Track Changes

I’ve been trying to find the perfect dumbphone since 2018. It’s very important for me to be ahead of the latest trends. Even when those trends actively make it harder to live my life.

But after seven years, I realise there is no ideal dumbphone. As Brendan Holder writes, “it’s not as if the cellphones from 30 years ago weren’t distracting. We don’t even have to read philosophy from the flip-phone era to get a sense that many of the criticisms directed towards smartphones today were directed towards dumbphones twenty years ago.

Still, it won’t stop me being hooked in by articles like ‘The DIY Dumbphone Method‘. I like to believe.

As Casey writes:

In my opinion: You don’t need a separate, dumber device. It is within your power to make your current smartphone dumb as shit, a real idiot.

1. Back up your phone. Sync your photos and notes, get whatever data you need off of it. Most apps now preserve your data on their end of things through logins/accounts versus storing on your phone, so this is mostly for preserving local data. If you can think of any apps you use regularly that don’t yet have an account through which your data is preserved, make one now. For me, this included VSCO and Seek.
2. Do a factory reset on your phone. This will delete everything on it, so, be careful before doing this step. But it’s key, because you need to nuke all of your apps. It takes way, way too long to delete them all by hand, and you will balk so many times about “do I REALLY need to delete this one?” that you’ll give up. That’s by design. You need the big bomb.
3. Identify the default-installed apps you really, actually need to keep. Most people who try to break their habits with a dumbphone/flip phone find that they actually do need their smartphone for two things: Messages (especially group chats) and some kind of Maps app. Keep those, and strongly consider hiding or getting rid of everything else. I kept Maps, Camera, Messages, Phone, Clock, Photos, Weather, and Calculator. I could probably get rid of the last two. I considered getting rid of Safari, and I still probably should. For a long time, I did not install a podcast app.
4. Set your phone up again, but take pains not to turn on any notifications. Go into your settings and set new app installs to go to “App Library Only,” versus the home screen. Make your background something really boring, like the default globe image. No children, no pets, no heartwarming memories. This is your enemy, not your friend; don’t let it wear the skins of your loved ones.
5. Install anything you really, really need that fits your ideal for how you’d use your phone. I installed my notetaking app, Notion; and Kindle, Libby, and Hoopla for reading books. The more honest and ruthless with yourself you are here, the better off you’ll be. If you aren’t a hundred percent sure an app fits your new dumbphone life, wait and give it some time. For the love of god, no email apps.[^1]
6. Delete as many default apps as you see fit, and/or put them all into one folder. You want your home screen to end up looking something like the image above.
7. (optional) If not having social media apps installed on your phone will create too great a temptation to reinstall them, get out an old smartphone with a decommissioned SIM, or buy a cheap one with no service plan. Install all your trigger-finger apps on that phone. You will not be able to meaningfully leave the house with this phone, because it will work only on WiFi. Leave it plugged in in a particular location, kind of like a landline, and only check it when you are in that (ideally uncomfortable) location. If you “Need” to post, you have to send the content to that second phone.
8. (also optional) In lieu of some of your smartphone’s more basic functions–calculator, clock, even camera–consider getting separate dedicated devices. The way that smartphones have inserted themselves into these basic, elemental actions is part of the whole problem. One of the most insidious ways endless idle screen hours stack up is that you go to do something completely innocuous, like check the time, then you see a notification, then you start reflexively tapping around looking for something to do, and then before you know it, 20 or 40 minutes have gone by. What was I doing?–oh yeah, checking the time–and the cycle starts all over again. There are crazy stats about how people pick up their phone a hundred, two hundred times a day; how many of those are we just trying to see what time it is? You can probably cut those pickups in half easily just by getting a damn watch. Weather apps aren’t even accurate anymore, due to climate change. A general daily forecast is about as good as anyone can do. Check the weather on your computer, or hell, the local TV station. Etc.

I think there is something in this list. Point #7 especially, echoes a video I saw the other day about having two phones, a dumbphone and a doomphone.

One acts as a distraction device, the other as a distraction-free device. We all probably have old phones we can use to do this.

And in a very micro-way, this can be an act of rebellion. Apps and smartphones make us feel like we are missing out by not having them installed. That these is something “inevitable” about us all being tracked and tagged and sorted into boxes. Maybe that doesn’t have to be true. At least not entirely.