On Friday, I started a 30 day experiment where I “upgraded” my smart phone to a mostly dumb flip phone. This is day 4 of that, I’m loving it way more than I thought I would.
I saw one of your earlier posts or comments about that…glad it’s working out for you! I have been tempted to do something similar. I’m practicing leaving my phone at home or in the other room at times I know I don’t need it or really want it. Started running without headphones, too, in a effort to disconnect a little more.
Thanks! So far, so good, anyway. I’m only on day 4, but liking it so far.
I still use the smartphone (on wifi) in the mornings when I let the dogs out. Mostly just to catch my daily Pokemon and play my daily word game while I drink my coffee. Then it gets put away.
Had a bit of trouble getting my work MFA moved off of it, so I still keep it semi-nearby in case some random thing decides to try push notification instead of prompting for a code, but other than that, it’s been smooth sailing.
I don’t know that I could run without music, lol, and I no longer have any discrete MP3 player that still works.
This is an intriguing idea, but how do you navigate to new places? Surely not MapQuest?
Believe it or not, before phones had GPS, I actually had a decent sense of direction 😆 (now, I can’t get out of a paper bag without GPS)
It’s got a map app and GPS which seem to work. I did replace the stock Google Maps with Organic Maps, though. Haven’t tested it beyond plotting a course to the grocery store, but that worked well enough. For the purposes of my experiment, I don’t consider that cheating since I did have maps/navigation/GPS on my flip phones in the past (though they relied on cell towers for positioning).
I figure if I commit to the dumb phone life, I’ll grab a dedicated GPS unit for my car like I used to have (assuming those still exist).
Might even consider getting a cheap Android phone and using it as an in-car navigation/music system. Then get a plan like https://tello.com that lets you pay $5/mo for just 1G of data. Idk how much it costs now adays, but I remember needing to pay for map updates on those dedicated GPS systems, so the cost may be comparable to keep a fully updated map, plus you get traffic and music with a phone.
