Is a Dumber Phone a Better Phone? | Hacker News Reader

Is a Dumber Phone a Better Phone?

nytimes.com

72 pointsartsandsci137 comments

The article uses the word "phone" about 40 times. Based on my own usage patterns, I don't even have a phone. I have a portable computer. I happen to use it to make phone calls a few times every week. I use my desktop to make video calls a few times a month, but I don't call that a phone.

We all know a smartphone is a computer, and I'm not trying to be pedantic about the words we use, but I think our insistence that these devices are "phones" is skewing the conversation. We keep complaining about our phones taking up too much of our time, or distracting us, or manipulating us. None of our phones are doing any of those things. But it turns out that having an internet-enabled computer in your pocket at all times can be very distracting. Are we really surprised?

I think the 'mobile phone' form factor is the import point here. When I use a desktop or laptop computer, it's at least somewhat more intentional. But pulling out your phone is something you can do anywhere. So the ways in which it changes how your attention works are probably different.

You object to calling them "phones" because they're not often used as phones, yet you want to call them "computers". What exactly do you compute with them?

We should all be honest and call them "trackers" or "distractors".

Rarely use the phone, often use it to check emails, reply to customers, create shipping orders, manage bank accounts and credit cards, view Reddit and Slacker News.

Yeah, you're right. I wish the Android hosts file would fucking block hotspot traffic, as well.

It does on my Android. This is not standard (on a rooted device, with AdAway installed)?

Hmm what version? I might upgrade lol, still running CM12...

LineageOS 14.1, on a Moto G4.

It doesn't have the awesome expanded desktop/screen mode, where the notifications and navigation bars are hidden all the time everywhere until you swipe up or down. This is why I never updated :/

Well, the correct name is, of course, "PDA".

It would be that if it was used by people as an "assistant" -- and not to play games, tweet BS, send dick/vagina pics, and watch cat videos...

Wow, that's very stoned-college-freshman level sociotechnological commentary.

You must think very highly of yourself for not being one of those stupid Sheeple who don't have anything productive to do with a phone than be tracked and play Farmville.

I'm sorry my comment gave you such a bad impression of myself, and I can assure you that I am neither a stoned college freshman nor a vainglorious hipster. As an educator, I have seen the impact of cell phones on sustained concentration abilities, and it worries me.

“communicator” makes a bit more sense.

You compute what pixels on the screen should assume what color so that you may be entertained....I ll show myself out now..

We aren't and the general media is absolutely not surprised. The reason why this article keeps on being rewritten by multiple people is the simple fact that it elicits the same response that you have just displayed. This is clickbait at its greatest level.

Language changes. Phone now means (primarily) thing-in-pocket, but importantly its _shorter_ than thing-in-pocket so phone it is. Don't think so? I misplaced my ____. Sally is playing games on her ____. Joe is watching netflix on his ____.

Phablet?

I've always been rather fond of The Register's "fondleslab" term, but I'd never dare deploy it in real life.

I think other languages call "phones" different things. In German I think it's a "handy". While like most German words its a bit awkward, it does seem closer to the truth.

But for English speakers it seems childish which also reinforces some of the stereotypes of European attitudes to tech.

Also "I'm going to run to town and get a handy" has a different meaning in America.

I have trouble understanding how not calling it a phone changes what the article is speaking about. Can you please help me understand your point?

It's a bit of a misleading hypothesis. DumberPhone is probably a better Phone. Few want a Phone anymore and but use the word "Phone" as a placeholder for what they want-- "4-6 inch tablet in my hand" is what many use phones for (if it werent for a few family members and archaic organizations I probably would do away with my phone number entirely) .

People hate computers. Computers are cranky, quasi-magical machines that can only be properly operated by mutant lizard people who have been genetically disinherited from the finer things in life, like meaningful social lives or mating opportunities.

But a phone... a phone is a social lifeline. In the 80s, it was a mark of privilege to get a phone -- even a regular, POTS, wired touch-tone phone -- installed in your room as a kid. The truly posh got their own phone lines. It meant you could keep in touch with your friends (or bf/gf) whenever you wanted. Themed phones (football, New Kids on the Block, etc.) were commonplace. This even extended into the cellular era with things like custom faceplates for Nokia dumbphones.

Technically you're correct. A smartphone is a computer. It has a CPU and RAM and can run programs and is indistinguishable from a computer in terms of its structure. But your technical distinction between "computer" and "phone" is as meaningful to most people as the technical distinction between "mammal" and "fish" would be to the ancient Hebrews, who called the whale that swallowed Jonah a "great fish". They classed everything in practical terms related to their own experience, under which a fish was anything that swam in the sea and had to be hunted or caught by people in boats.

To most a "computer" runs Windows or occasionally macOS and is used by students, office drones, and lizard people to crunch numbers or prepare documents. A "phone" is a tool for people with social lives to engage in and manage those social lives. From a perspective of what it's used for, it has a lot more in common with an office phone or a teenager's NKOTB-themed bedroom phone than it does a computer.

I for one am fine with the idea that 'phone' means something different now. That's how important smart phones are. They changed the meaning of 'phone' in under a decade. I disagree that this skews the conversation about them. People know how often they use the "phone" app. Nobody thinks "phones taking over our lives" means people are using them for voice communication too much.

This is a nearly perfect PR hit. Controversial question in the title, about a product category nearly everyone uses, with the product name in the first sentence, for an indie-funded startup, challenging Apple and Google and social media, published in the NYTimes in the middle of the week.

Short of an endorsement from Barack Obama, I don't know how this could have been any better for them. Well done.

We all live in pg's submarine: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

I've just abandoned using a smartphone in favor of a $20 dumb Alcatel phone that can only do three things: calls, alarms, and an FM radio. It doesn't even vibrate.

I offloaded every other functional use into my tablet, in this case an iPad Pro.

The phone battery lasts for days on standby; I can drain my tablet battery without concern. I can leave the tablet at home if I want to stay light or if I want to stay focused on my activity.

I've been doing this for two weeks now, and I most likely will not change back.

What do you do for navigation? (Thats literally the only feature keeping me with a smart phone right now).

Not OP, but can answer. What everyone used to do.

Drive around lost, unwilling to ask for directions?

Get lost and have to stop/call for directions?

Abandoning modern technology doesn't seem like the better alternative in this case.

Spend a few minutes looking at a map before the trip?

road closed. detours. insane levels of traffic you didn't anticipate. have fun.

This comment kind of reads like the lead-in to a bad infomercial. It's not that dramatic.

None of these are problems with proper planning. I usually add an hour for every three hours of driving as a buffer. It's worth noting that GPS doesn't solve this either. If there's an accident a few miles ahead of you that blocks the road you run into the same problem.

I had twice in a short time span a closed road that Google Maps did not know anything about.

It was useless, because it constantly routed me to the closed segment of the road. I had to manually select some far away point to finally get it to ignore the road almost completely, because I did not know how much of it was closed.

One was on a German side of a major highway connecting Germany and Poland. The other on Berlin's main highway. It was after midnight so it was a challenge, but it probably was a scheduled maintenance.

Got to say, that's my preferred method as a public transport user/pedestrian in London who sometimes goes to unfamiliar parts of town. A few minutes with the map beforehand and the help of a button compass (Suunto Clipper is my favourite), and I seem to get to the destination very easily when a few street names and bearings are committed to memory.

I used to get to the destination station, and would wait for the phone to get a reliable connection to download the map tiles... then the dodgy phone "compass"/magnetometer needed calibration, so wave it in a figure eight for a while, try to reconcile surroundings with arrow that keeps flipping direction, etc.

I get on much better with "south out of station, left onto X street, right onto Y street, final left onto Z street, then watch out for that building eyeballed on Google Streetview earlier".

You can even just go by street signs and general directions sometimes. I don't know if I have any paper maps any more. Plus, you know, reading maps while driving is probably as dangerous as texting.

The other day, I left home intending to go to a hospital near where I live. As I usually do, I plugged my phone into my car and tried to tell it to navigate there. But for some reason it hung while trying to contact Google to locate the address.

So I rebooted my phone, and rebooted my car, to no avail. Eventually I gave up, and based on the general knowledge that the hospital was to the south east, took one of the main roads through the city east, until I saw the first of several blue "H" signs directing me to the hospital.

My car has an electronic compass as well, if I didn't know which way was east/south.

First of all, not having a GPS does not automatically imply getting lost. People used to be able to navigate just fine most of the time before that technology was available.

And then, what's wrong with asking someone for directions? I've been asked many times in the olden days and never once was it an unpleasant experience.

> And then, what's wrong with asking someone for directions?

The frequently terrible answers!

>And then, what's wrong with asking someone for directions?

completely wasting their time. use your phone.

And then, what's wrong with asking someone for directions?

Ask this 14 year old....

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/14/us/michigan-man-shoots-at-tee...

The last thing I want to do is be lost somewhere in the South. Yes I live in the south.

Thanks for the anecdote. Doesn't prove a thing.

If I got lost somewhere where there are no stores for miles around I would never walk up and ask for directions at someone's house or if my car broke down (https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/07/us/michigan-woman-shot/index....).

The "anecdote" is even in my own neighborhood, if my son invites some of his White friends (who are his guests) to hang out at our neighborhood pool. He gets asked does he belong there? Do you think I would leave him in a position to have to walk up and ask a random stranger for directions if he got lost while driving?

It was sheer luck that both the teenager didn't die and the guys own camera showed he was lying. If the boy had been killed the man would have gotten off. If the camera hadn't been there, they would have taken the word of "upstanding member of society -- a retired fireman" over the word of "just another teenage thug" and the boy would have been arrested.

Well, if my car broke down, I probably wouldn't ask for directions, either.

If I ask anyone I know “a teenager stopped at a man’s house to ask for directions and was shot. Guess the country?”, I bet the overwhelmingly majority (if not all) will say “U.S.A” without skipping a beat. I wouldn’t even need to mention the races of the people involved.

Not to detract from your experience (after all, you live there), but I doubt that situation is representative of most of the world.

>I've been asked many times in the olden days and never once was it an unpleasant experience.

I must give off some kind of approachable vibe, because I get asked for directions by strangers at least once a week.

> Get lost and have to stop/call for directions?

Why is, it in these type of questions, people always immediately go to the worst case scenario to try and prove their point? What about the average case: people again learn to plan their routes in advance, use their instincts, road signs, and if necessary, how to use a map.

You also assume you can't get lost using a GPS. All data has the potential to be stale. Maybe the route the gps took you is through a mountainous road where there is no signal. What happens when you come across an unfamiliar geographical feature and are unsure how to proceed, and now your gps cannot update your location? What if the location you are attemping to access is "net new" as in new roads? What if the location simply no longer exists and your mapping service has not been updated? In my experience, GPS is great for city driving with clear path to the sky (and >50% battery for any trip that is over an hour). Not so good in mountainous or remote locations. I imagine if we didn't rely on a computer telling us where something is, we would revert back to the default behavior of actually learning our surroundings, which has a host of other benefits that you never know would come in handy until they do.

> In my experience, GPS is great for city driving with clear path to the sky (and >50% battery for any trip that is over an hour). Not so good in mountainous or remote locations.

I use my phone's GPS in the wilderness all the time and it's an amazing help. Having a topo map where you can see exactly where you are is awesome. Even just having altitude is a big help like the other day when I was trudging up a steep forested ridge and wanted to know how many more hundreds of feet I had to go before the summit.

Of course you can live without GPS, but I just can't make any sense out of arguing that it isn't anything other than amazing. I'd give up a lot of stuff before I'd give up GPS.

This is what got me re-tethered to a smartphone after a several-months-long experiment with returning to a flip phone - for backpacking it's so, so nice to have GPS in my hand.

No in a city you buy an A to Z guide

This reminds me of some of my favorite direction stories from life. I was in Ohio. I had just intersected the Dublin-Granville road. I stopped at a gas station to ask "I know Dublin is at one end, and Granville the other, but I'm not sure which direction I need to go to reach Dublin, left or right?" I assumed a station attendant, at a shop with an address on the Dublin-Granville road, would be able to answer this. Instead he replied "Oh I don't know, I'm not from around here."

In another instance, I was working with someone in Seattle who had lived there about a decade, had a PhD (I mention only to point out they had some intelligence), and I mentioned I had to go to Tukwilla that night - maybe ten miles at most south of the Seattle city limits. She had no idea where Tukwilla was, had never been there.

So point being, whether it was pre-device based digital maps or today, most people have no idea where they are.

What we used to do completely sucked. I did field repair work back in the days before smartphones and cheap GPS navigation. Even with a good map and directions written down before leaving I would frequently miss turns due to poor street signs. Or have to drive super slow to read house numbers and business names. I'm shocked anyone would even consider going back to what we used to do.

Part of me wonders if the parent poster has an inexpensive data plan for the tablet? I'd be tempted to do something like that, actually.

Yes, exactly. A small amount of prepaid data, which does not expire.

I've done this in the past, and I would pull up the route in Maps on the tablet and then take it with me. But that doesn't handle getting lost, or last minute detours, etc.

Seems like keeping an iPad with cellular data around would be a good solution, but it starts to risk being "too good."

Nokia has dumb-ish phones which can act as wifi hotspots (e.g. the 8110 4G which runs KaiOS). So an alternative would be that + tablet, if you really need to you turn on the hotspot and can connect to the net.

I've done exactly the same move 9 months ago. Nokia 3310 and carry an ipad+data if I'm on the move for a few days.

My car has a builtin GPS. Navigation has been an issue only once when joining a friend to a restaurant on foot, believe it or not I asked my way around and found the place.

I have a prepaid metered data plan on the tablet, and I carefully whitelisted applications for cellular data use. I use navigation with offline maps when possible, and chat apps set to only push text. Most everything else runs wifi-only.

There used to be pretty cheap stand-alone GPS navigation devices (probably still are, though I haven't bothered to look.) And many cars have built in GPS navigation these days anyway.

You can also get a road atlas for the regions you'll find yourself in. That's how I learned to navigate. It works just fine the vast majority of the time and the remaining time you just pull into a gas station and ask. It's not really a big deal.

GPS doesn't need data, just use an offline maps app on the tablet. HERE is okay, Google Maps nowadays also lets you download areas to use offline, and there are multiple apps that can use OpenStreetMap data.

You must live a very boring life if you never go anywhere other than where you plan to at the beginning of the day.

I do live a boring life! And I like that way!

But that doesn't follow from what I wrote. I keep my whole country plus the neighboring one on my tablet. And airports tend to have Wifi :)

Nowadays storage is cheap. The entire North American continent extract of OSM takes less than 8GB. Buy a cheap mini-SD card and you can carry the whole world map around.

That's how things were before ubiquitous GPS and electronic maps. Lawn, off, etc.

I find it funny how I was approached several times, by people with a smartphone in one hand asking me for directions. Most of the time I don't know answer either, because I suck with street names and my German is still spotty. But I can help those people by orienting myself with a map on my own phone.

I like to use my phone to navigation. Especially public transport in Berlin, however as I start to learn routes I don't need it as much as two years ago.

Recently my wife tried to get to a place on Streetname 65A, but Google Maps showed her only Streetname 65 (without A) and it was a wrong place. I found it on OpenStreetMap - it was a building on the other side of the street. That was a lesson for me and installed Maps from F-Droid (an ad-less fork of mobile Maps.Me). It is an amazingly detailed map and offline one as well.

So even with smartphone one has to be always prepared to ask around or plan in advance, so maybe after all it's not as good as we like to think.

There is a plethora of mapping applications that have offline data. Maps.me and Gaia are two that I have on my iPhone, but a web search should turn up others.

Alternatively, one could learn to read a map. That got me across the country and back on multiple occasions back in the day, and I don't recall ever getting too lost. I'm not saying we have to go back to sextants, but to me GPS is a nice convenience, not a requirement.

I'm interested in doing something similar. Does the tablet have cell? What do do you when out and about, away from wifi, and need something? How do you carry the tablet around?

You can also uninstall apps/turn off their data. A smart phone can be dumbed down.

Doesn't it mean you now have two devices to carry around instead of one? I used to have one regular phone for calls, SMS, and one iPod for calendars, notes, etc. Now I have two in one in my smartphone which I find way more convenient. Charging's not an issue and if I want to stay focused I just turn it off.

My $125 Alcatel Windows Phone meets or exceeds the specs of all but the highest end apple/android devices, but I can literally feel the ecosystem crumbling around me

Been doing that for about three years. I have a Nexus 7 and a $20 Wiko. It's really a great combo.

I disabled all notifications (except for phone and text) on my smartphone and enabled the power saving mode and now my battery can easily last 3 days...

I have a Nokia 130. As well as the features you list it will also play MP3 files, lasts several weeks on standby.

When my Nexus 5 dies, I plan on going back to my old Sony-Ericsson feature phone. Just before I retired it I put in a bigger battery. I can fit 3 of them in any pocket I care to choose. It ran 2 weeks on Standby before giving up the ghost. As for functionality. I'm old. Voice/Text/Camera. I've gone for years and years without having a data plan. I typically xfer about 10 texts a month and I might get 1 or two voice calls. Which leads to my next point; I even managed to get rid of my cell plan. I ported my number to my employers plan, he covers it all. I've got unlimited everything on the corporate account. So I save about $500/yr. Do you think I'm gonna invest double that in a new phone? Pfft.

Different strokes for different folks, but I wouldn't miss it at all.

I find it a bit peculiar of you to even entertain a thought of buying a $1000 device when, as you said, a feature phone can easily serve you. Because you can easily buy a $200 (or cheaper) smartphone that would serve you nice with addition of standard extras of camera and navigation. Of course if you don't care about those, more power to you.

I personally start to think that once my phone will break, that maybe I'll buy one of those 4G feature-ish phones with KaiOS like the new banana Nokia and a netbook or a smallest Chromebook. But I have small hope in Libre 5 project.

In 2014, my phone got cut off[1] and I went without connectivity for about 6 months (I was poor, doing a startup right after a previous failed startup, maybe not the smartest circumstances). The phone was basically a wifi device during that time.

I could have got a prepay SIM easily enough, but, oddly, I found being unreachable weirdly liberating. Yes, it was awkward that I had to plan ahead by organising when and where to meet people, checking messages (and maps) on wifi and so forth, but knowing that once I stepped outside, that I would be completely disconnected, was actually a great feeling. I knew that while I travelled to the office, nobody would bother me, I knew when I was out shopping, nobody would bother me. It was my time, disconnected from work, from friends/family/random people, from news that I really didn’t need to read...

Nowadays, I have an iphone which I use for whatsapp/telegram/signal, email, idle browsing when I’m not at home, very very very rarely a phone call. I think when this phone eventually dies, I’ll replace it with a cheap emergency-only phone, basically, like when I didn’t have a phone except that family can reach me in emergency. I have an iPad for when I do need to access everything else but am not at home or in work. Although, I don’t bring it everywhere.

[1] it was a bill phone in the name of my back-then-newly-deceased startup, I had tried to change it to my name, the account manager and other people said yes no problem and I went home waiting for a bill, which never came, then a few months later they disconnected me and wanted more money than the phone or the contract were worth to get it reconnected. I decided its not worth it.

I have strongly considered this. I'm on a Windows Mobile device right now, and as long as security updates keep coming monthly, I'll stay here, but eventually I am going to need a new solution.

Android is an unacceptable security risk, and I am not super fond of Apple or their limits. I was considering switching wholly to an LTE-enabled Windows tablet (I have a Surface, but I've been eyeing a Latitude) and then just getting a dumbphone for phone calls and texts.

As a Windows Mobile user, I've actually found not having the latest of every app available on my phone kind of refreshing. Other people seem annoyed I can't join them on the latest app, but it's a perfect excuse not to download said app.

Can I ask what tablet you'd be looking at? Perhaps one of the windows laptop/tablets hybrids? Besides those I'm not sure what other tablets besides Android/iOS you'd migrate to.

I've been eyeing the Latitude 7285, though Dell opted not to refresh it's form factor in the latest product line refresh, so I'm a little worried about if they'll keep the design.

It's a detachable 2-in-1 like the Surface Book, though it's magnetic instead of the Book's slightly overengineered mechanized connector. It's also a lot cheaper than the Book for what you get, far easier to disassemble and service, and has built-in LTE available.

I currently have a Surface Pro 4, and while I'm relatively fond of it in general, the lack of LTE on this model irritates me (newer ones now can get it), and the biggest issue is that the soft keyboard/kickstand design isn't sufficiently lap-usable.

This might sound ignorant but I really don't get it. I realised a smart phone was eating up my time so I weened myself off a lot of social media and uninstalled a bunch of apps and haven't looked back. I use Signal and Whatsapp to talk to a few friends, listen to music and read the news. Thats about it.

I went 2 weeks without a phone, gps, & online capabilities away from home due to breaking my old Moto X Pure and not having enough money to buy a phone. It was a great experience and now I'm trying to shift everything over to a dumb phone or even just a hotspot.

I didn't need GPS, I just looked up where to go before I left home or work and caught busses/trains that run every 10-15 minutes. If I absolutely needed online access quick I would stand outside of a starbucks or another restaurant/store I knew had WiFi and use my tablet or laptop. I purchased a $25 original Zune for off the grid FM and music. I learned quickly how to find & create alternatives to my phone and those 2 weeks were some of the best of my life.

I really noticed how our population always has it's head down with a total addiction to our phones. I felt isolated at Reddit group meeting where everyone would take 5 minutes to just check their notifications and everyone would have their heads down while I was just sitting there watching everyone and eating.

Biggest thing for me keeping a smart phone is the hi-res camera ability. I'm not carrying a separate camera around

Second would be Spotify, and Podcasts.

I often think about ditching my smartphone. There are a few things that a smartphone puts in your pocket that really make our lives better:

nice camera/maps/gps/calling/texting/email/music and podcast streaming

Really, the negatives of having a computer in your pocket can be summed up by:

gaming/transactional purchases/social media/news media

None of those things inherently bad, but they do tend to be addictive.

So, maybe we need phones without app stores? A closed off phone with the apps already chosen for it? Where would we draw the line on what gets included on the phone? Would there even really be a market for this kind of smartphone? KaiOS is the only thing that comes close...but it still has an App Store to my knowledge.

It probably makes most sense to just delete the addictive apps off of your phone and move on with your life.

I agree with those, and to add some more: GPS/Maps. Uber and Lyft. Mobile concert and airline tickets are pretty nice to have too. (I don't have a printer anymore.)

I really love all of the things that I can do with my smartphone these days that I'd never have been able to do with an older device (trying to even browse the Internet on a phone that I owned as recently as five years ago was painful), but I do miss a certain amount of reliability and hardiness of the older devices. Maybe nostalgia plays in a bit here, but I think that the move away from embedded device to general-purpose computer brought with it a lot of the downsides of the latter, along with the upsides.

As nice as it is to be able to watch an HD video stream on my pocket-sized computer on a stretch of rural highway halfway from nowhere, I don't always trust my phone to be able to, like, dial 911 when it really counts, and that's a little scary.

I’ve got my last smartphone. I’ll use it until it dies or Apple abandons it.

I’ve come to the conclusion I’d rather spend the money on a hobby instead.

Im also getting really fucking annoyed at how much stuff is broken for the amount of money I spent too.

I'm still using my "dumb phone" from 2010. I like it cause it has a physical keyboard, a long battery life, and I can drop it without worrying about breaking the screen. Plus I don't have to worry about the privacy issues that come from apps collecting data.

Honestly the only feature I feel like I'm missing out on is GPS. But I've actually found that not having GPS improves my sense of direction, since I force myself to actually learn the map of my surroundings instead of just always relying on the phone.

The two things I've missed without a smartphone is maps and the ability to find phone numbers and addresses of businesses on the fly. Other than that, there's no substantial reason to carry a smartphone. It's funny how much R&D was used up to build what essentially is a digital phone book.

I, on the other hand, don't use it to find phone numbers and addresses of businesses, but use it all the time to download and listen to podcasts. Each person might only have a couple of important uses, that doesn't mean the total set is small.

I bought my first smartphone a couple of months ago - always preferred small cheap dumb phones. They did fine for calling and texting, which was all I wanted.

But the world changed on me! I noticed that over time people were sending me longer and longer texts, and it was becoming difficult to communicate with thumb-button texting.

If things reverted to how they should be (anything over 5 words should be an email or a call, please) I would happily go back to a dumb phone.

It's not only the communication part of it. Increasingly there's a tendency towards an "app first" thinking, where the primary thinking is that something could just be a app on our phones. How this thing is suppose to work for people without smartphone is an afterthought.

I do have a smartphone, but I strongly dislike the "Just download our app"... are you really sure you need an app?

I now only use a huawei watch 2 with LTE as my only phone. I do not pair it with a smart phone.

It allows me to use google maps, call an uber and see my upcoming appointments by syncing with google.

But I can't check my email, facebook or the news, or other websites.

This means it is not distracting, but I have the really useful bits from a smart phone.

The only problem is battery life, and the fact that sometimes it needs to talk to a synced device (I use my zte projector -the os thinks its a phone)

How does that work for cellular plans? Are you in the US?

In the US, most carriers won't enable a portable without a linked phone. And you pay an extra monthly fee for the portable ($15-$20, I think).

I am in the uk, I just have a normal sim in the watch which I pay £10 a month for.

Sometimes I hate the US. ;)

We pay somewhere on the order of $40/month for a smartphone plan. And if we add a watch, that's another $10-$20/month.

No option to use just a wearable.

Moving toward a watch/headphones combo would be an attractive phone alternative to me. I would need to really sit down and weigh out the benefits/loses compared to keeping a phone vs going whole hog and disconnecting completely though.

People would be better off if they turned off the notifications. Even better would be if notifications were at first off, rather than on. Your phone should ring for calls and beep for text messages, and that's about it. Well, it should buzz if you set an alarm. But it should not interrupt you for an email or post on Facebook. Each app you install has all notifications on at first too. I think it would be healthier for all to be off. On first launch, the new app pops up a screen with checkboxes for each kind of notice, with all unchecked. You have to put a check in each one yourself.

Other than that, the only problem I have is that the average screen is too big. The right balance is about 4".

I like having all these things in one device: map, flashlight, camera, calculator, walkman, encyclopedia, newspaper. Then again I am not tempted to open it while driving.

Why is an email less important than a text message?

Large screens are great. You can see more without scrolling.

It's not less important. It's less urgent.

Why is it less urgent?

The Light Phone 2 features are very poor[0].

Any dumb mobile phone from mid 2000s has those that are guaranteed in [1], they also don't run a modified Android but a bespoke locked down OS, cost less (Light Phone 2 is available for $300 as preorder on IndieGoGo and MSRP seems to be $400), have a physical keyboard, some games, colorful display, email, etc.

There are even some not so bad smart phones that cost less than $200 or $300.

I'd also expect things like calculator, GPS, unit and currency converters, weather, dictionary, directions, maps, etc. to definitely be in since they don't fight for attention and are pure utility tools that one only uses when absolutely needed, not to procrastinate.

I also own an old 8 GB black Creative Zen Style 300 media player[2] from like 2010 or 2011 that is like 7x3x1 cm, cost me like 180-190 PLN (22% or 23% of that is VAT) or so at the time and it decimates Light Phone 2 with regards to almost all non-phone non-online features.

I'd consider myself as audience for a featureful utilitarian dumb phone but not for something like Light Phone.

I wish there was an ARM flip phone (I love these as long as the hinge is good and the plastic thick), with physical keyboard (I love them when they're good), dual SIM, 1 or 2 GB of RAM, few GB of storage, SD card, low res software rendered displays (main one and one on the back when flip phone is closed) that you could code yourself against almost bare metal in pure C, calling some built in APIs when you want to make a phone call, use data transfer, access storage, etc. to truly own and personalize every aspect of it.

[0] - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/light-phone-2-design#/

[1] - https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/...

[2] - https://imgur.com/a/QdMdHxN

I had a decent Motorola smart phone that was well under $100, and did everything I could want. I replaced it with a far more expensive Pixel XL, mainly because of the nice camera, display, and CPU. But all the basic functionality was on the cheap phone.

Hi! Does anybody find it easier to concentrate to calling with old phone? Still many things work with calling and hopefully will work on future. It is a sort of doing mode for me, not chatting. This goes to psychology and I am an engineer. Put so many many distractions to face on phone before getting to calling? Distractions can be and are at least for me very hard to resist. People are different. I need to turn off distractions, I cannot resist.

I would love to see Apple create an iPod with a 10Tb SSD and e-ink display pre-loaded with virtually every song from iTunes.

The biggest issue is that it would just be a matter of time before someone cracked the music library encryption.. Would a solution where the device uniquely encrypts every song for the user's account and requires a cellular network to retrieve a per-song key work?

$400? Ouch.

Cost aside, I can see the benefit for consumers who are prone to "social media addiction." Or children, where a slightly-smart phone has some benefits to a 100% dumb phone and many benefits over an actual smart phone.

I'm trying to wean myself off most social media. Removing the FB app from all but one device (and removing favorites/bookmarks from all browsers) was great.

I don’t necessarily want a dumb phone, but I’d like a simpler phone. I’d like navigation (which is the entire reason I got a smartphone in the first place), a Web browser & Signal (or an equivalently-secure text- & video-chat app), calling & texting.

Maybe that Jelly phone would be sufficient?

For those who want their phone to respect them, while still maintaining smart functionality, I recommend LineageOS, it's a distribution of android without all the google's proprietary crap.

That doesn't actually change anything about the smartphone being a distraction machine. All the same apps, social networks, constant notifications, etc are still there. The fundamentals have nothing to do with "Google's proprietary crap" and everything to do with being an internet enabled distraction machine, which is true for all modern smartphone OSes.

I could say that open source apps — like the ones in f-droid — don't present the same amount of dark patterns that closed source proprietary apps do.

But I agree, getting rid of google's proprietary apps doesn't necessarily mean get rid of this attention/dopamine seeking world we find ourselves in.

However, I think a great part of how uncomfortable it feels to know that there's a smart phone in your pocket is knowing that it's spying on you, and getting rid of google's crap means that your phone doesn't spy on you, at least not by default.

A great part of how uncomfortable it is for some people, perhaps, but not the author of the original piece.

Yeah. I went off on a tangent.

All I really want is a feature phone, long battery life, water resistant, end-to-end encrypted texting, onboard voice mail and hotspot capable. Is this too much to ask?

No upvotes so I guess this is a market of one :D

I'm a bit pissed because the article doesn't really discuss what they promise to discuss.

Might be a better phone. But is a phone useful?

Why do people hold up the NY Times as such a great newspaper? There's been like 8 stories from them on here today, and it's the same repeated drivel they trot out every two or three weeks, on the same topics, and the same low-energy arguments. My flag button is wearing out.

The NYT isn't a tech focused newspaper so the types of stories you see here are not representative of what gives them such a glowing reputation. This is an article out of their weekly magazine, it's not supposed to be hard news.

There is probably an argument somewhere that a lack of real news is actually good news - there isn't a major crisis or surprising events to report on.

Do you care to elaborate on how specifically they are not great, how they make drivel? Yours is a low-energy argument in itself, no specifics, just negativity.

The NYT's audience model is to make white collar slightly liberal managerial class and workers that aspire to the managerial class feel smart. These are the people that decide what a "glowing reputation" is, hence NYT gets one.

They then take this reputation they built up and pivot it into foreign policy propaganda, often based on official lies.

Of course, NYT also employs actual and good reporters. However, to a certain degree, they are swimming against the stream and their prestige enhances the prestige of the institution. Just look at how James Risen's stories on Stellar Wind were killed by calls from the White House.

>Why do people hold up the NY Times as such a great newspaper?

Because it's been in business for 167 years, and in that time has changed the course of history and our understanding of the world around us multiple times.

What have you done today?

> What have you done today?

Considerably more real work than I usually do...

A full third of the front page as I look right now is nytimes, bloomberg, wsj, theguardian, and other fairly junk mainstream news sites. Must be a slow day for the bloggers and people actually writing about technology.

The phone is not smart or dumb. The user is.

Considering that the darker edges of "app engagement" are trying to replicate gambling addiction, I hesitate to call users dumb when they don't act in their best self interest.

Removing the insult of "dumb" users vs "smart" users, gambling addiction is an interesting parallel since it's not something that everyone is equally prone to. Lots of people out there who can play poker, slots, blackjack, whatever, and not damage their life as a result.

So I'll keep my ability to pick and choose how "smart" my phone is. I think there's room for people to advertise that no, you don't lose much if you turn off notifications for Facebook or whatever, but I don't want Apple to change anything.

Actually most of the pressure has been social, i.e. peer pressure. "Why aren't you using this app? How can I reach you?" etc. Just have to say no and stick to your own plan.

It's not that simple though. Those people aren't pressuring you into doing drugs, they just want to be in touch – hardly a crime. Just saying "no" without providing some kind of credible alternative can make you a hermit, and not everyone is OK with that.

If you don't want to be bothered you don't want to be bothered. Also it's not like you're off the grid. You have more structured (and meaningful) communication on non-immediate devices, when you want it. People who care will reach you no matter.

I just moved to Android this week, after 9 years on Windows Phone. Android is making me feel very, very stupid indeed.

Still on Windows Phone. Their inability to create a 3rd mobile ecosystem gives me all the smart features I want without the cost of apple or the dark patterns of android. Not that they didn't try... I know it won't last forever, but I'll enjoy it while I can.

For not switching sooner? Just curious :/

Because nothing comes close to the simplicity and utility that was Windows Phone 8. 10 mostly brought Windows on par with iOS and Android functionally, whilst mostly retaining the simplicity and utility of 8. Add their (used to be) industry-leading cameras and there's an insanely compelling reason to not switch, if you're OK not getting and then having all teh appz.

I've played with Android off and on for ages. My girlfriend has always had iPhones, so I've always had a pretty good view of where both operating systems were at.

Neither were compelling, but after my 950XL broke it was time. And while I know how terrible Android is for an 8th go at the same OS, I'm blown away at the low quality bar Google has managed to get the world to accept. It's like Symbian all over again, but this time with touch screens.

Phones are pretty boring now. I'd write another iPhone app if I thought there was any chance in hell I could make a living on it without a million dollar marketing budget.

I intentionally went without a cell phone for 2-3 years in the early aughts. That's still an option.

Not just boring but inflexible and a pain to hack on. I'd really like something more like a PDA with a straightforward scripting language that lets me build primitive GUIs for my own tasks.

If you think that, I've got a Zaurus to sell you.

The Linux-based Zaurus with the sliding keyboard was incredibly cool and I still hope to acquire one someday, or even one of the later clamshell models.

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