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Comment by mydriasis | Hacker News Reader

Yet more ammunition for my upcoming "phone divorce". I've had my eyes on a few different "dumb phones", and I plan to eliminate my smartphone entirely. I shit you not, it was easier to quit smoking than it has been to try to quit my phone.

It's just... a waste. The thing is a waste. It's a waste of time and focus that I could be spending on my relationships, on my hobbies, etc., instead.

So. I've penned up the "divorce papers" for my phone and I, to be signed next month. This article will be an exhibit before the judge.

Now to get a little pocket change together so I can switch carriers...

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Divorcing a smartphone in this day and age is counterproductive, given all kinds of useful applications they run, like photo/video cloud backup, banking, home alarm/cameras, solar panel status, and a long etc.

I think it would be more productive to find out your time waster apps, and divorce specifically those. Social media, messaging, games, and news are the usual time devourers, they know hot to push our buttons.

Behind me, satan! :)

If there are any models you have in mind, please do share!

My real wife demands I have a GPS, so it's kind of limited me on what phone I can choose -- I need something dumb enough to be less of a distraction, but smart enough that I won't get lost in the wilderness.

For that reason, I'm really eyeing the Nokia 6300 4G. I'm in America and it's supported by lots of ( cheap! ) carriers. It has google maps and a couple of other applications built in, but it's otherwise a terrible phone all around, which makes me believe I won't be able to stand using it for long, so I'm excited to try it out. Or rather, buy it, and not try it out very much.

If you are looking for a smarter dumb phone, you might like the Sonim XP3800. I chose it because I was looking for a dumber phone that supported Signal and although the Punkt phone was sleek the experience was suboptimal.

Perhaps she could accept an apple smart tag or a very small gps device?

"Jiobit Gen 2" came up in a google search, no idea if it's any good.

"Perhaps she could accept an apple smart tag"

Yea, lets not normalize woman putting an Apple Airtag on their husbands...

My wife and I have 100% considered Airtagging each other.

Every time we're out somewhere one of us absentmindedly wanders off with a kid or two, leaving the other wondering "where did they go?"

It can be seen as distrust "like where are they",

Or trust "I know they'll only use this when its actually required"

Lots of ways to frame things, given my relationship history the more verifiable information I have the safer I feel. I will need a partner that strikes a healthy balance between asserting her own right to freedoms and empathy to the realities of my emotional state and past and how she can choose a minor sacrifice on her behalf for a major win for her partner. Afterall, isn't that what we all do in relationships?

If she's not cool with it, then cool, she's probably just not my person :) ..

Ah -- I guess I should've been a bit more specific -- by GPS I just meant "some app that can do directions when we're in a weird place", not really tracking, necessarily.

I uh.

Don't really leave the house. So, not much to track :D

Check out the Unihertz Jelly 2.

idk these days seems like a lot of couples have "share location" turned on 24/7. Don't really know how healthy that is. Really good in a emergency though...

We have it on all the time, but for us it's because we moved out to BFE and don't know our way around very well. It's very possible for us to be lost and damned.

Healthy is as healthy does. Our relationship kicks ass, so "location on" isn't a trust issue to us, it's an "oh dear, hopefully my loved one wasn't kidnapped" issue.

Healthy depends very much on the relationship, as a sibling post pointed out. I'm not a fan of the "if you have nothing to hide" argument in the general case, but in this case of my wife we have nothing private between us. In fact, its the things we share that make up the bulk of what I consider private from others. I figure that if Google, my cell provider, the government, and who knows how many other corporate entities have ready access to my location data, why not her? In practice she has more interesting and useful things to do with her time than watch me all day.

I have done pretty well with a combo of Nokia dumbphone for calls and texts, and a separate smartphone with no SIM as needed. I leave my smartphone at work or in the car when I want a break.

Only downside really is no WhatsApp but you can get a KaiOS phone that supports WhatsApp if it's essential.

Honestly the urge to constantly pull it out just passes after a couple of days. The boredom is intense but pretty soon you won't miss it and will enjoy other activities.

I also had good results with a very very cheap Android phone running Android Go. It was so slow that I just didn't want to use it for browsing. Downside is as a Dad I want to have a good camera within reach for special moments.

> I have done pretty well with a combo of Nokia dumbphone for calls and texts, and a separate smartphone with no SIM as needed. I leave my smartphone at work or in the car when I want a break.

This is my route, too. I use a Sonim XP3 for my day-to-day communications: calling and text. I have an old Xperia flashed with SailfishOS when I want a pocket computer for calendaring (I use the calendar to record memories of my kids), light web browsing, and the occasional note.

You can always just use an iPhone and turn on screen time, with tons of restrictions. You can "remove" the browser, adding apps, of course any app you want (including core ones like messaging), and keep a few useful ones like Google Maps, etc. Then have your wife or someone else set the passcode on it and bam, you have a "dumb" smart phone. If you ever need full functionality for something like a trip abroad, etc., you can have them unlock it. I do this with my wife sometimes because I don't like all the distractions, or even the distraction of resisting the urge to be distracted. Works great.

Yes! I can. But I'd rather have a phone that's dogshit from the start if I'm honest.

Plus the Nokia is like $70, haha.

I've bought several of these phones. My texting habits are relatively minimal, but I'm apparently pretty hard on T9-capable keyboards.

I bought a Sonim XP3 recently that is chunky, terrible for web browsing, and ideal for texting. One of its predecessors was featured on "Will it Blend?"[1] and only mostly blended (try that with an iPhone).

I've not destroyed anything on this phone, whereas the keyboards on my two Nokias died in less than a month.

[1]: https://piped.mha.fi/watch?v=Wt1fNKhQdKk

I like the idea of a dogshit phone, but I'd be really unhappy to lose having a good camera.

Can't you just buy a standalone GPS receiver?

I said "GPS", but I really meant "Google Maps or Waze or something" because holy hell my sense of direction is from toiletsburgh

The GPS I have in my car has similar functionality including traffic alerts that it gets over radio, but it's a bit large to be carrying around. No idea if any of the handheld ones have the same capabilities.

This sounds perfect for you:

https://sunbeamwireless.com/product/sunbeam-f1-orchid/

I have no affiliation with the company, just a satisfied customer.

http://bjornwestergard.com/notes/sunbeam-f1-daisy.gmi

I tried this with a unihertz jelly 2e. it's full android but ultra small. it didn't help it just made it frustrating, so after a month or so I went back to my old phone.

I also don't recommend the jelly 2e in particular because for some reason the only usb-c cable that's charges it effectively is the one it comes with, I couldn't find a single other cable that would charge it quickly, only trickle charge essentially...

Why not get a GPS device?

Bizarrely I didn't... even consider the possibility of that, haha.

I'd even gone as far as considering getting a decent digital camera, considering that my current camera is my phone.

The cat s22 isn't exactly a dumb phone but it is a flip with a numpad and a very small touch screen which makes it much less addictive. You can still hotspot with it and have access to apps when needed. I love mine so far

How long does the battery on something like that last?

I'm thinking of something like that and an iPad mini to tether when I need to actually use a screen, the mini would be too big to just keep in my pocket and pull out so I'll only use it for banking, maps, etc.

i dont use it much and get 2-2.5 days.

I have kept my smartphone and use that for maps (as gps still works) and music (predownloaded) in the car and occasionally around the house, but treat it more like my laptop now.

I'm a fan of the Unihertz Jelly 2. It's great for 'detoxing' from smartphone usage because it is still able to provide useful everyday functions like Google Maps, but is so small that it's infuriating to use for mindless scrolling/entertainment purposes.

How it the battery life in real world use?

It looks like the Palm PVG100 which had a bad battery life but it could be helpful to place calls when travelling

In my experience - it can provide a 'full day' of usage, possibly more if used minimally. Given that my use case is a conscious effort to minimize screen time, I haven't ever found myself worried about battery life.

I tried going back to a dumb-phone some years back. But that didn't quite work out, either.

One policy I had for a while was to remove apps that (a) I didn't want to use, or (b) I would never use and that didn't want cluttering up the phone's screen.

I have since moved on to my current system: I don't bother removing apps, I just move them to other screen-pages that I don't look at. Consequently I have a 'first-screen' that has only about half-a-dozen apps showing. *

If I can be bothered and have some time to kill, I might actually remove some apps from the phone, but generally I can't be bothered.

* It's not a huge list.

On the bottom row: phone, texts, camera

On the main screen: Settings, clock (alarms,reminders), browser, photos, calendar, notes.

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