Decentralizing my smartphone with single purpose devices

Is this not more a self control and discipline issue than an issue with the tools? The phone plays audio better than the CD player, fits in the pocket better than anything there, takes better pictures, etc etc. It feels like most of this issue could be solved by changing the way you interact with it.

TV is the same. Some people turn on the tv and “flick” to see what’s on to watch to fill time, some people turn it on with purpose when time has been carved out for something specific.

I'm conflicted about this. I hate smartphones, all of them. On the other hand I'm not really nostalgic for 100 stupid devices with AA batteries and weird failure modes. With a basic consumer device you can browse the web, listen to music, read, pay, get directions, take photos, make calls, increasingly importantly access AI services and even develop your own software. I feel like problems mostly come with the social pressures and expectations phones create rather than the technology itself.

The reason I waited in line and bought an iPhone 3G the day it came out is because I was tired of carrying several different devices everywhere. Even just carrying the flip phone and the iPod was a lot. I remember the reason I made this choice, and nostalgia isn’t going to send me back.

The key is to use the smart phone responsibly. Delete all the bad apps, especially the doomscrolling ones.

I definitely appreciate the mindset, but I think keeping content-apps off or restricted, and being very aggressive against notifications gets most of the way. I'd be kind of lost without the ability to take a quick note or todo and have it auto-synced with my other devices

Separate devices for music make so much sense. Most devices people use today for listening have no mode of operation that guarantees that playback won't get interrupted or have another sounds overlaid. At some point Apple overhauled AirPlay to allow playing music to remote device AND have unrelated local audio, which sounds great, but it's not reliable, which ends up being just frustrating.

Since switching to a dumb phone I've gone down the same path. I already was an avid photographer but I've added a typewriter and a nice pen/notepad which has gotten me writing again. I've also read more books than I've read at any other time in my life, it's really incredible how much time I was wasting.

I just use an iPhone without the brainrot apps installed. Notifications shut off, except for the essentials.

But I got pretty nostalgic looking at that photo. And I still carry a calculator around.

i did this and it made for a horrible travel UX. leaving the house and you have to pack up an entire bag in case you might need to take a picture, write an observation, record an interesting noise, wayfind with a gps, etc

Between Gen X/Millennials pulling back from technology, and Gen Z revolting against it, I wonder what kind of products and/or design trends might materialize. Hoping for a return to a more tactile world.

I am divided between wanting to make the snarky comment that the picture is basically an ad[0] for continuing to use a smartphone..

..and the subsequent intrusive thought of "you don't always have to carry your typewriter with you, just write at home, it's good to bind activities to specific places"

Day to day I toe the line, between purchasing dumbphones[1], removing color saturation from my iphone 13 mini's[2] screen, blocking all the doom websites and apps, and realising that i need ente auth to survive modern life (sigh).

[0] a typewriter? really?..

[1] of which I bought 3, and all sit in a nostalgia box somewhere with polaroids and ex girlfriend's letters

[2] I refuse to carry a bathroom tile worth of glass in my pocket, please someone make small smartphones again

I've just dug up my Sony PRS-505 to read ebooks from gutenberg.org after it spent 10 years or more in a drawer. At times it's almost weird to think I can't click on a word to search Wikipedia for it; but OTOH it's somewhat relaxing to let go of the urge to know more.

bros applying the unix philosophy to real life