There’s a bit of a tech fad at present which might perhaps be better described as an anti-tech fad, epitomized by products like the Light Phone III and Minimal Phone.
The idea is that a less-capable, less-compelling smartphone will let us do the essentials without getting addicted to our device. But while I love the concept and aesthetics, most of those who’ve tried them quickly found they spent hundreds of dollars on something that’s more frustrating than calming …
Even Apple acknowledged back in 2018 that smartphone addiction is a problem. Most of us spend too much time staring at a small grass screen instead of the world around us, and a device intended to make our lives easier often seems to make it more stressful. Rather than our iPhone serving us, it can easily feel like we are instead responding to its demands.
The company introduced a number of features intended to reduce our usage of our pocket computers, and has added more since then. But there isn’t much evidence that any of it’s made a significant difference.
The fad of not-very-smartphones
A small minority of people have abandoned smartphones altogether, and switched to dumb phones. Others have found themselves tempted by a modern alternative: the not-very-smart smartphone.
There are a number of these on the market now, like the Light Phone III and the the Minimal Phone. (I don’t link the Wisephone II, as that’s actually just a Samsung Galaxy A15 with a custom launcher which they are hilariously selling for way more than the original device.)
The thing is … they don’t work very well. In fact, they kind of replicate the original smartphone experience – a device which promises a simpler life, but actually creates a more annoying one. MKBHD’s experience seems pretty typical:
So, okay, let’s say l’m at the studio and I have a calendar event in an hour in the city and I wanna navigate there. I can actually put a location in the calendar event, but I can’t click on it to navigate. And so, you might think, “Okay, just copy and paste it,” but this phone doesn’t seem to have copy and paste either.
So, you gotta go ahead and manually flip over to the Directions app and then start typing away. And good luck, because there’s no auto-correct either, so you’re gonna want to double check and get this address exactly right […]
I have a bunch of conversations happening in other messaging apps: WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack. I can’t have any of those conversations here. And I also happen to use Spotify for my music. And so, l’m really not trying to move all of those playlists and all of those songs manually to this app.
He goes on to give other examples of why it just isn’t practical to use this phone as your daily driver, before concluding that adding all the things he needs it to do is basically just turning it back into a regular smartphone.
Calming your iPhone is a far smarter idea
Rather than spend hundreds of dollars on a device so lacking in functionality it’s more likely to create a coronary than a Zen-like state of mind, my strong recommendation is to instead calm your iPhone.
I adopted this approach back in 2018, just a couple of months before Apple acknowledged the problem.
I decided initially to try a ‘notifications diet’ – dramatically cutting back on the number of apps allowed to send me notifications. But as I started going through the list in Settings, I realized I also had apps I never use. I opted to extend the plan to an ‘app diet’ too. I’ve also switched off badges on most apps […]
The upshot of all this? My phone feels like a calmer part of my world. It’s not constantly flashing up alerts. I don’t have a long stream of notifications to scroll through on the lockscreen when I take it out of my pocket. I don’t have a mass of apps with those little red dots all demanding I look at them.
It feels like it is now what it should be: a device that’s there to serve me, rather than the other way around.
Seven years later, I still use it. If you want to try it yourself, here’s how.
First, choose one messaging app as your primary one for the important people in your life. Let people know that’s the app to use if they need to contact you urgently. For all other messaging apps, switch off notifications.
Second, switch off most other notifications. Ask yourself the question “If I don’t get this notification immediately, could it cause a major issue for me?” The answer for most apps will be no.
Third, switch off most app badges. Those incremental numbers are visually distracting, and create stress. For example, I don’t need to know I have 47 unread emails, I just check them periodically.
Fourth, setup focus modes to decide what is allowed to interrupt you when. Some people create many different ones – personally I find a couple is enough.
Fifth, cull your apps. Delete any you never use, just to reduce screen clutter (and the number of screens you need). With the apps you do use, ask yourself if any of them are honestly just unsatisfying time-sucks. The digital “do they spark joy?” test.
Finally, if there are apps you want to be able to use on occasion, but don’t want to be tempted to over-use, remove them from your Home screen (that is, go to delete them then accept that option when offered). You’ll still be able to find them by search, or in your App Library, but there’s more friction than when they were just a tap away.
You’ll probably also want to tidy up and reorganise your Home screens once you’re done with the app cull, so below are a couple of video shorts with handy tips on speeding up the process.
Some people go even further, with mono app icons or tints, but my experience was that while I liked it aesthetically, the usability hit was too high. Colors greatly speed up locating an icon on the screen.
If you’ve done something similar, or are now considering it, please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.
Highlighted accessories
Image: 9to5Mac composite of images from Light Phone, Minimal Company, and Lavi Perchik
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