Is a Dumber Phone a Better Phone?

The article uses the word &quot;phone&quot; about 40 times. Based on my own usage patterns, I don&#x27;t even have a phone. I have a portable computer. I happen to use it to make phone calls a few times every week. I use my desktop to make video calls a few times a month, but I don&#x27;t call that a phone.<p>We all know a smartphone is a computer, and I&#x27;m not trying to be pedantic about the words we use, but I think our insistence that these devices are &quot;phones&quot; is skewing the conversation. We keep complaining about our phones taking up too much of our time, or distracting us, or manipulating us. None of our phones are doing any of those things. But it turns out that having an internet-enabled computer in your pocket at all times can be very distracting. Are we really surprised?

This is a nearly perfect PR hit. Controversial question in the title, about a product category nearly everyone uses, with the product name in the first sentence, for an indie-funded startup, challenging Apple and Google and social media, published in the NYTimes in the middle of the week.<p>Short of an endorsement from Barack Obama, I don&#x27;t know how this could have been any better for them. Well done.

I&#x27;ve just abandoned using a smartphone in favor of a $20 dumb Alcatel phone that can only do three things: calls, alarms, and an FM radio. It doesn&#x27;t even vibrate.<p>I offloaded every other functional use into my tablet, in this case an iPad Pro.<p>The phone battery lasts for days on standby; I can drain my tablet battery without concern. I can leave the tablet at home if I want to stay light or if I want to stay focused on my activity.<p>I&#x27;ve been doing this for two weeks now, and I most likely will not change back.

When my Nexus 5 dies, I plan on going back to my old Sony-Ericsson feature phone. Just before I retired it I put in a bigger battery. I can fit 3 of them in any pocket I care to choose. It ran 2 weeks on Standby before giving up the ghost. As for functionality. I&#x27;m old. Voice&#x2F;Text&#x2F;Camera. I&#x27;ve gone for years and years without having a data plan. I typically xfer about 10 texts a month and I might get 1 or two voice calls. Which leads to my next point; I even managed to get rid of my cell plan. I ported my number to my employers plan, he covers it all. I&#x27;ve got unlimited everything on the corporate account. So I save about $500&#x2F;yr. Do you think I&#x27;m gonna invest double that in a new phone? Pfft.<p>Different strokes for different folks, but I wouldn&#x27;t miss it at all.

I have strongly considered this. I&#x27;m on a Windows Mobile device right now, and as long as security updates keep coming monthly, I&#x27;ll stay here, but eventually I am going to need a new solution.<p>Android is an unacceptable security risk, and I am not super fond of Apple or their limits. I was considering switching wholly to an LTE-enabled Windows tablet (I have a Surface, but I&#x27;ve been eyeing a Latitude) and then just getting a dumbphone for phone calls and texts.<p>As a Windows Mobile user, I&#x27;ve actually found not having the latest of every app available on my phone kind of refreshing. Other people seem annoyed I can&#x27;t join them on the latest app, but it&#x27;s a perfect excuse not to download said app.

This might sound ignorant but I really don&#x27;t get it. I realised a smart phone was eating up my time so I weened myself off a lot of social media and uninstalled a bunch of apps and haven&#x27;t looked back. I use Signal and Whatsapp to talk to a few friends, listen to music and read the news. Thats about it.

I went 2 weeks without a phone, gps, &amp; online capabilities away from home due to breaking my old Moto X Pure and not having enough money to buy a phone. It was a great experience and now I&#x27;m trying to shift everything over to a dumb phone or even just a hotspot.<p>I didn&#x27;t need GPS, I just looked up where to go before I left home or work and caught busses&#x2F;trains that run every 10-15 minutes. If I absolutely needed online access quick I would stand outside of a starbucks or another restaurant&#x2F;store I knew had WiFi and use my tablet or laptop. I purchased a $25 original Zune for off the grid FM and music. I learned quickly how to find &amp; create alternatives to my phone and those 2 weeks were some of the best of my life.<p>I really noticed how our population always has it&#x27;s head down with a total addiction to our phones. I felt isolated at Reddit group meeting where everyone would take 5 minutes to just check their notifications and everyone would have their heads down while I was just sitting there watching everyone and eating.

Biggest thing for me keeping a smart phone is the hi-res camera ability. I&#x27;m not carrying a separate camera around<p>Second would be Spotify, and Podcasts.

I really love all of the things that I can do with my smartphone these days that I&#x27;d never have been able to do with an older device (trying to even browse the Internet on a phone that I owned as recently as five years ago was <i>painful</i>), but I do miss a certain amount of reliability and hardiness of the older devices. Maybe nostalgia plays in a bit here, but I think that the move away from embedded device to general-purpose computer brought with it a lot of the downsides of the latter, along with the upsides.<p>As nice as it is to be able to watch an HD video stream on my pocket-sized computer on a stretch of rural highway halfway from nowhere, I don&#x27;t always trust my phone to be able to, like, dial 911 when it really counts, and that&#x27;s a little scary.

I’ve got my last smartphone. I’ll use it until it dies or Apple abandons it.<p>I’ve come to the conclusion I’d rather spend the money on a hobby instead.<p>Im also getting really fucking annoyed at how much stuff is broken for the amount of money I spent too.

I&#x27;m still using my &quot;dumb phone&quot; from 2010. I like it cause it has a physical keyboard, a long battery life, and I can drop it without worrying about breaking the screen. Plus I don&#x27;t have to worry about the privacy issues that come from apps collecting data.<p>Honestly the only feature I feel like I&#x27;m missing out on is GPS. But I&#x27;ve actually found that not having GPS improves my sense of direction, since I force myself to actually learn the map of my surroundings instead of just always relying on the phone.

I bought my first smartphone a couple of months ago - always preferred small cheap dumb phones. They did fine for calling and texting, which was all I wanted.<p>But the world changed on me! I noticed that over time people were sending me longer and longer texts, and it was becoming difficult to communicate with thumb-button texting.<p>If things reverted to how they should be (anything over 5 words should be an email or a call, please) I would happily go back to a dumb phone.

I now only use a huawei watch 2 with LTE as my only phone. I do not pair it with a smart phone.<p>It allows me to use google maps, call an uber and see my upcoming appointments by syncing with google.<p>But I can&#x27;t check my email, facebook or the news, or other websites.<p>This means it is not distracting, but I have the really useful bits from a smart phone.<p>The only problem is battery life, and the fact that sometimes it needs to talk to a synced device (I use my zte projector -the os thinks its a phone)

People would be better off if they turned off the notifications. Even better would be if notifications were at first off, rather than on. Your phone should ring for calls and beep for text messages, and that&#x27;s about it. Well, it should buzz if you set an alarm. But it should not interrupt you for an email or post on Facebook. Each app you install has all notifications on at first too. I think it would be healthier for all to be off. On first launch, the new app pops up a screen with checkboxes for each kind of notice, with all unchecked. You have to put a check in each one yourself.<p>Other than that, the only problem I have is that the average screen is too big. The right balance is about 4&quot;.<p>I like having all these things in one device: map, flashlight, camera, calculator, walkman, encyclopedia, newspaper. Then again I am not tempted to open it while driving.

The Light Phone 2 features are <i>very</i> poor[0].<p>Any dumb mobile phone from mid 2000s has those that are guaranteed in [1], they also don&#x27;t run a modified Android but a bespoke locked down OS, cost less (Light Phone 2 is available for $300 as preorder on IndieGoGo and MSRP seems to be $400), have a physical keyboard, some games, colorful display, email, etc.<p>There are even some not so bad smart phones that cost less than $200 or $300.<p>I&#x27;d also expect things like calculator, GPS, unit and currency converters, weather, dictionary, directions, maps, etc. to definitely be in since they don&#x27;t fight for attention and are pure utility tools that one only uses when absolutely needed, not to procrastinate.<p>I also own an old 8 GB black Creative Zen Style 300 media player[2] from like 2010 or 2011 that is like 7x3x1 cm, cost me like 180-190 PLN (22% or 23% of that is VAT) or so at the time and it decimates Light Phone 2 with regards to almost all non-phone non-online features.<p>I&#x27;d consider myself as audience for a featureful utilitarian dumb phone but not for something like Light Phone.<p>I wish there was an ARM flip phone (I love these as long as the hinge is good and the plastic thick), with physical keyboard (I love them when they&#x27;re good), dual SIM, 1 or 2 GB of RAM, few GB of storage, SD card, low res software rendered displays (main one and one on the back when flip phone is closed) that you could code yourself against almost bare metal in pure C, calling some built in APIs when you want to make a phone call, use data transfer, access storage, etc. to truly own and personalize every aspect of it.<p>[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiegogo.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;light-phone-2-design#&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiegogo.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;light-phone-2-design#&#x2F;</a><p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;c1.iggcdn.com&#x2F;indiegogo-media-prod-cld&#x2F;image&#x2F;upload&#x2F;c_limit,w_695&#x2F;v1519788149&#x2F;fbeaeuv7zuuuncg9nq4e.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;c1.iggcdn.com&#x2F;indiegogo-media-prod-cld&#x2F;image&#x2F;upload&#x2F;...</a><p>[2] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;QdMdHxN" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;QdMdHxN</a>

Hi! Does anybody find it easier to concentrate to calling with old phone? Still many things work with calling and hopefully will work on future. It is a sort of doing mode for me, not chatting. This goes to psychology and I am an engineer. Put so many many distractions to face on phone before getting to calling? Distractions can be and are at least for me very hard to resist. People are different. I need to turn off distractions, I cannot resist.

I would love to see Apple create an iPod with a 10Tb SSD and e-ink display pre-loaded with virtually every song from iTunes.<p>The biggest issue is that it would just be a matter of time before someone cracked the music library encryption.. Would a solution where the device uniquely encrypts every song for the user&#x27;s account and requires a cellular network to retrieve a per-song key work?

$400? Ouch.<p>Cost aside, I can see the benefit for consumers who are prone to &quot;social media addiction.&quot; Or children, where a slightly-smart phone has some benefits to a 100% dumb phone and many benefits over an actual smart phone.<p>I&#x27;m trying to wean myself off most social media. Removing the FB app from all but one device (and removing favorites&#x2F;bookmarks from all browsers) was great.

I don’t necessarily want a <i>dumb</i> phone, but I’d like a <i>simpler</i> phone. I’d like navigation (which is the entire reason I got a smartphone in the first place), a Web browser &amp; Signal (or an equivalently-secure text- &amp; video-chat app), calling &amp; texting.<p>Maybe that Jelly phone would be sufficient?

For those who want their phone to respect them, while still maintaining smart functionality, I recommend LineageOS, it&#x27;s a distribution of android without all the google&#x27;s proprietary crap.

All I really want is a feature phone, long battery life, water resistant, end-to-end encrypted texting, onboard voice mail and hotspot capable. Is this too much to ask?

I&#x27;m a bit pissed because the article doesn&#x27;t really discuss what they promise to discuss.

Might be a better phone. But is a phone useful?

Why do people hold up the NY Times as such a great newspaper? There&#x27;s been like 8 stories from them on here today, and it&#x27;s the same repeated drivel they trot out every two or three weeks, on the same topics, and the same low-energy arguments. My flag button is wearing out.

The phone is not smart or dumb. The user is.

Phones are pretty boring now. I&#x27;d write another iPhone app if I thought there was any chance in hell I could make a living on it without a million dollar marketing budget.<p>I intentionally went without a cell phone for 2-3 years in the early aughts. That&#x27;s still an option.