The dumbphone boom is real
newyorker.comI tried a dumbphone but it was a frustrating experience.
I recently bought myself a cheap old Android device and installed LineageOS on it. I then removed the play store and browser, and installed a handful of apps that are useful and that I don't get sucked into (personal email, whatsapp, maps, kindle). If I need to (e.g. for a trip) I can load the browser and whatever apps back on
It's the only thing that has worked _for me_ to stop randomly scrolling through rubbish when I'm bored, after having tried parental controls etc. on an iPhone
My aversion to smart phones has always been two-fold:
1. I don't like being interrupted. Land lines drove me crazy when the phone would ring unexpectedly (and it was often telemarketers). So in the early days of people starting to buy cell phones, my view of them was that I would be carrying around this thing that would constantly make noise and interrupt me wherever I went. So I default hated mobile phones in general for the longest time.
2. Once I finally bought a cell phone, and I was observing how much people were using them in general, I felt like it was a device that I didn't really control. On the desktop I use Linux and have since the late 90s. I'm a "power user" who likes to customize everything, use as much FOSS software as I can, I loathe bloatware and don't like sending my data to remote servers. So I really only used a smart phone to text my family and occasionally use a web browser if I was out in public and needed to look something up.
As for #1, I realized that smart phones in general have a killer feature that landlines never did: you can set your default ring tone to silence and then give people you actually care about a custom ring tone.
And for #2, I eventually bought a Google Pixel and installed GrapheneOS. Now I feel less hatred of the device. I still don't use a smart phone as much as most people do, but I feel like it's mine and I'm in control of it. There's no bloatware or spyware, I install the FOSS apps that I want to use and I customize the thing to my liking. It feels like running Linux on my desktops ... I'm the user & the master of the machine. It exists to serve me, not the other way around.
If I didn't use my phone as an mp3 player, reach for a web browser occasionally or temporarily install proprietary apps when I'm on vacation (Uber, My Disney Experience etc.) I'd probably get a dumb phone myself.
I've done basically the same thing, but without lineage involved. Most / all of what you say there can be achieved with stock Android. One can download F-droid, disable the play store and google services, disable 15 other things, disable the stock browser, and do the same little trick of having no browser, and then easily downloading one occasionally if there's an actual need, then re-deleting. This works for me if I have it as a rule that I never re-enable the stock browser.
Not suggesting you do this, your approach is better I would say. Just for anyone reading, it is possible to do something very similar with a standard Android phone, and roll back if required. I only have a few apps from F-droid installed, and never feel the lack of something. Used OpenStreetMaps once or twice when in a new city for navigating offline with a downloaded map, for example.
Thanks - that is a good point. I mentioned lineage only to say I was initially put off because I didn't want to spend lots on a new phone; but this way I was able to get a 2018 model running the latest version of Android.
After some more research, I think it is possible to achieve the same thing on iOS using management profiles.
Do you consider HN scrolling through rubbish? I ask because that's my "doomscroll", but I feel I get value from it
I've seen the light phone or phones like it.
I think the biggest thing about the smart phone is important apps like on-call, office reimbursement/receipts, chat applications such as WhatsApp or GroupMe, and the camera. Were it not for these, I might switch. Also I do light reading/research on my phone, which I would miss.
I have recently migrated most of those “important” apps to an old iPhone that has no SIM card
My interrupt driven life is segregated to a WiFi-only device and I am available most of the day. However the rest of the day is my own and I have a barrier to divide the two.
I am still weaning myself away from link/discussion sites like HN (Gen AI is making this easier) but ditched other social media a decade ago and have had no regrets at all.
There really is something about returning to a “slow” lifestyle. Read more long form media. Listen to albums in their entirety. Go for a walk with zero notifications or distractions. Take time, be bored. It’s better for you.
Stop letting your life and worldview be controlled by some algorithm that is not acting in your best interest.
I think we will look back on the decade or so post-smartphone and realize that the never ending feed was the most impactful innovation, and it didn’t do us any good at all.
> Also I do light reading/research on my phone, which I would miss.
Same. I particularly like queuing up items to read when I'm on transit, in a waiting room, standing in line, etc. It helps me both be more patient during those odd 3-10 minute blocks of downtime and read a few things that I might not otherwise take the time to read.
I suspect the light phone could fill this roll for me, as far as the reading is concerned.
I had a dumbphone for two years, it was fine.
For the past two years though, I've been using just an Apple Watch, which I was able to connect my old phone number to. It has maps, texting, calling (works best via bluetooth), weather, heart rate monitoring, alarms, email, sports scores, and some music apps. When attached to my wife's phone plan, it costs me $5 per month for all service.
I think the unfortunate reality of dumbphones is that of the folks searching for dumbphones, we all have fairly specific ideas on which features we want and which ones we don't, but there are only like 5 reasonable options available, and most don't hit the mark for many of us. If you want good maps, that rules out many. If you want a camera, that would rule out the watch like I use. If you want reasonable texting ergonomics that isn't speech-to-text, that rules out pretty much all of them
I think a watch is indeed a better 'companion' for people that want to detox from screentime. I do find Apple is hesitant to make it act as a primary driver. I find myself needing my iPhone too much for my liking. Hopefully this will change in the future.
I want the connectivity, I just don't want to... - carry 2 devices. - have a media consumption device with me all the time
I imagine the profit on a Watch dwarfs that from an iPhone, so they're leery to kill the golden goose.
And they've prioritized iPhone >> MacBook, so they're likely not interested in encouraging watch + laptop uses.
Can you tell me more about your watch use? I wanted to do something like this, but I got the impression that even if you get an Apple watch with a SIM card, you still would practically need an Apple phone paired with it.
Yeah for sure! So you sort of need a phone paired with it, but only as in you need a family member (or someone on your phone plan) to have an iPhone, but the watch owner themselves doesn't actually need any other phone that the watch.
It's called "Family Setup": https://support.apple.com/en-us/109036, and it lets me use the watch in what is sometimes called "Standalone mode" or "Companion mode" in different apps.
If you go down this route, know that many apps in the app store will not be downloadable, as they don't support "Companion mode", but I can still get everything I personally needed just fine.
As far as the SIM goes, I think I'm using an electronic sim card? I'm not positive
I wanted a dumbphone so I could avoid the crapware in android. But then I saw the Punkt MP01 with it's 4G hotspot and lust filled my heart.
So then I had a smartphone with android crapware and a very bad UI.
It did keep me from doomscrolling at the bus stop, so there is that.
I suspect the "iPhone of modern dumbphones" hasn't been invented yet. My gut feeling is there are about as many reasons people want to use dumbphones as there are people using dumbphones so getting "one dumbphone to rule them all" the same way the apple and Samsung have is a ways off.
Jobs did his thing with the iPhone. He took a complex and indecipherable phone market and removed pretty much all choice.
It worked brilliantly and if your phone is not a featureless slab of glass you have an insignificant niche of a market.
This idea of “one dumb phone to rule them all” is what every carrier in the world was trying to do in 2005 and we ended up with hundreds of ambitious and doomed designs.
What I miss most about the pre-iPhone era is that I didn’t think about my phone unless I needed to communicate with someone in my real life.
The dumb phone isn’t making a huge comeback. People escape into their smartphones.
But I appreciate this movement that in return offers us an escape from the smartphone
> ...every carrier in the world was trying to do in 2005 and we ended up with hundreds of ambitious and doomed designs...
However, one could also note that such an admittedly messy period was needed to arrive at a more fit approach - not so different i suppose conceptually to evolution in general. Also, i suppose that to Apple's credit, their iphone popularized the concept of "phone apps" - whether those exist as websites or actual mobile apps as we know them today - and that explosion of mobile apps triggered more evolution...i feel however that evolution has stagnated a bit and more recently there is an emergence of different changing environment, which may trigger either a new evolutuon...or who knows maybe create a more permanent a split - where one set of users will stick to the conventional smart phones, while the other fork of the split will create a new market of new type of phone users (sort of like current dumbphones but with at least a little more functionality)...and i woiuld guess mobile providers - both manufactureres as well as cellular providers - will choose to meet the market demands or choose to ignore this market. I for one hope to be a customer of some sort of smart phone that is NOT how the current smart phones offerings exist on the current marketplace. I myself want a smaller phone, but i also still like using websites and a few other "smart" features (e.g. camera, mapping, etc.)...and i also want that phone to last many years (do not want to buy a phone every 2 years)...etc. ;-)
I always wanted a pocket-sized computer. But I never wanted a pocket-sized computer with a built-in telephone. Strange idea.
Some folks got to experience the world before telephones were portable, and also before mobile telephones came with general purpose computers attached ("before"). To anyone born after, the idea probably seems perfectly natural.
The case for carrying a mobile phone on one's person wherever they go is compelling, for emergency reasons alone. But the case for one carrying a portable computer wherever they go, not so much.
Those generations born before might remember that as kids we used to have handheld video games, with tactile buttons. Of course, kids wanted to bring these games everywhere. But no responsible parent let their kid bring them _everywhere_.
I used a string of KaiOS devices mostly as my primary device from ~2017-2023. I loved the battery life, the lack of distraction, the size and portability. I liked KaiOS because I could still chat via Facebook, Whatsapp, check email, maps, when I needed to. But it was annoying enough that I didn't spend much time in them. I loved/hated the physical T9 keys. I could text while not even looking, but it definitely was never as fast as a smartphone. If the predictive text was better it may have worked out.
The problems are 1. The camera. I had multiple devices with different levels of camera but it's truly a marvel of our world that I can carry around something that takes cinema-quality photos immediately. Dumb phones do not have good cameras. It's almost useless to even include one, I mostly just used it to remember specific posters/signs like parking.
2. The 'requirement' to use smartphone apps. Certain bank logins need an authenticator app. The Canadian border required Arrive can. Some concerts use apps for tickets. Yes, there are workarounds. Yes, it's possible to live without these.. But I can tell you from firsthand experience it's getting harder and harder, more annoying. This is actually simultaneously the reason I stuck with it so long, as a sort of protest against the direction our society is going.. but alas it didnt quite last.
3. Job changed, I needed to access discord while working at a bar. I realized I was carrying BOTH phones around for almost all of 2023, using my dumb phone for calls and texts, and my smartphone with WiFi to run discord and a few other apps. It felt stupid and was annoying so I bit the bullet and switched my sim to the smartphone.
4. I literally listen to less music. The music player apps were all garbage and it's no longer 2007 so it's not really fun to maintain a library of mp3s on a device. None of the KaiOS devices support streaming music.
If someone comes out with a small "dumb" phone with maps, Spotify, a great camera, and support for signal, Whatsapp, maybe FB messenger, and a basic browser, with good predictive typing and an OS that doesn't lag, I would pay a premium for it.
Edit: one of the most annoying side effects is when I'm in public trying to check maps or write a text and suddenly everyone around me asks "omG is that a flip phone???" and I am not a rude person so I maintain a slight conversation while they pry and ask to see it and show their other friends. Slows down the process of quickly using my phone quite a bit
i have a phone with KaiOS. The trouble I have is texting. Everyone wants to text but if I need to reply it takes three different button for each letter. I am looking some t writing a custom keyboard. does any have any ideas?
Edit: Maybe (just now looking at KaiOS development stuff) I could write a morse code keyboard.
> So many hours of each day are lived through our portable, glowing screens, but the Internet isn’t even fun anymore.
I'm in the process of "de-apping" my entertainment: I replaced TV/Streaming with a stack of DVD's and hard drives, and Music apps with cassette tapes.
I'm thinking there's something to the "tactile experience" that vinyl lovers want from their collection, but I just don't have that much room...
Things like Taxis/Maps/Work will be impossible to remove from my smartphone, but this way at least my free time is fully mine again
To recharge my EV on the go, unfortunately, I need a macrospy device, aka smartphone [1] but I normally do not use it as a phone, and I answer calls from it only on the go, my phone numbers for 99% of my contacts are on my home pbx and calls get redirected only when I'm on the go. Only very few in my family know my "mobile" phone number. For me it's essentially:
- a GPS device for car navigation
- a portable hotspot when needed
- rarely a quick browser looking for basic information (like a phone number of a shop)
- rarely a MUA if I need to see, not compose, my mails on the go.
That's is. I've tried a KaiOS phone but it's just a bad hybrid, so I quit it.
[1] macrospy as opposed to classic micro-spy (bugs) that was bought and deployed with significant costs, potentially aleatory reliability and potentially short lifespan by those who want to spy a target. These days PR are able to do the inverse: an expensive and very visible device, bought and kept up by the spied target to enjoy being profiled...
Isn't this a damning condemnation for the tech world? Can anyone think of another product that was so popular and then people started abandoning it for their own mental health? This sounds like drugs!
We created the most influential hardware device in the past 30 years (smartphone) and within 5 years it was used to weaponize human vulnerabilities (high jacking dopamine, porn, propaganda, etc...) and has had a huge negative impact on our young people so much so that social media* is now being compared to smoking. I think the takeaway is "Don't trust anything this industry makes because eventually they'll use it to extract profits and harm you in some sneaky way". Kinda like how most people rolled their eyes when tobacco companies push vapes as "safer".
Most of my non tech friends are starting to look at the tech industry like the oil industry. Greedy, hurting society for profits, and delusional. This is sad because most people I work with are amazing and great people who build fantastic products.
* I think social media would be a fraction of what it is today without the smartphone
This is a growing chorus indeed, and I see no reason to believe that it'll die down.
Big Tech does indeed resemble Big Oil, plus "I'm in this picture and I don't like it" (for many folks on this site).
My love for the dumbphone has nothing to do with disconnecting from distractions. I just want a small fucking phone again.
i love my iphone 12 mini for this very reason. It's still small enough to fit 'mostly' comfortably in my pocket, even a shirt pocket. I hate how large most phones are now and everyone i know that sees my phone makes fun of me/it. I just don't get why (or how) one uses such huge devices as their phones now.
The reason the market has shifted to larger phones is that for many people outside the HN crowd, phones are their _primary_ computing device.
Reading books, watching videos, social, etc. but also interacting with webforms, etc. are all easier on a larger device and screen.
Phones are more of a content consumption devices than a communication device for probably the majority of users; a bigger screen directly makes it a better content consumption device, even if you sometimes need to adjust your grip to tap something on the top edge of the screen.
A friend of mine has an iPhone 12 mini. She has to carry a powerbank the size of the phone around. Thus it is bigger than my iPhone 13 Pro. YMMV.
Depends a lot on what she does with it, doesn't it?
My friend with a 12 mini complains it's still too large and basically always needs to have a purse with her since it won't fit any of her pockets. Never complained about battery life and doesn't cart any external power source, either.
Different friend had one of those cases with integrated battery packs around her iphone pros. She spends her days on the phone, though...
As another data point, my iphone 7 had basically enough battery to last me through the day until last year. I changed it because the battery was bulging, and at the end the screen was hanging on to the body by next to nothing.
Love my iphone 12 mini too. I was so disappointed when I found out they wouldn't be releasing mini versions anymore
My daily driver is a Unihertz Jelly Star: full android 13, but on a 3" screen and it fits in a watch pocket. Probably not for everyone, but I love it and maybe you would too...
I went on their website and immediately got a bot chat window and three notification sounds I never asked for. How unpleasant.
The phone sounds great though!
With bezels that big, they may as well have included a larger screen
Edit: And it's twice the thickness of a normal phone
Exactly. I've wanted a small phone for years now. I even bought the Qin 3 mini but the hardware is a bit crap (and I'm suspicious of the software)
Now I have an S23 which together with the Zenfone is considered the only real "small" phones, and yet they're still almost the size of a normal phone
My first Afghanistan deployment, I left with an old nokia and came back to find the world had invented smart phones. My second deployment, I left with a new iPhone 4, and came back to find people walking around with tablets.
I miss my iPhone 5, that thing was so tiny. It was amazing.
>and came back to find people walking around with tablets
Well, if the majority of people voluntarily chose with their hard earned cash to walk around with tablets instead of small phones, then it's just the free market at work, and there's not much you as an individual can do about it.
Apple in the days of Steve Jobs was notoriously opinionated about small phones being the best and preaching on how they're much better for ergonomics, as a response to the assault of Androids with much larger OLED screens, but even they shamelessly caved in and adopted the larger screens against their own previous rhetoric, since you can only piss against the wind for so long before you get wet(as in loose sales and market share to competitors who offer what customers really want, larger screens).
> If people voluntarily chose with their hard earned cash to walk around with tablets instead of small phones, it's just the free market at work.
Just surprising. From my perspective, I missed all the marketing. I remember getting off the plane and someone pulling out their massive android and me being like WTAF is that?
Maybe I like smaller phones since I missed out on being told I wanted bigger phones on TV. By the time I got back, nobody was trying to convince me I wanted bigger, just cameras and stuff.
>I just want a small fucking phone again.
Foldables are now the best of both worlds now if you're open to this relatively niche tech and some of the compromises it brings.
Too thick and heavy, compared to how small and light smartphones used to be.
What do you realistically expect?
None of the major phone makers will go back to making 2009 era sized phones just to cater to you and the 3 other people who like them, because the market has spoken with their wallets unilaterally in favor of large phones, hence why most manufacturers have dropped small phones altogether, whether you like it or not.
Since nothing is ever perfect at satisfying everyone, choices in life are always about compromise, and foldables are currently the best compromise for those who value small sizes without sacrificing usability of larger screens.
Another one of the 3 other people here who like small phones.
This exact same economic model of an oligopoly only offering larger and more expensive models has been done before. I'm pretty sure the big 3 automakers were also saying that 'the market has spoken', right up until the Japanese ate their lunch.
>only offering larger and more expensive models
Where? The phone makers have been also shipping smaller phones until they had to scale back production and cut them out completely because nobody was buying them. You and two other people buying them is not a market share worth catering for and keeping production lines busy for.
You have to accept you're a minority here and not a profitable one.
Cheap phones are also large now BTW, so nothing to do with pushing expletive models. Even 100 Euro phones are still over 6 inches. Because that's what the majority wants, large phones, and voted with their wallets.
The iPhone mini sold more units than some Android models, and for example magnitudes more than the Fairphone. Apple decided it’s beneath them, but that doesn’t mean it’s not economically viable.
Comparing iPhones sales to Fair phones is like apples to oranges.
I disagree that foldables are the best compromise, because they are thicker folded than a regular smartphone, which is inconvenient for pocketing, and what’s worse they are heavier, while the screen is also not smaller than a regular phone unfolded.
For example, the Samsung Flip5, one of the smallest foldables, is 15.1 mm thick folded and weighs 187 g, while the regular iPhone 15 is only 7.8 mm thick and weighs only 171 g, while also being marginally narrower (0.3 mm). For those who find the regular iPhone to large, too wide, and too heavy, the Flip5 is not an improvement.
Just for comparison, the iPhone SE 2016 was a full 13 mm (or 18%) narrower, less than half as thick as the Flip5 folded, while only being 45% taller (or 25% shorter than the Flip5 unfolded), and weighed only 113 g.
Small phones are also about “thumbability”, that is, the ability to be used one-handed with the thumb being able to comfortably reach across the screen. The foldables are of zero help there.
>Small phones are also about “thumbability”, that is, the ability to be used one-handed with the thumb being able to comfortably reach across the screen. The foldables are of zero help there.
Foldables have the external screen for "thumbability". And the large internal display for contant consumption and multitasking. Therefore best compromise.
Yes, I will slowly have to adapt and move to larger and larger phones once my 13 mini dies (hope this will still take a looong time).
This wont stop me from complaining how ridiculous these phones have become, even foldables are just a crude hack from my POV.
What about durability? I've heard a lot of "one speck of dust gets in the wrong place and the screen self-destructs" stories.
Nothing is ever bulletproof, and if you search enough you'll hear horror stories about non foldable phones too, but everyone I know with recent foldables hasn't had durability issues.
I was at a carrier shop activating a new line and someone was returning their foldable - it just died on her. Rep was on hold for an hour trying to get approval to return.
Really seems too bleeding edge for general public.
No they're the opposite. I want a small screen that I can reach the entire thing with one thumb. Not a screen that folds out to be twice as big as I want
> I want a small screen that I can reach the entire thing with one thumb
You mean just like the outer screen on foldables?
Foldables are just as big as regular phones when folded. The Google Pixel Fold is the same size are most Pixel phones.
Yes, small is the best. Currently I use a Palm Phone which is the perfect size. But of course discontinued. The market needs a lot more choices in that size.
Got my kids dumb phones for basic calls & texts only - their only really meaningful gripe is that sending texts using T9 is very very slow.
I do want them to text friends and us for coordinating. Otherwise, they do feel ostracized for not having a smartphone or Apple Watch.
This has worked pretty well for me on iPhone:
1. Pacific Block app to block images and videos on the web
2. AdBlock Pro
3. Text Font Extension to make all fonts the same on Safari
4. Delete all social media apps
5. Block social media URLs
Surprisingly getting rid of pictures, videos and fonts goes a long way towards making the web less addictive.
Do many dumb phones include whatsapp? I think for a lot of europeans that might be an issue
Not for me, I've NEVER had WA and I regularly tell anyone: "to reach me you have mails for long async stuff, phone calls for quick/urgent/important topics, with various VoIP numbers to match you country/phone plan, you do not need anything else".
People tray to force others on walled gardens must be LART-ed enough to understand.
I'm sure you do, but I'm also sure that a lot of people just don't bother contacting you because of it.
I try to use signal instead of whatsapp wherever possible, but I think a lot of people just wouldn't bother if I only used signal
I quite like a smartphone. But I am capable of limiting my use.
Perhaps that's the problem no?
If enough people do have a problem with a thing, the cause could either be seen as the thing, or human nature. But we aren’t changing human nature, so we can only really go after the thing.
Also we can work on self-improvement
(sorry, this is long. i took a few minutes to write this down.)
I never owned a Google/Apple device and never used one for more than a few minutes in my life.
I currently use my pinephone exclusively since my +15y old 2G dumb phone broke last year (i broke it while fiddling with it, duh. it would likely have lasted another 15y. it still had its first battery which lasted 5d with moderate phone usage). Before pinephone i used a +15y old 2G flip phone (it had its first battery and lasted +7d) and i loved it, which replaced my htc hd mini and htc hd2 around 2015 (fun times, sigh).
I hate the modern concept of phone and observing the long-lasting effect of addiction on people's social and mental capabilities reminds me how important a mind free from distraction and addiction is. I know it takes a lot of self-discipline to own such a thing and not get sucked into all the dark patterns that lurk you into addiction and drain your brain (and pocket, ultimately, as this is what it's made for).
Every now and then HN features some "i quit my smart{phone,watch} and it was hard" post and commenters romanticize about it, yet i doubt most of them grasp the real implications. Every now and then I whitness the effect of detox/cold turkey with "smart"{watch,phone} on people (usually children, which cant't know better. they are exposed to digital media way too much with way too little guidance/regulation by adults who are exposed too much and who don't seem to know better as well) and it's the classic symptoms.
Unlike other additctive things, while addictive, modern phones seem useful/beneficial at the same time, which is used to justiy excessive use. It's a fallacy, i don't see it. Software run on these devices is not meant to be useful (in the generic sense) but to keep/make you a customer (and they use lot of psy trick).
Do I miss out on things because i don't take part in the "modern" way of interacting with people/companies/state? due to my self-impossed "accessibility issue" (not using "apps", that is)? Sure, but I think * people forgetting my birthday because their facebook app didn't remind them (because I don't provide data to facebook) are dumb, * banks who don't provide any other second factor for auth than their Google/Apple apps are dumb, * (nothing to complain about state here yet, but will probably come later)
To me this just reveals the brokenness of some aspects of social interaction and economy as the exclusion very well applies to elderly people as well (who even struggte with using a computer, so they miss out on even more that can't be done in a purely offline way).
And i'm not even taking into account the macroscopic political aspects of driving social life, state affairs and economy more and more into the walled garden duopoly that is Google/Apple.
Nowadays, Nokia branded HMD dumb phones are available (i have a 4G 2660 flip here, works ok'ish).