bought an iPhone 6 in august and am going to turn it back in for a flip-phone without all the apps stuff. anyone else decide phones do way more than we need?
ps: is there a market for these rowboat anchors?
I'm definitely considering ditching my smartphone. It is a circa 2014 Samsung Galaxy S3. I'm fairly tired of the crappy battery life, constant updates to keep things running smoothly, and it proves to be a fairly constant annoyance/distraction. I have tried to remove apps, turn off notifications, etc. but these things are "needy"; designed to grab your attention and keep it once they have it. Apps update and I have to go through the process of killing notifications again. It's a constant game of whack-a-mole.
In 2006-07, I very briefly owned a house in a very rural area - no cell service, internet was dial-up, and just a land line so I spent minimal time on technology. I've never been a more productive and satisfied person than I was at that time.
My biggest issue with smartphones is that many people have come to expect constant connectivity/availability when I actively reject the notion being constantly connected. "Did you get my text?", "Did you see my email?", "You get alerts to your phone, right?" I would love to pull a dumb phone out of my pocket and say, "got your text but was waiting to call since texting is hard on this phone.....and no, I didn't get your email." (wait for strange looks)
My wife wastes hours of her life on her smartphone; I can see her mood shift when she spends too much time on it. As far as I'm concerned, they are really becoming a problem and others seem to agree:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health...hone-detox-how-to-power-down-in-a-wired-world
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/30/health/smartphone-addiction-study/index.html
The overall personal communication and technology solution I'm considering is:
- switching to AT&T to get onto a GSM carrier (SIM cards)
- keep the S3 existing phone for kids games, GPS, baby monitor, or some other use; I've confirmed it is fully depreciated
- get a Sonim XP5 dumb-ish phone for daily use (supposedly great battery life, great signal strength, is a 4G phone that can be tethered to a laptop, has some smartphone-ish features)
- get a tablet capable of accepting a SIM card (for times that I want a smartphone-like device and WIFI is not available)
- replace my big laptop and small netbook computers with a small but more powerful laptop for when I need to do real work
- maybe get an Intel NUC as a backup computer (tiny, could live in a drawer until needed; I am starting to build a side business from home so having a backup would be prudent)
Anyway, just my $0.02.