I’ve been using a flip phone as my daily driver for a while now. The smartphone is still around, but it mostly sits in a drawer until bureaucracy or banking apps force me to use it.
For me, the benefits are clear: less distraction, more focus, better sleep. But I know for many people it’s not so easy. Essential apps, social pressure, work requirements… these are real blockers.
I’d like to start a discussion (almost like an informal poll):
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If you thought about switching, what’s the single biggest thing that holds you back?
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Is it banking? Messaging? Maps? Something else?
I’m genuinely curious because if we can identify the main pain points, maybe it’s possible to work on solutions or even start a small project around it.
So: what would need to change for you to actually give a flip phone a try?
Who even makes phone calls today? Not me. I need a device that does everything but phone calls more than I need a device that only does voice.
There are devices like that. For example the iPod touch.
I still need internet service and the iPod touch was discontinued years ago.
I don’t use the phone part of my smartphone much, so thie idea of a dumbphone has no real appeal for me.
i don’t want my phone to be dumb, I want it to be open source, front to back! The issue of smartphones isn’t that its “too smart”, instead we should talk about why the control of our phones aren’t within our grasp, but on the palm of corpos and govs.
you want to use your smartphone while keeping it simple? Install less apps and disable ALL telemetry (this is where being open source comes in).
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You may as well ask me to throw away me phone entirely. I don’t carry a smartphone to make phone calls. I hate phone calls.
95% of that is spam. And an old dumbphone won’t even have auto spam detection.
I use my phone to take pictures, send those pictures, look for restaurants, navigate to those restaurants, listen to music, etc.
So what you’re asking for is to make the part I hate about phones worse, while removing all the functions I actually use my phone for.
yeah my phone is not a phone, I fucking hate the phone. it’s a computer
Maybe not a dumb phone but I would love to use a phone with an e-ink screen. I know there are some projects about this or some Chinese phones but I haven’t met an e-ink phone that I can install a custom ROM yet.
I’d like to be able to use Signal.
A flip phone/dumbphone would sort of be mutually exclusive with my use case. I use my smartphone nearly exclusively as a lightweight mobile computer for web browsing, SSHing into my server, and messaging over internet (not SMS). I rarely use the “phone” features of my phone, i.e. phone calls and SMS. So I’d be losing out over the features I do use, in favour of features I don’t use.
If you’re being distracted by your phone and a dumbphone works for you, good on you. I think most people are like me and use their phones as a small mobile computer rather than a phone though, in which case distractions are best handled with one of the many apps/browser add-ons/etc that block websites or apps.
Being forced to use a stock google android or iOS would be what drives me to use a dumb phone.
As long as I can install a custom ROM like LineageOS or GrapheneOS, I’m good.
What phone are you using?
Pixel 9 pro
It’s solving device addiction with another device. Sure it will be very interesting to investigate phone models to pick from. Indeed we are good at tricking ourselves. Creating “windows” with no phone at all works better for me.
Whatsapp. That’s the only fucking reason I’m not using a dumbphone. In Brazil, everyone uses it. Need to talk to a company? Whatsapp. Friends and family? Wpp. Book a medical checkup? Wpp.
There’s also the problem of cell phone fees being abusive when calling/messaging people from a different company.
That sounds dystopian
Dumb phones with KaiOS can have WhatsApp installed
Camera is probably the first obstacle. I’ve got a kid, and I really want to have good documentation of her growing up. If there were a dumbphone with a legit camera, that’d be a big deal for me.
After that, probably maps is the next most important thing that I want an actual smart phone for. I remember getting my first smart phone, and probably the main thing I was excited about was always being able to navigate directly to where I wanted to go.
Almost everything else is tertiary to my needs.
As someone who always had some kind of PDA (CASIO digital diary, Palm, Compaq iPaq) and switched onto the smartphone bandwagon pretty early (SonyEricsson P800/P910i, Qtek 9000, various Androids and various iPhones) … I don’t think I could enjoy the experience with a dumb phone. I love modern technology too much.
I once had a colleague that religiously only used a Nokia 3210 (the newer 3G/4G model). Which meant 160 character messages only. No emojis, no photos (as MMS were expensive). He was also the kind of person to use paper maps when driving - incl. stopping to look for alternative routes if some road was blocked or jammed. That’s definitely not for me.
The only way this could work for me would be to have some small PDA that can connect to the phone to use the Internet. And I appreciate that both devices have been merged into smartphones at some point.
I have exactly one game and exactly one 2fa app that I would meaningfully miss out on switching to a dumb pbone, outside of those two things I would genuinely consider it.
It would have to have Signal.
