Ask HN: Want to move to use a "dumb" phone. How to make the switch?

5 comments

• throwaway5465 1 hour ago
  A take on this to add - the absolute ease of this might depend on your social enviornment.

  Make a list of mobile apps you use. For each of these, identify the web or other substitute soluti9n.

  If there is no substitute, you might need a smartphone. Is the solution to 5his keeping one in a box, for example.
• oneearedrabbit 3 hours ago
  Cold turkey. More than seven years ago, on my way home, I stopped at T-Mobile and bought a random flip phone. I still own that same phone. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21929194

  Just a few minor updates to my original post:

    - Low-res photos are perfectly fine for my purposes
    - I don't need Google Maps when I'm on the go
    - Quick fact checking is not important
    - One day, I ripped off the band aid and migrated all auth keys to Yubikey
    - Tethering is occasionally useful
  

  Edit: some things never change--I still haven't learned how to format a bulleted list here.
• rickcarlino 2 hours ago
  I think it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do this. There are so many things now that simply don’t have good non-mobile alternatives, like the maps and authenticators you mention. “Uninstall the apps and turn off data” seems like the most attainable option in this thread.
• fuzzfactor 1 hour ago
  Maybe think about what it was like before they were everywhere.

  Peoples' recollections might not be that accurate, and watching old TV shows may not help much, but think what it means to you and how you would thrive like so many people did and many still can.

  Now with the smartest of phones you can put your communication on steroids and do more other things by far, but just because you can doesn't mean you should.

  I never even got a cellphone until I had been in business for over a year, then it was only because I wanted clients to be able to reach me 24/7. Decades ago they were already popular but not really common yet.

  When I got my first smartphone they were still monochrome and just got you on the internet as a wireless dial-up modem, connecting by the built-in IR sensors to your laptop's little port before there was USB which became available in later years.

  And it was pretty good because it was usually way faster than 56K, which most people didn't even get when they had a premium land-line modem.

  But it was also pretty expensive by the minute so only useful when there was just no landline available.

  So it's quite easy for me to refrain because I'm old enough to remember how it was before these were even here.

  Eventually I had a Sony smartphone in the flip-phone format which was way more capable than the iPhone was, but it was decades and calls and text were still enough to keep me busy so I never had time for any apps on the small screen, especially when I was long used to having the full internet on my x86 laptop whenever I want.

  I kept my final Sony-Ericsson as long as could, and one of the nicest features was it was not Android nor iOS, but eventually all its frequencies were discontinued.

  So got a run-of-the-mill touchphone not that many years ago for the first time, and Android is worse than I thought.

  The experience is so "rewarding" that it's even easier reverting to how it was before there were even cellphones at all, which I also remember well.

  So most of the time it doesn't even come with me, just leave it sitting there on the desk at home or office and mainly carry it in between, or in a vehicle if I'm going to be gone a long time.

  Touchphones are so bulky (and delicate) compared to everything I was accustomed to, that it's a drag to carry around anyway, and ends up more so than ever, without planning, back to serving more like a good old land line stuck to the desk than anything else.

  So that's the switch I made and it was no effort at all, just let nature take its course :)
• mrKola 3 hours ago
  Uninstall all the apps. Turn data off.