"Dumbphone"/flip phone users? (+EDC)

[ialu]

Hi, all! Considering this is a forum for techies and retro nerds, I figured I'd ask if anyone here uses a "dumbphone" (which basically just means "flip phone", or, more broadly, any phone which intentionally has less functionality than your average smartphone) as a daily driver. Personally, I have a pretty basic black Kyocera 902KC, but I still need to get it a SIM card; in the mean time, I've just been using a generic Android smartphone, so I suppose I don't count.

Beyond that, I know many fans of dumbphones tend to use other somewhat outdated technological devices either to diversify how they accomplish daily tasks (as opposed to having them all be centralized in one device) or simply to compensate for what their phone can't accomplish. Examples include things like Walkmans/iPods/MP3 players, digicams, et cetera. How many of you do this as well? Do you think it beats out using a smartphone for most things?

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I never had a smartphone as a private person, but I'm required to have one as service telephone in my job for a few years now - but I use it only this I'm on duty.

After using an very simple Samsung-Flipphone for many years, it eventually broke. Two models that I had in between didn't last long - they were utterly crappy, one basically died after a few months, the other after around 2 years - I went on using a CAT B26, and it is in use for ~4.5 years now. I love it, but it is rather torn by now as well - I'm a clumsy guy, and had to repair it with duct tape. The battery is also getting weak. I don't plan to switch over to a smartphone when it breaks, but I'll need to find a new sturdy phone then; the CATs aren't produced anymore. Not using a smartphone got more difficult over the last years - it happened to me that restaurants don't have menus but only QR-codes (but I always got a device from them up until now), and some of the public authorities here also stopped to give out schedules but over a QR-gated portal (again, they give you the link when you complain...), and when cheap tickets for the railway where introduced some time ago, they were at first also smartphone only - I made screenshots on the deviced of others, and printed them out (which sometimes caused trouble) - eventually, the local distributors began to offer plastic cards. For now, it still works.

When I'm on vacation, I got used to have friends with smartphones with me - this year, I traveled Italy alone, and it was crazy to wander through the streets of Bologna trying to find an address, while around you children sat in their buggies handling smartphones that gave them theoretically access to nearly every possible information :D. Later on the trip I met my friend Francesco, who is also a non-smartphone-human - he sported a map and a tiny compass that he had attached to his digital watch - seeing him operate this was quite a sight.

I use a chinese brand MP3-Player that supports flac and weapon-grade studio headphones to listen to music while riding the train to work; I also have a laptop running Debian Linux, but I only take it along while traveling.

[grubbyfox]

I'm so confused as to why a lot of people call a dumbphone a flip phone xD A flip phone is a phone where you flip half of it. A lot of dumbphones are indeed not flip phones. I see people call the Nokia 3210 a flip phone....Or they'll say "just get a flip phone", but there are smart phones that are flip phones too, lol.

Anyway, yeah I'm in the works of getting one.

I'm getting either the Nokia 3210 or a TCL OneTouch 5044, but there's virtually no info on the 5044 anywhere so I dont want to go in blindly with it.

There is a few TCL phones I'd consider as they are fairly cheap - but they seem to have only a very few sparse reviews, so I have no idea if they are worth it or not.

The Nokia 3210 is still kinda overpriced here, and it's not been on any sale or anything in like, literal years.

[shapezncolourz]

not a dumbphone, but i do use the alt mive folder 2 as my daily driver!

i need to get better with actually using the buttons though, it has an option to use touchscreen and i find that easier - i did try to download a cursor but it required touchscreen being on so i just ended up using the touchscreen again

'd aif anyone here has good cursor apps that don't require touchscreen then i'd appreciate it! the one i tried is c9 for reference

[fuwaka]

not a dumbphone, but i do use the alt mive folder 2 as my daily driver!

i need to get better with actually using the buttons though, it has an option to use touchscreen and i find that easier - i did try to download a cursor but it required touchscreen being on so i just ended up using the touchscreen again

'd aif anyone here has good cursor apps that don't require touchscreen then i'd appreciate it! the one i tried is c9 for reference

oooh I use this phone! (* ´_ゝ`) other than that application requiring touchscreen being on, was there anything else wrong with it? I love this phone and do find myself wishing the cursor/tactile buttons worked on more than a couple of games and apps. 

me personally, there was a time where my ALT MIVE was my main daily device. but since being back in college it’s just been easier using a modern iPhone in order to access two authentication and textbook applications. I’d personally recommend it to someone wanting to use a modernized flip phone (*´∀`)♪

[nvalk1]

I used a dumbphone I bought on Amazon for like $30 (iirc anyway). Brand was called AGM Mobile and I remember specifically searching for phones marketed towards seniors because that's exactly the level of technology I was looking for. I used the phone for about a year until biting the bullet and opting for a Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS instead. I was Richard Stallman-level anti-phone (not just smartphones, all phones) because I just see all of the horrible effects of them today and it genuinely upset me.

Eventually though, I realized that it wasn't the world I had a problem with, but my own personal smartphone usage in general. The year I used that dumbphone was essentially a long form detox and now with my Pixel, I use it for maybe 30 minutes a day, if that. At the end of the day, smartphone usage aids in systemic problems, but I understand now that I can choose to not be a part of that problem and not participate in those systemically damaging practices.

Progress isn't made overnight, but one day at a time.

[xwindows]

I have not used smartphone for more than half-decade now.

I figured I'd ask if anyone here uses a "dumbphone" (which basically just means "flip phone", or, more broadly, any phone which intentionally has less functionality than your average smartphone)

Note that a proper (and more pretty-sounding) neologism for this device is "feature phone".

Flip phone is just a specific type of feature phone, which I don't like much in term of longevity: it relies on hinge and ribbon cable which run through that hinge, which are the first things to get damaged in such phone and toast the whole thing.

I'm more of a bar phone guy, and my current daily-drive GSM bar phone has already passed its 17 years old birthday. While I wouldn't say that bar phone is nigh-"indestructible" like many people would, it's pretty damn close; especially when we're speaking of consumer electronics.

many fans of dumbphones tend to use other somewhat outdated technological devices either to diversify how they accomplish daily tasks (as opposed to having them all be centralized in one device) or simply to compensate for what their phone can't accomplish.

• For payments: I use cash.
• For (alarm)clock, calendar, voice recording: I use my dumbphone. (At home, I use real analog clock and paper calendar)
• For flashlight: outside, I use my dumbphone; but when I'm home, I use my own "specialized" submarine-red LED DIY-modded flashlight.
• For taking photos and videos: I use a DSLR. (1) (While my current dumbphone could do that, quality is best described as "poop")
• For navigation: other than my noggin', I myself use paper map printout. I sometime got curious stares when I brought it out on a bus to look and mark things on it with my plastic fountain pen; but I don't mind.
• For taking notes: I use (surprise!) pen and paper; sometimes my laptop.
• For literature: I read real printed books.
• For radio: I use either a boombox at home, or my dumbphone when I'm on the go.
• For music, movies, and everything else: I use my laptop.

Do you think it beats out using a smartphone for most things?

The main reason I use feature phone + manythings instead of a smartphone, is not because they inherently function better (1) or more convenient; but because doing so allows me to have specific somethings that smartphone these days do not allow me to have:

And that is privacy and control over technologies I use (instead of the reverse).

I could write Android software (2) and I have been basically carrying a computer with a fully-functional Android SDK installed on it with me every day in the last decade; but I don't use smartphone, because I know how it works, including which and how it collect and transmits my sensitive personal information (worse: sometimes including information of other people I'm with) to external party behind my back by default, in ways I couldn't reliably disable or block.

I would rather just call smartphone an "espionage slab" these days.


(1) Well, DSLR does have better picture quality than phones, as well as better form factor for capturing it, and I don't have to deal with some bundled Artificial Idiocy misfeature threatening to fabricate parts of my hard-earned reality snapshot to make it "Instagram-ready".

(2) And have one software released on F-Droid. There were plans to release few more (despite not using smartphone myself) with one already written and partially-polished for publishing; but that plan is no more-- because the next year, running off-store applications from developers who're not willing to give Google personally-identifying information (which I will not) is going to be verboten.

^ Basically, the do-more-evil!Google's first step toward forbidding programs from outside of their Google Play monopoly-shop.

If you care, I suggest that you find a way to turn off your phone's automatic firmware update, and turn it off, now; before your device would become just another causality of OtherOS-like debacle.

[warlock]

While I haven't fully committed, I'm planning on buying a Sunbeam F1 Horizon when I get my next paycheck :D It has all the features I want/need (gps, mobile hotspot) and none of what I don't. Plus, since it runs its own locked down version of Android (I think? It may be totally custom!) it doesn't run into a lot of the same issues that a lot of modern feature phones that run KaiOS have. Built in trash apps? No thanks!

At present, I'm currently running an aging iPhone that's been debloated to the point of just being a text/call device with a web browser. The only time it does anything else is for stuff like concert/movie tickets, which are expected to be used via an app. I recently went to a concert at Fenway park (MCR, eeee!!!!!!) and there were a bunch of signs that said all tickets must be through their own custom app to be accepted.

Since I'm already pretty close to having a minimal digital device, I've had to structure some of my life around the limitations of a feature phone. I carry around a notebook, sketchbook, and paper planner around with me at all times, along with a book and PSP for downtime.

There's a really good video about the benefits of this sort of digital minimalism. He promotes having a flip phone and keeping a smartphone with you without any mobile data for things that you simply cannot do without one. This is where the F1 Horizon (which he shouts out) shines, since you can link up a mobile hotspot for the few minutes you need to use your smartphone, and then shut it off when you're done.