
What if you abandon your smartphone? - coffeeyesplease
https://medium.com/@sahba.sanai/switching-to-a-dumbphone-changed-my-life-ca08a18eff44
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jaclaz
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.

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tsuyoshi
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.

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sahbasanai
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.

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leethargo
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.

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soganess
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.

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pseudonymousgun
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.

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

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pseudonymousgun
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.

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vmurthy
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.

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bzb3
What do you mean with scheduled notifications? Notifications that fire in
batches every X hours? What OS allows that?

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

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Krisando
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.

~~~
sahbasanai
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.

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

~~~
eimrine
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.

~~~
sahbasanai
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".

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unsignedint
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...

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Asuchug4
Is is really possible? How do you deal with banking and 2FA? SMS are not safe.

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

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shadowprofile77
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.

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sahbasanai
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.

