January 07, 2022

What

October 2021 was when I became dumb.

And by that I mean a dumbphone user. That month I picked up a Alcatel flip phone running KaiOS from Public Mobile and signed up for an extraordinarily generous 100 minute, unlimited text, 250MB of data at 3G speed plan for the low low price of $15/month (which after a $2 discount for adding a credit card came to $13 a month).

alcatelflip

Why

The reason why I decided to go dumb is I had a moment in May where I realized I was wasting way too much time on my smartphone. I would check the news on it right after waking up, I would respond to texts on dog walks, I would scroll Twitter while running errands, I would be on Instagram while watching TV…I could not get away from it, and I felt like I could not get away from it.

And this was after trying various means of not looking at it. As it stood I had made the internet browser difficult to access, uninstalled many social media apps, had adopted a minimalist skin, and had tried apps which limited how long certain apps could be open.

How I am doing it

After a couple months of trial and error I have settled on running a two phone system (my flip phone and my old smartphone). The reason for keeping my smartphone is there are a number of apps which the flip phone cannot run, such as the GreenP parking app and OneNote, and there are other apps which it can run but is far more convenient to do on a smartphone, such as Google Maps and WhatsApp. Also the advent of vaccine passports in Ontario and UCheck at UofT increases the need to carry a smartphone. One Android app I still regularly use is the Forest focus app, however I was able to use Bluestacks (an Android emulator) to run it on my laptop.

I generally take my smartphone when running errands, and may check it a couple times a day for WhatsApp messages and Instagram. Also, if it is the weekend/holiday I may use it to go on the internet. For everything else I use my flip phone. This is not quite the cold turkey smartphone quit that some try, but I have found this system works well for me, and even when I have it on me the impulse to check it is far lower than before I had a flip phone.

How does it feel

In many ways it is freeing to deny myself the option of scrolling my smartphone for most of the day. I found that I ended up appreciating walks more since I got to ‘absorb’ nature more, and I also found my mind wandering more throughout the day (in a good way). I do still feel the need to check the news, so I am probably on my laptop more than I used to be, but at least my laptop is in my office. I have found that if I am wasting time scrolling the news on my laptop it is easier to walk away from it and do something else than when scrolling on a smartphone.

I have been fairly impressed with all a flip phone can do. It has a camera (which is not great, but the low resolution gives the photos a cool effect), it can play podcasts, and I can connect it to Bluetooth devices. In a pinch I can use its internet browser (but it is so ridiculously slow that I would not want to use it very often), and Google Maps runs acceptably on it. One obvious drawback is the typing (it does not have a QWERTY keyboard), but I can always type out longer messages on my old smartphone if I need to.

For anyone battling smartphone addiction I would recommend you give a flip phone a try. The phone was only $100, and the plan is dirt cheap, so it’s a low risk way to try and kick the habit. For more information check out this Reddit on Dumbphones.