Today, I’m embarking on a 30 day experiment to see if I can live (and do my job) in the modern world without a smartphone.
Why?
I’ve been a tech enthusiast all my life: always had to have the latest, greatest, newest, and shiniest gadget I could afford. Here lately, it feels like the tech is taking over and just making me miserable. “Always connected”, notification fatigue, endless doom scrolling, "download our app for [super basic thing that shouldn’t require an app], etc. I love my smartphone, but I feel like it’s a “ball and chain” that’s causing me unneeded stress.
I’ve been wanting to try this for some time, but the “killer app”, so to speak, on my smartphone is hospot mode. I use that heavily for both work and personal use, and I only recently realized that modern “dumb” phones could do that now. Suddenly this experiment became possible, so I bought a cheap dumb phone and decided to give it a try.
So, can I go 30 days without a smartphone, and will I see any quality of life improvements (or perhaps the opposite)? Only one way to find out.
Conditions of the experiment:
I bought a modern-era “dumb” flip phone and moved my SIM to it yesterday evening. It’s not a true “dumb” phone, though. It runs a stripped down version of Android, so I’m able to install a few “must have” apps that I need such as my MFA and credit union app. I made a concession with the banking app since the closest branch office is 45 minutes away (I don’t consider the MFA app to be a concession since some of the dumber dumb phones had support for at least TOTP generators).
That’s it for the apps. No email, IM/chat apps, web browser, etc (though I can run all of those it seems). The only “apps” will be the ones that would be standard for a dumb phone of the mid 2000s (calendar, camera, alarm, music player, etc). I’ve already connected it over USB and loaded up era-appropriate music from my local collection 😆
Rules:
- I’ll allow myself to carry my smartphone (w/o SIM card) in my bag, powered off, in case I do need it for something urgent, but I won’t carry it on my person or use it beyond immediate need. Will connect to my “dumb” phone via its hotspot for internet.
- If I do need to break out the old smart rectangle, I should look to see if there is a way to accomplish what I need without it.
- This experiment cannot interfere with my job duties.
- I’ve setup an SMS bridge on my server to forward certain critical alerts. I used to do this back when all phones were dumb phones, so I don’t feel it’s breaking the spirit of the experiment. These will only be “the datacenter is on fire” level alerts, so I don’t anticipate many (or any).
So, here goes. I’m not sure what to expect or how this will turn out and even less sure I’ll make it the full 30 days. Wish me luck.
There are standalone hotspot devices.
Does banking on a laptop ruin the experiment for you?
Academically, no, and that was the original plan. However, my banking app sometimes requires me to open it to approve a purchase during the POS transaction or I’ll need to launch it to adjust my spending limits (both fraud protection features). I could turn those off, but I’ve grown to like them. Plus, I occasionally have to deposit checks, and you have to use the app to scan the checks to deposit them remotely; there’s no equivalent in the web-based OLB portal.
Ah, so it does make a big difference to do all the banking on a laptop. Ball and chain analogy intensifies
Yeah. The way it works is if their detection algorithm feels funny about a transaction, it’ll decline it and alert you in the app. Then you can click an “approve” button and run the transaction again and it’ll succeed. Not sure if that behavior works just using the online banking (never tried).
The remote deposit I could live without. I don’t get checks that often, and I can just as easily mail them for deposit if I don’t want to drive.
Like I said, I could turn those off or call the bank when it declines and have them issue the “approve”.
If I make it to the 30 days on this experiment, maybe phase 2 will be another 30 days but without the bank app.