for voice if it weren't such a good safety feature. I still swear I could punch out text faster on T9 than I ever could on a touchscreen.

I don't know about faster, but I could do it blindly...

Before iPhones and all the really nice capacitive touch screens, I had a haptic touch LG phone I could text blindly on with surprisingly good accuracy. Now... No way

yes. In a touchscreen keyboard, the only feedback if your keypress registered is to look at the echo back on the screen. In a tactile keyboard, the feedback is via tactile sensation of the key being pressed.

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