homepage/content/blog/2024/01-17-my-dumb-dumbphone-experiment/index.md

---
title: My Dumb Dumbphone Experiment
date: 2024-01-17
tags:
  - pocket computing
---

Last year,
I went on a quest to reduce how much time I spend on my "phone"
(which is actually a pocket computer: I don't place many calls with it).
Comparing notes with my kid last week,
it looks like I'm averaging about 1 hour per day,
which is pretty good.
Most of that appears to be using the web browser,
probably to look stuff up,
and the Something Awful Forums app.
I do a little bit of text messaging every day,
and a few other scattered "utility" apps here and there.

The kid's phone stops getting security updates in August,
meaning we're going to have to drop another $500-$800 again,
or risk running malware on the gateway into her online life.

I'm tired of this.

I'm going to try using an $80 Nokia flip phone.
We'll see how it works out,
maybe jr will want one when it's time.


# Apps I'm Giving Up

By doing this,
I am in essence giving up every app on my device at once.
Many of them have web page equivalents,
so this is not a big deal.
A few, like banking apps,
I suppose I can keep using the phone when I'm at home.
Maybe I can set up SMS check deposits:
that would mean I don't need the app at all.

The ones that seem the most painful are:

* Amtrak: Their web site isn't great, but maybe I just need to spend more time on it.
* Google Calendar: Getting reminders has caused an improvement in me being to things on time.
* Signal: This is where all my friends are.

I made [a full list](apps.html),
if you're interested.


# Initial Thoughts

It's much better than I remember featurephones being.
So it's exceeding my expectations,
which is nice.

It is a lot bigger, though.
Much bigger than I was expecting.
Maybe in a few years there will be a smaller one I can get,
with the same functionality.
It's still significantly smaller than the smartphone,
so it's still an improvement.

The text messages work pretty well,
I can do group messages and see images,
I can even send images and emoji.

The music player is fine for me.
People on the Internet seem to hate it,
but it's playing my music files,
so whatever.
Bluetooth music playback is great too.

I found a podcast app that seems decent enough.
That might be nice when Amy starts back at work,
but right now I'm not listening to a lot of podcasts.

The browser is miles better than the one on the 5310.
It's good enough that I'm thinking about whether I should try writing an ePub reader
that I can host on Woozle.
I think maybe not:
I like the e-ink book reader I've got a lot.

The phone part is fine, no complaints.
Speakerphone works well, maybe better than the smartphone.
Bluetooth works on calls exactly like it did on the Pixel.

I paired it to the car,
but I can't imagine using it that way for anything other than calls
and quick voice-dictated text messages.
That's probably for the better:
ever since Google got rid of standalone Android Auto on the phone,
I've been unlocking it, navigating menus, and whatnot,
in the seconds I'm at red lights.
I was probably going to give up on that anyway.

The camera is roughly equivalent to the point-and-shoot camera we have.
My requirement for keepsake photos is that they be at least as good as a 110 camera from 1975.
This is much better than that.
It also geo-tags photos, which is a nice thing to have.

It comes with a low-resource version of Google Maps!
I haven't used it for directions yet,
but it seems like it'll be good enough.
This is a pretty big deal,
and I'm glad to have it.

I can also connect to Google Mail,
Google Calendar,
and Google Contacts.
None of them seem to work particularly well:
I keep getting reminders for things that happened years ago.
Maybe cleaning out old events will help:
having calendar reminders would be pretty nice.

The games are insipid.
No change there from the 5310.
It also has news and weather apps that will tell me some headlines and the weather,
but I have to go open them up to see it.
There's little chance I'll get wrapped up in any of these.

Calculator is basic and fine.

I tried sideloading an app in debug mode and ran into trouble,
but I'm realizing that I'm thinking about the phone wrong here.
It is a telephone with an okay camera.
I should only turn to it when I have no better options:
it's not there to try and replace a real computer.

Except the music player.
It's reasonable to want this to be good at playing music,
and it is.