How can we resist the seduction of the mobile phone?
timharford.com
timharford.com
The only notifications I receive are: Calendar, Text Messages, and Phone Calls.
I give out my phone number sparingly so the only people that can reach me synchronously are family and close friends. Everyone else can wait until I batch respond if I happen to check that app.
A good set of wireless headphones with a mic and liberal use of the voice assistant makes it so you don’t even need to look at your phone for about 60%-80% of what you want to do, so if you want to put on a podcast or some music without the so-called risk of feeding your addiction to some game/social network/bs app, there you go.
Oh and don’t have apps installed that you’re not going to use, put everything essential on the first page and bury everything else, only using search to call them up.
It's the same technique I use for clearing out my closet or other areas of my home and office. Pack things away (but still technically accessible), and if you use them put them where they should be stored for use. After a few months, give away, trash, or sell the remaining contents.
Also, I've found uninstalling any apps the you find even slightly addicting to help. You more than likely won't miss them.
Once I realized I was only using snapchat and instagram to essentially brag about whatever fun I was having, I removed them.
I cannot stress enough how true this is.
When I am out and about, my watch frees me from pulling my iPhone out of my pocket. At face value this may seem irrelevant, since I glance at my watch just as much, but there is quite a staggering difference in these two behaviors. When I use my phone, I unlock with Face ID, open Notification Center, tap a notification, interact with an app, swipe home, check Twitter, and so forth. With the watch, I simply raise my wrist. If the unread indicator is lit, I explore. If not, no need to worry; I just lower my wrist.
I imagine this is more difficult for those who are tapped into social media a great deal, but I think starting to curb use at home can set a precedent to disconnect with your phone and it will bleed into your life outside of home. A smartwatch is a great way to instantly curb checking your phone by putting (important)notifications on your wrist.
I turned off all notifications except for PagerDuty. I figure if something is really, really urgent, people will pick up the phone and call (work or otherwise).
It's like we've replaced every single chair in the house with a La-Z-Boy recliner and now we're asking why people flop in a chair for hours on end aren't as active as they were before.
Your phone can be a slightly inconvenient tool that you use as-needed instead of being a constantly inviting temptation to do nothing else.
Now if someone could make a 4" phone that isn't a disposable piece of trash, that'd be great.
Unfortunately the (all but confirmed) rumors for today's iPhone announcements are that it comes in 3 sizes: Huge, Enormous, and Gargantuan.
If you've held an iPhone X before, that's now the small size.
Given that the SE was a years-old manufacturing process (basically an iPhone 5) and they couldn't get it in stock consistently for months after release, I don't know why they keep doing this. But here we are.
In fact, 9to5Mac is reporting that the iPhone SE may be discontinued today. We'll find out soon.
The form factor is still better than anything else I've encountered - enough thickness for a decent grip, and small enough. The very last thing I want is a phone that's a not so small any more, but 2mm thick, tablet.
"What do you call a phone that's bigger than Plus size? We call it the iPhone XS Max."
No, Phil, the word you were looking for is "Obese."
Oh well.
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/12/apple-discontinues-ipho...
Leaves nothing in the range that's appealing.
If this trend keeps up, I won't want to look at my "phone" because I'll have to put on a back brace to lift it safely.
Moving that to the top corner of the screen seems like a colossally stupid idea to me given the size of these things, but they ran out of gestures you can do with your thumb now that the home button is gone.
EDIT - this is possibly worse because I use my phone with my left hand (right pocket is for car keys), and you have to reach the top right for Control Center. You'd think they could improve it by giving an option to flip Control Center to the top left corner, but as far as I know you can't.
A D&D playing friend advises me that the conventional size progression is Large/Huge/Gargantuan, but I think Large is underselling the iPhone XS size, so Huge/Gargantuan/Colossal may be more accurate.
OTOH, watching the presentation this morning, not a lot of new appeal for Apple Watch 4 over my current Garmin Fenix. So we'll see.
All of the features the AW provides beyond the 935 are implemented poorly. Any noise from street or wind or water made the AW phone features useless. For texting, only bareable responding with a few words or less. Siri did not work.
With the 935 I gained battery life, big screen size, better fitness tracking, sleep tracking, and still operates with wet (rain or sweat or swimming) fingers.
Even if I get notified of something on my AW, couldn’t do anything about it without my phone.
Sometimes I missed carrying a phone on long distance runs for the camera. Eg. Moose!
I’d like a smaller phone like my old Motorola Razer for my runs.
As a tech person, I always found the Apple watch to be more on the 'smart watch / techie' side of things - and more aesthetically pleasing.
There is no doubt that the Garmin does a better job of actually recording a ride, or transmitting heart rate to your cycling computer, or just about anything activity-based. So I was always swapping my Apple for my Garmin before rides, workouts, etc.
I always knew there was a shortcoming with even the Garmin when it came to heart rate accuracy - it just didn't respond quickly enough to sudden changes in heart rate (ie. going up a hill at full throttle, etc) - so I tried a heart rate strap on the chest. The Garmin heart rate strap for the chest is perfectly accurate and responds to changes in heart rate immediately. I have that paired with my cycling computer on my bike...and I no longer swap watches depending on what I'm doing.
I've learned to appreciate the Apple Watch for what it is - a device to record activities where heart rate accuracy isn't necessarily 100% important - such as a quick training jog or a quick treadmill workout at the gym, etc.
In either event, I've rambled long enough. I'll be first in line for the new Apple Watch 4 - and will sell my Apple Watch 3 shortly after. I might keep my old wrist strap though. :D
For those wondering what I'm talking about...
https://i0.wp.com/vittorioroncagli.it/wp-content/uploads/201...
If I'm at home, I'm probably in front of my computer. If I'm not at home, I'm doing something non computery.
A few days later, I was at the car wash, thoroughly cleaning my car interior with a vacuum. Phone was out of my pocket, I saw my wife calling, figured I'd just call her back, which I did a few minutes later. Turned out she'd fallen at home and severely injured knee, so she needed me to come take her to urgent care. And because she'd left her phone behind when she went outside to rip vines off the house (and then fell from a ladder), she had to crawl back through the house in massive pain in order to call me.
Sigh.
That said, I have removed Facebook and Twitter from my phone, and removed most things from my opening screen. But I keep Kindle there. When I feel a need to give my eyes something to do, I can read a book. That's been awesome.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/technology/personaltech/t...
Colors do help a lot with providing visual cues. Removing them entirely makes it a challenge to quickly scan for colors I associate with certain actions.
Of course, if "scan for certain actions" is just feeding your phone addiction, then making it harder is entirely the point.
My previous phone died. Instead of getting the hot new thing, I got the cheapest one my plan still supported. It's perfectly adequate for texting, making phone calls, navigating, and taking photos. But it's not super great for skimming Reddit and Facebook.
Bonus: I saved a few hundred bucks.
> taking photos
I value my candid photos too much to trust that a shittier phone is still great at taking adequate photos.
When I want to take actual nice photos, that's what the DSLR is for.
It's also why I justified to myself to buy the iPhone X.
1. Disable almost all notifications (as others here have already described).
2. Pick opportune moments to leave your phone at home (or, I guess, in the car). My girlfriend and I frequent a local diner and when we go neither of us brings our phones. It's wonderful.
Similarly, there's basically no reason to have your phone in a bar. Don't even take it inside. You should be dancing with the one who brought ya', so to speak.
Also to call the lyft afterwards.
That dumbphone has changed my life. I can think again. I strongly recommend it.
I've had mine for about three months and the paint is beginning to flake off the keys. And the key legends have lowish contrast.
The music player goes for hours with little battery impact and it will drive my big Sony headphones.
/disclaimer I didn’t read the article.
I have no ability to relate to this endless stream of articles about how to mitigate this rampant and intractable problem. It's an alien concept that I would feel a prisoner of my phone and not in control of it.
Now we’re the first ones to deal with this problem. We should all establish — first starting with ourselves then in our families — what is acceptable, when, and why. Starting with yourself will always be the hardest part.
I have a cellphone. Sometimes I get calls or texts. But what in the heck is everyone doing on the damned things all the time? I can't even imagine what could be so interesting.
I think it's a matter of imagination. What's going on in my own head is usually a lot more interesting than what I could potentially do on a cell phone.
Perhaps you prefer not to do that.
i switch on computer a) when i need to work (it helps i don't work 9-5), b) when i am gonna watch movie (connected to TV) which i watch on TV anyway, for everything else i prefer much more comfortable experience on smartphone with exception of typing which would be faster on keyboard, but swiping ain't that bad either
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180814-the-new-phones-that...
If google maps, email (for flight tickets), and a dead simple browser (enough to check in to my flights) could be put on a "dumb" phone, I'm sold.
Edit: if you calculate the total time wasted by smartphones in general with the total time saved by checking in to flights on a smartphone, the phone is wasting a lot of time (not to mention the detrimental cognitive effects).
Sad that I can't instantly instagram, but this peace of mind comes at a price :)
This is probably because there are more tourists in Venice than there are locals on an average day.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/italy...
Tons of evidence that phone usage at night decreases sleep quality as well, another very good reason to do this.
Most importantly, start using airplane mode for an hour or two at a time.
I like the idea of trying out airplane mode.
The small circle of folks that need to reach me can make unknown desk phones ring too. Vibrating is fine too but telling the spouse it's airplane mode for 2 hours seems to work too.
Mobile world is a closed world in witch costumers pay a data-munging device that they do not really own nor control. Of course I use myself an Android device, mostly to have a good satnav, quick email reading on the go, cam etc. But I live in my own desktop, not using someone else computer's to store my data, of course my mail provider have my messages, but they are mirrored locally on my PC by mbsync, of course Google have my contact list, but it's mirrored on my PC etc.
We have more and more LESS choice but any tech-savvy or free person certainly it's NOT seduced by mobile crap.