Maybe this will renew a movement towards better mobile OS.
As if phones weren’t already full of ads anyway.
All the more reason to use a custom OS.
Feels like a weird strategy after the past few years have been about unlocking your phone as quickly as possible (via fingerprint or face scan), and with Google having removed the ability to place widgets on the lockscreen over security concerns…
man, I miss lockscreen widgets. imagine how cool would they be with something like KWGT!
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This is a good reason for using a custom ROM.
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I’ll have to get this one out again (it still has some battery, I think). Anyway I give the smartphone not much more use than with this one.
@sexy_peach The day that my phone becomes user-hostile is the day that I drop it to pick up something more open like a PinePhone. I’ve gone through the headaches of using FOSS stuff before it was ready for prime time before and I can do it again.
Easy, do not use a smartphone.
Good luck, smartphones are integrated so deeply into modern society that it can feel impossible to get by without one.
A better solution is government regulation of the advertising industry, and free software alternatives that are designed using humane technology principles.
I’m using a dumbphone for a year and lost nothing.
Depends on where you live. Not everyone lives where you do.
Where you can live with a dumbphone in your opinion and where you cannot?
Just a few weeks ago I used a dumbphone for 2 days in the US.
During that time
- I was called for work while out and the caller expected me to review their email and respond while on the phone with them. This would have been easy with a smartphone, but instead I had to go home, review their email, then call them back the next day. They were annoyed by the inconvenience and delay.
- I was called to schedule a doctors appointment while out, I needed to call the office back when I got home because I could not check my calendar without a smartphone.
- I was working on a project and wanted to take a photos for memories / share when explaining why the project was taking so long. I needed to leave the project site, go home, grab my camera, return to the site, take the photos, upload them to my computer, then email them.
- I wanted to log in to an account while away home, but I was unable to access my password manager or email without my smart phone.
- My family went out to eat and I needed to borrow one of their smartphones because I could not scan the QR code for the menu and the restaurant did not have paper menus available.
- I needed to deposit a check, so I would have driven nearly 20 miles round trip if I had not used remote deposit on my smartphone instead.
- I wanted to listen to an audiobook from the library, but I need to use the overdrive / libby app in order to do this.
- I heard a song on the radio and I could not use Shazam to identify it.
- I needed to display a ticket for an event, so I had a friend save my ticket on their smartphone and they used their phone for both of us.
- I needed to read a smart home monitor, but the only interface available was a smartphone app.
- Discord kept crashing on my desktop, so I used my smartphone instead.
I gave up using a dumbphone after only 2 days because smartphones are integrated so deeply into modern society that it felt prohibitively difficult to function without one where I live in the United States. Everywhere a person goes it is assumed they have a smartphone on them, so anyone without a smartphone needs to find workarounds for simple tasks and is forced to navigate dozens of inconveniences every day.
I am spoiled and addicted to the convenience that smartphones provide, but my experience persuaded me that systemic changes, instead of individual choices, are necessary to ultimately solve these problems. Evidently, it can not be expected that a significant portion of the public will choose to abstain from the convenience smartphones offer even when they are educated about the harms caused by smartphones. Therefore, the only solution I can imagine is regulation to mitigate those harms, and humane technology design that solves the problems of profit-maximizing technology design.
The US public library services’ reliance on Overdrive, Libby, Hoopla, Kanopy, etc. is unfortunate, as they often only support Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, and even then, only with the official Chrome, Firefox, or Safari builds.
Additionally, a fair selection of the library’s ebooks are often only offered as one of either Adobe Digital Editions or Kindle, both of which are mutually exclusive formats as I understand it.
I hope public libraries in other countries are somewhat less restrictive in their online offerings. My university library uses O’Reilly, which caters to browsers and operating systems without DRM or even JavaScript.
Re: radio–it’s nearly always possible to see the day’s playlist on the station’s website.
But to add another point, navigation is a chore. It is now expected that everyone can use Google Maps to chart an effective route anywhere at all times. This becomes even more difficult for places with which one is less familiar.
I heard a song on the radio and I could not use Shazam to identify it.
It is so sad that you have been through that.
Hearing a song I liked and missing the opportunity to listen to it again later is not a serious issue, just another piece of straw on the camels back.
My point is that a lot of little inconveniences add up to a significant life-style change, especially when the end-user is supposed to choose that life-style change.
So tragic
I think it mostly depends on your habits and daily routines, of course dumbphone is changing a lot, but also freeing you from many useless activities.
Oh come on, are you doing this again? Ask for a list of things that people want to use a smartphone for, then dismiss them all outright as useless trivialities?
