Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

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I'm curmudgeonly enough that I'd tend to agree with you, however as someone who travels often I don't think I could ever give up my smartphone. I actually had a smartphone and some other similar devices well ahead of them being popular, and the reasons pretty much have not changed. Here are the things I don't have a reasonable alternative, because it's not just the capability, it's the capability backed by the Internet that is valuable:

1. Translation

2. Maps and Directions

3. Ticketing Services

4. Ride Hailing Services

5. Weather

6. Camera

7. Making calls from anywhere to anywhere

None of those are necessarily what people think of first when they hear "smartphone", but without them traveling would be a pretty difficult experience. I know firsthand, because I traveled prior to having these things. I had to deal with the expense policy at work trying to figure out how to get and handle cash in multiple countries so I could pay for a taxi and risk getting ripped off, or buy a train ticket. I had to carry around a phrase book and hope my pronunciation was close enough to get things done without offending anyone. I had to deal with paper maps, and get lost, and hope I made appointments on time. I had to roll around a wheeled pelican case with camera gear to get any decent photos, taking up precious space and making me stand out. And for the weather, well, I just looked outside and hoped I brought the right clothes.

I don't use social media, except Hacker News (if that counts). I don't really do any of the things you probably think of when you think of smartphones being problematic, but having this devices has made my life immeasurably better. So much so, that it's probably the most essential thing in my travel kit.

Really it's just social media that's terrible. If all the social media apps go away, you still get left with all the above and can contact people you know. Algorithmic recommendations and flame wars with strangers are the worst things about smartphones — and they're not limited to them either.

Yep. It's kind of annoying to see people be so fatalistic about their self control that they think the only solution is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I carry my smartphone everywhere for the useful functions detailed above, but the closest I get to social media is some idle HN commenting if I'm unexpectedly waiting around somewhere. It's really not hard to just not spend all day on Twitter of whatever. The device is just a scapegoat. It's like blaming a microwave for a poor diet, ignoring the usefulness of on-demand heating for better uses

I do resent things that require smartphone though. E.g. parking or ordering in some places. And especially if they require your device to be certified as locked down by the Google-Apple duopoly

Once you've gotten rid of a lot of the more aggressive functions of a smartphone, I don't find the tradeoffs of carrying a large, fragile glass screen worth it.

My current flip device (Sonim XP3+) is mil-spec tough (in the sense of "Is tested to a range of military standards and passes"), lasts a casual week on battery (or two, if I shut it down at night, which I frequently do), and I can use it just fine with gloves on - which isn't a problem because the usable temperature range is radically wider than smartphones too. It also has a far louder ringer and speaker than almost any smartphone out there.

But more importantly, to your second point:

> I do resent things that require smartphone though.

The way to fight this requires "not carrying a smartphone." If you obviously have a smartphone and refuse to install the apps to do [whatever], you're just being cantankerous and can be safely ignored. When you pull out a flip phone and act baffled, it really surprises people. I don't think a lot of people under the age of about 30 even realize there's anything that's not "Android" or "iOS" out there (or if they do, they're still shocked that anyone would use it). So because I object to "smartphones required," and I'm old enough/stubborn enough to help counter that world, carrying a flip phone is a way for me to help fight back against the "smartphone as default way of interacting with all reality" thing that's been creeping in for quite a few years now, accelerated with the touch-free stuff during Covid.

> When you pull out a flip phone and act baffled, it really surprises people.

The same happens when I show them my Librem 5 running PureOS and ask for a Linux app.

> I do resent things that require smartphone though.

I got trapped by this over the weekend. I had a date to a hot new restaurant in town. When we arrived, I discovered that not only do they not provide actual menus, requiring you to go to a website instead, they also don't let you order and pay except through that website (Toast).

I was livid. But I was on a date and so felt forced to smile and pretend everything was cool, and subject myself to what turned out to be a privacy policy and ToS that I would never have agreed to under any circumstances.

But lesson learned: now I need to call ahead to establishments to ask if they force their customers to use that sort of nonsense, so I won't get trapped again.

You're still stuck carrying around a device designed to collect as much of your personal data as possible. Any kind of cell phone will cause your location to be tracked (where you live, where you work, where you sleep, who you're with, etc) but smart phones are packed with more sensors and many non-social media apps are filled with ads and do everything they can to steal as much of your data as possible too

Not all smartphones are designed to collect as much of your personal data as possible. GNU/Linux phones aren't. And they have hardware kill switches to stop cell tower tracking whenever you need it.

> Really it's just social media that's terrible.

Not for me. I don't use social media (I'm even one of those few people who spend less than an hour or two per day using my smartphone at all), but smartphones are still a real problem for me.

As an aside, I know for a fact that 4 (ridesharing) is possible without a smart phone... if you speak Yiddish. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn I saw an ad for an integration between flip phones and Lyft geared towards the Chasidic population many of whom believe that it is forbidden to own a smartphone but OK to have a flip phone. I haven't dug into the internal reasoning from a Jewish legal perspective, but from the outside, it's a fascinating place to draw the line.

I also find it fascinating from an engineering perspective. I wonder what other apps they've managed to integrate into the flip phone?

The problem I've found with flip phones is that they're still smartphones, complete with apps. Just very limited smartphones.

I want an actual dumbphone, but I can't find any on the market anywhere.

Funnily enough, if you're shopping for a "kosher phone" you can actually choose between a smartphone with a limited number of apps to fit in with your religious strictures, or an actually bonafide dumb phone.

https://koshercell.org/collections/dumb-phones

Though there may be other features of a Kosher phone that don't make it a good choice for somebody who wants a dumb phone but doesn't live within a specific type of insular religious community. I'm not sure.

Oh, thank you! I will absolutely check this out.

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