I was happy, sad, lost and lonely without a smartphone at the same time

I also live in Switzerland, and it is perfectly possible to survive 48 hours or so here without needing one, unless of course every single transaction you engage in requires 2FA, which.. here, you generally do not.<p>I mean, I feel for the guy moving to a new country - been there, done that - but, with respect he&#x27;s hyperventilating just a little bit.

I gave up my smartphone and swtiched to a burner. Mostly an accident -- I bought the burner for travel, but then dropped my Pixel.<p>Biggest struggle was texting -- hard to do when you&#x27;re pressing number keys -- and no Maps.<p>Everything else I could get around by bringing my laptop with me, or by moving &#x2F; planning &#x2F; scheduling better. Before I could just kinda go and figure it out on the way, get planted and read reddit on my phone, maybe see what was open near my in terms of coffee or food and roll with it. Couldn&#x27;t do that with a burner.<p>2FA for personal stuff wasn&#x27;t too bad, I had a tablet at home and that worked. Most 2FA stuff I didn&#x27;t do anywhere except at home (disclaimer: also work remotely).<p>I could make it work, but after a while decided I didn&#x27;t want to. Easier to scale down smartphone use or try to touch it less, than try to make the burner phone hacks work.

&gt; So I had to live last weekend, without a smartphone<p>Gods, a WHOLE WEEKEND? Un-be-lie-va-ble.<p>&gt; and made me realize that even though as much as I would love to live without a smartphone, unfortunately, we will never be able to escape from using a smartphone<p>That was kinda clear from the get go.

Can&#x27;t they just remove the company Zoom app from their phone and be happy all the time? Or are there places where you are expected to monitor that stuff 24&#x2F;7?

This was really interesting. Smart phone is almost a friend.. The article reminded me of a great, classic American song.<p><i>Your best friend is you. I&#x27;m my best friend too. We share the same views and hardly ever argue. Eat spam from the can, Watch late night C-SPAN, and Rock out to old school Duran Duran.</i>

This kind of article makes me want to reply in Reddit style, but I&#x27;ll try really hard to refrain from doing so.<p>I guess this article is a good example of the mismatch between the intended audience and the actual audience, me.<p>I am totally unimpressed by someone who hasn&#x27;t used a smartphone for some hours, but perhaps this is some new kind of sarcasm that I can&#x27;t yet appreciate.<p>Somehow I expect public blogs and Twitter messages to be written for the most general audience, but this is obviously almost never the case.

I quite often just forget my smartphone when I leave home. Last weekend I became the first time nervous about it because I thought i brought it and became nervous but only about that I might have lost it after I found is was not in my pocket.

Just another case of industrial disease...

Oh for god&#x27;s sake it&#x27;s not really that bad. A couple years ago I accidentally, absolutely shattered my smartphone one day and after a couple days without one while shopping around, I decided &quot;why the hell not? let&#x27;s see how long you can go without&quot;. Then spent an entire year with nothing but an old tiny Nokia dumb-as-bricks phone until some new work made a smartphone unavoidable again. You miss a few things sure, but enough of the silly modern drama.<p>Edit. For financial transactions, for all the talk among many here about not letting BigTech take over your personal life, it would be nice to see more effort to you know, actually apply that to the basics, such as by not utterly depending on a phone and a couple of mega payment processing tech monsters like Apple and Google to pay for basic shit that could be handled through fairly simple alternatives. a little inconvenience for the sake of a more fundamental point rarely kills.

A weekend?! I don’t think being without a smartphone for _one weekend_ constitutes any empirical foundation for how life without a smartphone would be.

If you can&#x27;t survive a weekend, or even a week, or a month - without your phone - you badly need to take a look at how you&#x27;re living your life. IMO.<p>It&#x27;s a damn beautiful world out here. Silence and space are wonderful. Lack of notifications and lack of stimulation is to be embraced. Cash points and debit cards exist. People are kind and will give you directions. Interactions with humans - real ones, not mediated via a screen - will teach you a million times more useful things about emotion and love and fear than a thousand years of InstaTikTokFaceplant bullshit.<p>Get back in your life.

I&#x27;d be at the Apple Store the following day buying a new iPhone. I don&#x27;t understand all the romanticizing over having a break - F that. I got stuff to do and people to call.

someone physically took my device, knew my pin-code, drained my funds, locked me out of my own icloud and on top of that left me without a smartphone while i dealt with my various bank accounts and a telecom and could not buy lunch or pay my bills - for a week. you don’t have my sympathy

i’m sure you will live