Smartphone makers will soon face an unlikely competitor. Concerns about the impact of social media are driving demand for old-school Nokia brick-like handsets…
It’s a easy fix with software, exactly like flight mode they can introduce focus mode for school.
Brick is a combination of software and (add-on) hardware and imo a better solution.
My company did a similar 3rd party app on their phones for truck drivers, to cut down on driving distractions and within days they had all figured ways around the software and were back to watching videos while driving.
If people (or kids) want a way around they will find it. There have been too many examples that can be found already of them getting around similar software.
Best go with the ‘non smart’ phone to begin with the simply eliminate the issue altogether.
That looks like a 3d printed shell over some sort of scannable chip that pairs with an app on a smart phone to require a physical action to unlock the full phone experience.
A printed QR code paired with an similar app would serve the same function.
Good point. Reminded me of this alarm app, where you scan a QR code to disable the alarm:
I hope for something like the Motorola D lineup. You could take out the original battery and replace it for 4xAA batteries. That’s pretty cool.
A few months ago I was quite happy to finally win one functional handset, Motorola D170, in auction for just around €7 incl. shipping. Unfortunately, I always bring bad luck. The seller unexpectedly ended up in hospital and I got a refund.
The D170 even has a flip-out keypad cover which makes it even cooler. And all of these have extendable antennas.
A picture of D170 for illustration (not the same unit):
Otherwise the most available seems to be D520, but almost all of them are corroded and non-functional because people left batteries in them.
And they won’t work anymore with the retirement of analog years ago, 2G years ago, and now 3G for consumer use (I’m assuming that phone was analog/2G).
If I remember correctly, GSM900. The shutdown of 2G in my country is set at around 2028 - 2030, so I’d be good for a bit.
In other words, just like with my current phone that doesn’t work with VoLTE on my carrier because VoLTE is a total mess. This once again leaves me with 2G for phone calls. (Although I use LTE-only to prioritize data meaning nobody can call me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Hell, my carrier hasn’t even yet implemented USSD over IMS which means no call barring settings, no call forwarding settings, no caller ID settings, no USSD codes and just everything else that uses MMI codes. All depends on GSM.
I don’t know why it is accepted that there’s no single mandatory standard for VoLTE that would work everywhere, but I guess people’s ability to put up with BS is just going up over time.
And yes, this impacts emergency services too, with US visitors, for example, even if the devices support VoLTE at home.
In my country, they’re planning to phase out 3G, while 2G is very unclear because of just how many things rely on it, not just phones.
We still need some way to fix the endless robocall and fraud spam that we can’t even block because they’re always using a different number
I’m alwaus very nice to them, but I also firmly explain that I’ll search for anything I want all by myself.
Last caller asked if I lived in an appointment or a house (selling ev panels or heating or something I guess), I switched around and asked how he lived, after a confused but correct answer (he lived in an apartment) I asked him where he lived, mini hilarity ensued. I wished him a good day and courage because its probably not the funniest job, I think he got a small genuine happy happy, or so his voice sounded.
Have got zero calls since.
You’re lucky to get a human to call you, I only get robocalls, literally zero humans on the other side of the line, either trying to convince me to borrow money or a fraud attempt trying to convince me “a purchase was just made on your account, press 1 to confirm or 2 to talk to our support” - on the latter, a human sometimes answers when you press 2, but they deserve all the shit you can throw at them because they’re fucking fraudsters and they know it.
I block all calls except those I know.
Make phone companies legally responsible for giving thousands of new phone numbers to scammers. They have zero control on who they give phone numbers because that’s cheaper.
The sooner one of their CEOs is put in prison over that they will take immediate measures to only give phone number to legit companies.
I heard about the Light Phone recently and I think it’s a decent bridge between the old brick phones and modern smartphones. It has navigation and music functionality that a brick phone wouldn’t, but doesn’t have all the rest of the attention thieving bloat of a smartphone.
It would be nice to have music streaming capability and alternative messaging apps (Signal) and perhaps a web browser, though.
Just disable everything on your phone right now down to the essentials. If you’re on Android, there’s a lot of really minimalist 3rd party launchers like Niagara launcher that can improve the minimalist experience as well. You’d basically mimic the light phone at that point while still having every upside and be able to selectively enable and disable what you’re asking.
You don’t need to pay for an overpriced phone to take your choices away. You can find the will power to just disable it on your current phone.
The whole focus of concern about social media is on kids being exposed to material their parents don’t want them to see. I think this misses a much larger point - simply the effect social media overuse has on attention span and encouraging superficial thinking.
Scrolling through the firehose of infinite content trains people to process each item as quickly as possible and make a quick value judgement based on minimal information before moving on to the next item. This is absolutely backasswards of how kids should learn to think. It encourages binary thinking - seeing every issue as two opposite extremes - and spending as little effort as possible acquiring information before making that binary decision about who to idolize or demonize. Degrading people’s intellectual process makes them much more susceptible to suggestion and conditioning, which of course is how oligarchs want us.
