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I've failed the no-smartphone life (forum.uncomfortable.business)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So, after like 8 months of dumbphone only, I've given up.

It wasn't one majorly annoying thing, but just a non-stop death by a thousand cuts. Modern life really requires at least possession of one of these stupid little rectangles, and if you don't have one, you get slowly nibbled to death by the ducks of modernity.

So, rather than redouble my efforts to bend the world to dealing with me wanting to be a bit of a luddite weirdo, I've given up and just..... bought an iPhone SE and paired it with an Apple Watch 8 I already had.

See, the thing I really didn't consider is that I pretty much already had the ideal dumbphone: this AW8 is a cellular version.

It does phone calls, text messages, and has sufficient ties to modern services (music, podcasts, audiobooks, maps, etc.) that it is, by itself, a 60% solution. And just for perfect clarity: there's a lot of things wrong with the watch that make it not an ideal device, with the biggest one being really not fantastic battery life.

For everything the watch doesn't do, I also have the phone, but the phone isn't strictly required, and I can simply leave it at home when I don't want to deal with all the modern smartness and just rely on the watch.

For sure, it's not a cheap solution since an iPhone and a cellular watch is a giant investment even if you go for the "cheapest" versions, and I'm paying for two cellular plans (though, with US Mobile it's $96/year for each so, relatively speaking, still pretty cheap).

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I really wanted to get rid of the smartphone because I waste so much time on it. I made a list of all the things I use it for and possible alternatives, and it was mostly doable, but I just can't give up Discord. Got friends and family without cell service, especially the younger ones, and Discord is how they text.

Part of me is relieved because tracking my gym progress with pen and paper sounded like a pain. I'm always missing at least one item from my gym bag on a given day :P adding two more to rely on is a bad idea.

But still, the luddite life is so alluring...maybe someday I'll be free of this magic rectangle that makes me sad.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah that's basically the same conclusion I reached: it's perfectly cromulent until you run into something you need that it won't do, and then there's absolutely no way to make it work, period.

A lot of the final decision was based primarily around the fact that I just was not invovled in what friends and family members were doing, because I had become a pain in the ass to contact and so people just.... didn't.