alt Hacker NewsI reckon that all these "productive" takes on smartphones don't really solve the issue, they end up being too "dumb". The one big thing that makes smartphones addictive is not all the apps: it's the big beautiful piece of glass at the front.
The screen is what makes smartphones addictive. You can tell just by looking at the history of them. So my ideal productivity device would be a smartphone underneath - full android, great cameras, decent processor - but the screen would be small and rubbish. Let me do everything I want to do, just make it unpleasant to do it unless I really need to.
I’m under the impression that the main problem of cellphone addiction is that stuff like short form video is too addictive—YouTube, and then TikTok just made it worse.
IMO an e-ink (or whatever it is, black and white and, I think it is non-emissive?) screen with a small text-only OLED display is pretty good. But, to be called a productivity device, it needs a bigger screen and a full keyboard.
This thing is a PDA. Which is fine. But a PDA is an organization and communication device, right? Not productivity.
Making it unpleasant to use seems like a mistake. Productivity requires ergonomics, and ergonomic things are pleasant to use, there’s no getting around it. But we can maybe kill off the flashiness.