i don’t want my phone to be dumb, I want it to be open source, front to back! The issue of smartphones isn’t that its “too smart”, instead we should talk about why the control of our phones aren’t within our grasp, but on the palm of corpos and govs.

you want to use your smartphone while keeping it simple? Install less apps and disable ALL telemetry (this is where being open source comes in).

You may as well ask me to throw away me phone entirely. I don’t carry a smartphone to make phone calls. I hate phone calls.

95% of that is spam. And an old dumbphone won’t even have auto spam detection.

I use my phone to take pictures, send those pictures, look for restaurants, navigate to those restaurants, listen to music, etc.

So what you’re asking for is to make the part I hate about phones worse, while removing all the functions I actually use my phone for.

I’m closer to carrying around a cyberdeck than a dumbphone.

I don’t like either sms or phonecalls.

Pretty much because my smartphone is basically my digital Swiss army knife. Like even if I got a separate digital camera and MP3 Player, I also use it for navigation and to communicate with my parents and friends over signal, and like hell I am gonna give up signal. Add to that it’s also my portable wifi hotspot when I’m out, my train tickets, and how I pay for things when I’m sans-purse, I don’t know if I can give up my smartphone.

Would it be good for me to get off social media and to stop doomscrolling the news? Yes, but I can do that by going out and touching grass.

It’s solving device addiction with another device. Sure it will be very interesting to investigate phone models to pick from. Indeed we are good at tricking ourselves. Creating “windows” with no phone at all works better for me.

I’d like to be able to use Signal.

Having a software authentication that can hold multiple keys for MFA. I’d love to switch to a dumb phone but that’s pretty much a requirement and I’ve never found a device for MFA that is as convenient for MFA

Why would I want a device that I never use? I only make phone calls roughly 3 times per week. I message multiple times a day, but flip phones had shitty interfaces for typing. The vast majority of my phone use is web search, camera, navigation, and messaging. Flip phones could get better cameras than they used to have. Their screens were too small to do great at web searching. Navigation might work, I guess. Although I used to love my Treo and Pre for the full physical keyboard, I prefer swype typing now to tapping or physical keys.

Being forced to use a stock google android or iOS would be what drives me to use a dumb phone.

As long as I can install a custom ROM like LineageOS or GrapheneOS, I’m good.

I don’t make phone calls and rarely use SMS. All the features I need/want from a phone would be missing.

Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I genuinely love my phone. It makes my life better.

I’m currently in Asia and – in this country at least – you are basically required to have a smart phone to do anything. Credit cards don’t exist. And they use QR payments for most things. So that implies a camera and a banking app (for your bank). Many places don’t accept cash anymore (!) - I don’t really get how they can do that because not everyone has a smart phone (poor people (obviously) & tourists (not even allowed to get bank accounts here) come immediately to mind — of which there are millions of both). I think so far it’s not a big deal because these people just spend their money elsewhere, but I worry this will become entrenched.

Anyway, I tried “dumb phoning” my iPhone and there’s just way too many things I rely on daily that require a smart phone: paying by QR code, banking, international banking, translating, navigation, ride booking, accommodation booking, messaging on iMessage, Line, Messenger (almost everyone in this country uses the last 2). When travelling in a foreign country, these things aren’t really optional. If I can’t pay for a bus ticket or food, I could be really screwed.

Now you might say some of things in my list are doable without apps; like accommodation booking… sure. But even if you find a place old skool style, how do you contact them? Most don’t have web pages, they use Facebook pages. And the contact info is usually a Line or Messenger id. Even if somehow you managed to find a phone number, they are unlikely to speak English. I’m old enough to remember travelling before the internet and honestly it was great and worked well, but that was because everyone was on the same footing. We’ve lost that and I actually think it’s much more difficult now.

I’ve gotten rid of most social media (except fediverse) which has helped my screen time a lot, but I think going back to a feature phone is, unfortunately, impossible here. I do hope that they see how economically unfair requiring a smart phone is though and at least pass some laws that require shops to take cash payments (last I heard these laws did exist in the West).

I need maps and Line. Banking and everything else is nice but maps and Line are essential.

It would have to have Signal.

Whatsapp. That’s the only fucking reason I’m not using a dumbphone. In Brazil, everyone uses it. Need to talk to a company? Whatsapp. Friends and family? Wpp. Book a medical checkup? Wpp.

There’s also the problem of cell phone fees being abusive when calling/messaging people from a different company.

I’m switching to a Garmin smartwatch and a point n shoot camera in the near future. I’m excited to see how it changes adventuring.