6 Months with the Unihertz Atom XL

Disappointment is a recurrent theme with getting a device meant to decrease the smartphone's hold on our lives.

There's the hipster-fare which are e-ink dumbphones sold at the price of a mid-level smartphone.

There are the feature phones which invariably have some critical feature that is missing or unreliable and which makes the device useless in practical terms.

There are the modified smartphones such as the Unihertz that fail to really provide what the user is seeking.

There are halfway solutions such as the e-ink smartphones that are coming out of China, which have their own issues.

We might conclude that just reverting to a dumbphone and being done with it is the obvious solution. But despite the moral righteousness some might derive from that choice, it's not always the ideal outcome as it mostly suits specific personality types and age ranges.

It also abdicates the possibility of using what is at its heart a minimalist and highly practical range of devices, and it allows you to avoid confronting what made your life vulnerable to browsing addiction in the first place.