What if you abandon your smartphone? | Hacker News Reader

What if you abandon your smartphone?

medium.com

I tried to do this not too long ago, but (at least in the US) all of the mobile networks are switching to LTE, and shutting down their 2G and 3G networks. I was unable to find any "dumb" phones with LTE support. The closest thing I found was some overpriced Android phone with most of the smartphone features stripped out.

Maybe try some "smart feature phone" like phones with KaiOS installed?

Hi, author of the article here. I actually felt my stomach drop when I read your comment. It is a scary thought to have to have a smartphone to be minimally connected. I don't have anything against smartphones - and will possibly return to having one at some point - but it's good to have the option. I hope/expect that the market will soon respond by meeting consumer demand for simpler communication devices.

Is a Nokia 8110 4G what you're looking for? It's not a particularly good phone, but it's not Android.

Another data point (about Italy).

Almost any "home" contract is around 30-35 Euro/month, no matter the technology, ADSL or "fiber" (or radio) doesn't change much.

What is called "fiber" is NOT (with some exceptions in some parts of some cities) actual "fiber", but rather "fiber+copper", i.e. if you are within 100-400 meters from the telephone cabin/actual end of the fiber you are mostly fine, if you are more than 500 meters away, speed is far from the advertised one, if you are 1,200 meters or more there is no practical difference from "traditional" ADSL.

Everyone is trying to make people get their land line migrate to VOIP over the "fiber" with an actual reliability (and quality) of communication that is often more than terrible, unbearable.

And noone tells you that in case of a blackout (which can often happen in emergencies) a normal landline will still work 99.99% of times, whilst (obviously) the VOIP won't, unless maybe if you have your own power supply for the router.

The mentioned in the article operator (Fastweb) is only one among the several providers, from experience it is one of those that you cannot count on, in the sense that if you are lucky and their (your) connection works, it works, if for whatever reason it doesn't you won't ever be able to have them solve the problem.

A related approach: Have a smart phone, but leave it at home.

I stopped my smart phone usage habits some years ago, but I find that I still "need" it for some specific 2FA apps, in particular banking. So I just keep it permanently sitting on my desk, silenced.

I'm not quite that strict, but...

At least a few times a week I leave my phone at home for an extended period of at least 4 hours. I also always leave my phone at home if I have to run a small errand. Miraculously, my world somehow doesn't catch on fire if I don't have it on my person every waking minute.

If I do need to take it with me somewhere I often just leave it in my car or pack(on silent) and check it every couple hours.

If I have to be notified of something time sensitive, then and only then, I turn my watch's bluetooth on for as long as is required and turn it off once I get the all clear.

I'm not trying to be Luddite, I find my phone genuinely useful and value having a nice one, I just don't care to be shackled to it.

Added bonus: I'm never worried about the ever growing size of my phone because its rarely on my body, and I always get between 2-4 days of battery life.

I am already living this idea. I do not own a smartphone in 2020. It has been close to 2 months and i do not miss it. Once the lockdown is over, then the real test of how long i could resist the allure of smartphones would be evident.

Did you feel that your anxiety levels (re. corona in particular) changed once you dropped your smartphone?

Actually, i would love to have a discussion with you - since there is a lot of thinking that went into quitting the smartphone. I have been mulling quitting smartphones for more than 2 years now. Only the pandemic let me to quit the smartphone. I do not have much anxiety over corona, it's beyond control. But smartphone is within our control. To quit or not seemed a simple decision for me. I was always willing to quit. My work demands made me put up with it for so long. Since WFH began due to pandemic, i see no need to use a smartphone anymore. I have diligently tracked my usage on smartphone and am pretty aware of how much time i wasted on it. Surprisingly, i am not addicted to any social media. But i started getting addicted to Youtube (if you consider that a social media, then yes). I didn't waste my time on pointless conspiracies etc on youtube. But nevertheless, i wasted enormous amounts of time on it. Hence, i was just waiting for the perfect time to quit it and to set expectations to people who would otherwise want to reach me.

My only problem dropping a smartphone has been there is no alternative for authenticators. I have a few authenticators including:

Google authenticator, Okta Verify, Battle.net authenticator, ESET Secure Authentication and SecureAuth.

While I might be able to find an alternative for the Google authenticator on a dumb phone, I feel it's unlikely for the others.

Hi, author here. This is a good point. I also have an authenticator that I was not able to replace. However, I need it very infrequently (a few times a year) and never in a time-sensitive manner. So I can just afford to turn on my smartphone for a couple minutes whenever I need the authenticator, and then turn it back off.

I you don't want to/can't go cold turkey (like me) : You can achieve about 80-90% of what the author says by removing social media app and disabling WhatsApp notifications. Depending on the OS, you might be able to have "scheduled" notifications, too. I've been trying the former and I see quite a big difference in how I use my mobile :). End of the day, I realised that it is a tool which you can either control or get controlled by without meaning to.

What do you mean with scheduled notifications? Notifications that fire in batches every X hours? What OS allows that?

I haven't had an iPhone in a long time but you used to be able to.

Hi, I'm the author of the article and would be happy to discuss further in case there are any comments or questions.

Why not using some less dumb phone with music from microSD, opera mini as a browser and no need to clean SMS? HN works excellent with OM browser.

This is a good question. The short answer is that having a browser would've gone against my objective of reducing phone usage in general. Plus, I wanted to recycle a dumbphone from a relative, instead of looking for/buying a "less dumb phone".

Smartphones have one killer feature for me: language support. Especially when it comes to CJK support, most can't display, let alone input those. Quite niche, I guess, but I do message/text in Japanese 30% of time and this definitely makes it harder for me to switch...

Is is really possible? How do you deal with banking and 2FA? SMS are not safe.

Hi, author of the article here. I have a token for 2FA - in addition to SMS as a third factor.

People love to paint as dramatic, blog post-worthy challenges what are not particularly difficult things with a bit of creativity. Speaking from several months of personal experience, it's not hard to do.

Hi, author of the article here. You make a good point. This being said, it took me years to do this "not particularly difficult" thing. Why was that? The purpose of the article was to show to others "this is not a big deal, and here's a practical way you can do it". I think many (like myself not too long ago) feel overwhelmed by the possibility of living without a smartphone. It took a solemn decision on my part to sit down, reflect, and realise it was not too big a deal. This being said, it did require planning and preparation.

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