I have an LTE-enabled tablet, so if I'm going somewhere totally unfamiliar, I'll throw it in my bag just in case I need to look up some information. Otherwise you just have to plan your outings in advance - like we always did prior to 2008 or so.
I have a Garmin GPS mounted in car for road trips, which I honestly prefer since it doesn't tempt me to fiddle with it while driving like a smartphone does. I also carry a semi-nice digital camera sometimes. It's obviously not as convenient as a smartphone camera, but I find I am more thoughtful and appreciative of the photos I take as a result.
I use more paper items (small paper notebook for grocery lists, transit tickets instead of using the app, etc). This can be somewhat freeing, as I've missed my ferry a handful of times because their app glitched out.
My personality tends towards obsession and analysis paralysis, which can be good for programming but sometimes bad for real life. I no longer obsess over which restaurant has the best looking pictures or online reviews, I just walk inside and try it out. Sometimes this is for the better, sometimes for the worse, but it's definitely a more human experience.
Without the smartphone, I also find I am much more inclined to talk to random strangers, since I can't just whip out the phone during awkward silent moments.
With lack of FOMO, I am also much more present with family and friends, which is probably the biggest benefit.
What made you compulsively use your phone, but not your tablet?
I appreciate that you mentioned you still have the LTE tablet - one of my biggest concerns was traveling and the HUGE convenience apps have on my life then.
I haven't gone all the way and actually gotten rid of my phone, but I personally operate in three "modes:"
- Mode 1 where I'm going to need it for a task like navigation, or I'm OK with killing time and letting my mind wander. I keep it near me, always silent/no vibrate, and check it fairly often.
- Mode 2 where there's a remote chance I may need it because I might need to take a phone call or deal with an OTP. It sits out of sight, preferably in another room entirely.
- Mode 3, the phone is physically powered off. This is pretty much always the case after 8pm, it's frequently the case when I'm working, sometimes the case when I'm out with friends.
In practice I'm almost always in Mode 1 or Mode 3. I accept that it's OK/necessary to submit to distractions (though I do keep it on silent), or I just say screw it and turn it off.
In my experience if you develop a habit like always just powering it off after 8pm, after a few weeks the phone starts to lose its hold on you. You start having moments during the day where you're fiddling with it and your brain just goes "screw this, I would rather be relaxed, happy, and living life." That's the moment where Google, Apple etc. have lost the war they're waging against you, your brain is no longer hijacked, and it all gets better from there.
The biggest switch for me would be losing music streaming. What do you use for music on-the-go (at the gym, commuting, walking around, etc.)?
While my musical taste is eclectic (i.e. from classic over techno to glitch) I mostly prefer to either listen to music or do other things, instead of mixing those activities. I do listen to music on commutes, and sometimes while doing certain chores in the kitchen though. But otherwise either or, not both.
I wonder what gyms looked like in earlier generations (I'm only 27). Did people talk more?
Yes. Especially before the televisions arrived.
Gyms were well-known social hubs. You'd meet people, sometimes even work out business deals, at the gym.
The isolation that technology has brought us has reduced the number of serendipitous human connections we used to make as a species. It has also turned us into an us-verus-them society because we no longer have large circles of friends with varying opinions.
Personal music at the gym is not new or anything specific to phones
I gave that up too, replaced with live music venues where I could interact with the musicians.
Although depending on the venue musicians and even patrons will occasionally be wearing hearing protection earbuds for isolation.
Without earbuds it can only be better for personal interaction at the gym, etc. too.
When the Sony Walkman came out, those who took it to the gym were more keenly aware they were signaling that they didn't want any interaction there.
Solo commuting I'm just fine with news & talk now. Driving passengers or being one I can better appreciate anybody's channel selction. Nonmusic is too boring for most people anyway.
I get plenty of live music and that's all I really need.
If you already have to be on a computer a bit to begin with, might as well make the most of it.
When you do close the laptop and revert to normal in-person interaction, you can always walk away from the PC with mere cellular voice, if you really need that, for the duration.
Twenty years ago smartphones didn't have touchscreens. But they would take messages.
When that was the only thing you were carrying around, all you could really do was talk & text like anyone else.
But when you had your laptop, the built-in IR or USB interface to a top smart phone was what made it smart to begin with.
As a virtual COM port device, the analog modem in your phone was then accessible to Windows no differently than the analog hardware modem the laptop used when hardwired to a phone jack having a dial tone.
Even laptops without built in modems back then still had hardware COM port connectors just like desktops, which could be used with external hardwired phone modems (or used for local hardwired RS-232/TTY within the generous cable length limitation without need for modulation/demodulation).
But the cellphone was about twice the speeds the office was getting with 56K hardware modems.
From anywhere you could get a cellular signal.
This was years before each cellular company began to slowly roll out data plans as the phones got _smarter_.
Which were geographically limited ridiculously by comparison for many more years before data coverage got to where it is today.
Anyway you could get to your office network directly by dialing in to (one of) your target server's phone number(s) (and tying up that landline as long as you are connected).
Without having to go on the internet, so security could be through the roof by comparison.
Alternatively you could dial in to any ISP's phone bank when you needed to get on the web.
This could even be simply done routinely from a different Windows partition, physically separating personal from business for instance.
Would that make it a sandcastle compared to a sandbox?
Even with only a common single bootvolume you could connect to two networks at the same time using two modems, using the built-in Dial-Up Networking in Windows 98. You could become a bridge this way and security could be not so good.
You just pointed & clicked your selection(s) and they negotiated or autodialed if necessary.
So many offices had internet that you would almost always be fine to just dial in to that one place, and with more than one modem using more than one phone line W98 could be configured to communicate much faster than 56K using modem sharing.
And with a laptop you had all the power and software for business & internet connection you needed without having to wait for phones to get more powerful on their own.
With progress phones are much more popular & stylish now.
Posing with a touchphone, one-handed at a characteristic near-45 degree angle as an interested observer, recognizable in silhouette, whether standing (walking) or sitting, is not something that was ever seen in the 20th century.
Likewise the accompanying silhouette with the other hand on the touchscreen as an active operator.
Under laboratory conditions over a period of years, redirecting time otherwise spent in either pose toward actual scientific progress can have much more ideal outcomes when it comes to milestone accomplishments.
Anectdotal data, YMMV.
I do get the idea that more traditional poses such as yoga-style might be more preferable to a great many.
Rumour has it your cognitive capacity can be increased.
This Sony device [0] even offers Tidal integration. Not sure if Spotify is among the list of supported services.
[0] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1538890-REG/sony_nwzx...
I wonder if there is a way to accomplish many of these things while still carrying your phone? For example, what if your phone took 5 minutes to unlock? And didn’t give notifications until you unlocked it?
Just a thought.
i've started to just chuck it somewhere if I'm trying to focus
When I got a new phone about 6 months ago, I spent about a week horrified by the number of notifications that I was getting by default.
That, and keeping the charger in a remote corner, helps to park it and forget it.
Also, disable face/fingerprint/pin unlock, and use a longish password, so unlocking it isn't convenient.
A bit different, but good if you want a break.
1) The majority of people disable the feature after a short time (if they needed it in the first place, it's hard to maintain the self-control to keep it enabled, when it's presumably trivial to disable), and
2) Whether the cognitive effects remain, even when it's locked, because the mere presence of the phone makes you think about it, and it being locked makes you think about what you're missing.
(No affiliation, just a happy user)
Of course, on wifi, it can do everything that phone with a normal data plan can do. I just don't bother, because most of the time I'm on wifi, I have a laptop available. Especially these days.
Also, based on location, I automatically disable all notifications while at the gym or in a restaurant. If a had an urge to access it anyways, I might set the brightness to zero too.
I think people often overestimate their need. People act like they can't live without Google Maps, but 90% of them take the same route to work every day. I would argue if you aren't traveling outside your local area, you have zero need for a mapping app. It's true you may not be notified of a slightly faster route because of some unforeseen event, but the difference is probably a couple minutes at most, and you should know your local streets well enough to get along anyways.
There was the rare event where I couldn't participate in some restaurant's rewards program because they only did it via iOS/Android app, and that was annoying, but it also led me to just use that business less.
The maps ("Here") on Windows Mobile were actually not bad at all.
Using this phone taught me not to be obsessed with instant mail notifications among other things.
- 2FA codes, but a self-hosted Bitwarden and a Yubikey solved that well enough
- Maps. This is a legitimate sacrifice, especially for someone with as poor a sense of direction as I have. But between the mapping application in my car and looking things up before I leave somewhere on my laptop, it's not been a huge problem.
I could probably ditch Maps (by using my spouse's when needed, not sure if that counts...), but I have family abroad and other family here), and kid photos to send etc etc. It's true I could do most of that via email, but the rest of the family is on WhatsApp and I would genuinely feel more disconnected from them then I already do.
It sort of supports Maps, but is inconvenient enough to kill the temptation to use it for everything.
As an added bonus, it's water proof, doesn't crack when dropped and the battery lasts a week.
My Galaxy S10e has it.
The people with the best will power have organized their lives so that they don’t need will power.
Source: this is the specialty of Veronika Job, see her work here: https://tu-dresden.de/mn/psychologie/iaosp/sozial/die-profes...
To be fair, I was able to refrain from mindless scrolling all the time. But with the phone nearby, I always wanted to mindlessly scroll during every random quiet moment.
I liken it to an alcoholic keeping an ice cold beer on his desk all day, but doing his best not to take a sip. Why subject yourself?
I experimented without a smartphone and I am happier as a result. This will probably not be the case for everyone. But, if you ever feel like a slave to your own technology, I highly recommend trying it out.
There's a phone at home and one in my office for emergencies, but other business gets done by email, on my terms.
I live in a (non-US) large city, walk or bike to work every day and don't own a car. We have a pretty good public transit system which I used to use a lot, pre-covid.
The biggest inconvenience of not carrying a cell phone was that I didn't have access to live bus and subway schedules, so I would sometimes take a suboptimal route to my destination.
My schedule is done on paper in a pocket schedule book that I always carry. I also carry a pen, a simple watch, a Swiss army knife, and a small flashlight, all of which I use at least once every day. I also always have a book in my bag, for reading while waiting for the bus, the doctor, or other things and people.
I look things up on the Internet at home.
I'm not saying I will never carry a phone, but it seems that not having a phone is the right choice for me at the moment.
I'd have details settled with friends before leaving my connection to the group chat. I'd plan out my route in google maps and try to memorize where destinations were and how to get to them.
Of these two, only the lack of maps is a real step back. I've come to appreciate the need for clear planning that comes out of not having my group chats with me constantly.
The feature phone was doomed from the start, since it only had a 2G connection which is going away. But then that phone broke after a rainstorm, and I got a Nokia 2720 Flip running KaiOS. It has 4G, can work as a wifi hotspot, and has a version of Google Maps that is surprisingly not-terrible. With that, I lost my only real pain points. AND I have a cool retro looking satisfyingly flippy flip-phone.
I highly reccommend it to anyone who wants to listen.
I also have a Kindle, and instead of reading on the computer I use the "Send to Kindle" extension so I can read them in depth later. It's just too hard to focus on the screen, especially because I'm usually browsing articles as a means of procrastination anyways.
People find it bizarre and hilarious when I explain my smartphone setup, but compared to a few years ago the reactions are much more understanding, because even non-tech people these days recognize that they have a problem. It has also done wonders for my attention span. I wonder if the reason public discourse has gone to shit is because people struggle to consume info longer than a tweet.
I have several smartphones but don’t use them as phones, and don’t carry them on my person. For cell service I have a dumb phone (Alcatel MyFlip) I keep on me.
I’ve operated like this for years and find no loss of convenience at all. Whatever I need a smartphone for (2FA codes, podcasts, Discord, etc.) I can do at home with Wi-Fi. Everything else I can do on a computer. The only thing mildly inconvenient is having to ask people for directions sometimes (which is really only inconvenient for them, because of their embarrassment at not being able to explain how to get to their own house).
Overall, it definitely helps with social etiquette and living in the moment. It makes you more in tune with other people.
Having to keep a smartphone on you at all times to function is a burden, instead of the other way around. It’s a burden placed on you by corporations and governments.