You. don’t. need. a. dumb. phone. to fix your social media addiction
Basically every modern smartphone has features that allow you to restrict your usage of distracting apps/websites. You can recreate a minimalistic dumb phone on your smartphone using free & open source software or your operating system’s built-in tools/features. There are a few good videos about this:
I understand why, but dumbphones aren’t good solutions for most people’s problems. They have many disadvantages, for example they don’t offer secure (encrypted) communications (except for the Punkt MP02 which has Signal support, but it also has other issues), you don’t get a proper keyboard, no touchscreen, and you often can’t even look something up on Wikipedia. You can’t listen to music/podcasts, use the phone for navigation or take notes. Most people just end up getting frustrated by a dumb phone, and switch back to a smartphone and continue wasting their time on social media. A decluttered smart phone with restrictions for social media usage is much more effective. The videos I linked in my original comment explain this pretty well.
I recently discovered an alternative to these minimalist phones. On the iPhone I am able to setup “Focus” modes. You can tune which applications give notifications while in the focus mode. So when I’m in my work focus mode I block out notifications for all apps except Outlook and Teams. Then you can also adjust the focus mode to change your Lock Screen widgets and Home Screen layout. So you can prioritize the items you want to see.
Then additionally I setup screen time limits on social media sites like Instagram. I set a 30 min limit per day. Then if I want to bypass that limit I need to make a decision to do it.
I feel like these tools have let me wrestle back control of my device usage. Now I can’t get sucked into hours long Instagram scrolling sessions.
The camera is too important for me to give up my smart phone, and I don’t want to carry a separate device just for taking photos/video.
Maybe if the came out with a feature phone that had a camera on par with a smartphone and supported syncing to google photos or immich or synology then I’d consider it.
You can get a normal android phone, then hit it in the head with a brick, remove googlr play services, don’t add an app store back, and get a minimalist launcher, the end result is what you’re looking for, and it becomes hard enough to get a new app on your phone, that its much easier to resist
What do you mean? Most people already have a suitable android phone either in their pocket or in a closet, and a cheap one is significantly less expensive than the dumb phones that are sold to people who want to stop doomscrolling
Give me a semi-smartphone. All I want is a dumb phone that has high quality music streaming, GPS, Mail, RCS messaging, calling, Bluetooth, and a modern camera. No big screen, return to T9 typing on a keypad. Just something pocketable that can take good pictures and tackle basic communication in a reliable shell.
I even love the idea of the screen being at-best preview size for photos just for framing and general composition. Where you can’t really tell the quality until you look at them later on a computer.
Idk I’m rambling but after my last app purge I’m down to just 60 apps (which includes most of the built in ones). Still feels like too many since I’ve also cut my daily phone usage down to about 90m on average. I’m kinda tired of it all.
I’ve been thinking the exact same thing. But then I think, “I need to be able to install apps like proton mail, my bank app, and Signal. But I NEED a web browser because I do a lot of personal business-related things on my phone. Well, now I’m back at just having a smartphone.”
I don’t know, I need all the functionality of a smartphone, but I want some kind of physical control to keep me off it until I actually need it for something. Mostly something that makes using it just difficult enough that it’s not worth using only because of boredom. And software controls are just too easy to turn off.
This story has been popping up every few months for about the last decade. Usually prompted by someone with something to promote (a dumb phone, a book about downtime, some course )
“My vice was Twitter… I’m kind of a news junkie, and I love to refresh it all throughout the day, and sometimes argue with people online, I guess, so it was a bad habit,” explained Stults.
Along with his partner Daisy Krigbaum, they decided to adopt a less-screen-filled lifestyle and help others do the same. “Some people just can’t function with how addictive the smartphone currently is,” Stults said.
I’ve been using a Light Phone II as my daily driver since August, and I hope I never go back to my iPhone. The transition was pretty easy since I was already “off the grid”, but I do sometimes have to toss my iPhone in my bag for things like Uber or the Starbucks app.
I’ve considered the Light Phone before but there are just some things I think it goes too far with such as lack of email and texted images. I consider these to be basic communication fundamentals and should be standard on dumbphones. It’s not like they’re closed-source software tied to specific companies.
Honestly, I don’t mind the lack of email that much since I have always preferred writing on my computer. That said, I do hate the lack of image support. A low-res black-and-white image would be better than none at all…
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