So what can you expect when you put down your Android smartphone in exchange for something simpler? Here are some of the areas in your life where you’re bound to notice a difference.
Keeping in Touch
This is one of the first issues you are likely to confront when deciding whether to reduce your smartphone use. Given the myriad ways we communicate nowadays, the answer isn’t straightforward.
How often do you place traditional phone calls? Does your social circle communicate via SMS and MMS? Do you primarily chat using specific apps? Do you have family members and colleagues that expect regular video calls?
You can offload much of this activity onto a PC. If you want to use the likes of Discord, Slack, Skype, or WhatsApp, you can do this in a web browser or via a desktop app. If you’re able to schedule what times you’re available to talk, this can be an easy transition.
But if you’re dependent on these apps as your on-call tool for work or the primary way family members check in with each other, then you may only be able to switch to a dumbphone part-time, if at all.
With adjustments and workarounds, most of us who want to can make this transition. It’s easy, though inconvenient, to carry around a Wi-Fi-enabled phone as a fallback for those occasions you need to do something your dumbphone can’t on the days when you need it.
Some newer dumbphones can serve as a portable hotspot. If none of this seems ideal, you can consider turning your existing Android phone into a dumbphone as best you can.
But consider this—if part of your motivation for switching to a dumbphone is to be less accessible in the first place, having these roadblocks may actually work in your favor. You can make sure the people who absolutely need to be able to reach you have your phone number and allow yourself to disconnect from all the rest.
Doing Without a Camera
Smartphones may be an evolution of the mobile phone, but for many people, it’s the dedicated camera that they’ve completely replaced. With a camera in our pocket at all times, we document more of our lives by taking pictures and are increasingly sharing photos as a primary means of communicating.
Why tell someone about the item you’ve come across at the store when you can send a picture message showing the item and its price?
If you go for a traditional dumbphone, you will have to accept a low-quality camera and a screen that’s too small to make out many of the details in a photo. If you go for one of the more premium and minimalist phones, you will likely end up doing without a camera entirely and wind up with a screen that doesn’t display photos at all.
There’s a sort of irony to paying more for a phone that does less, but this can lead to a nicer experience.
These phones do a better job of being just phones. They encourage you to let go of a habit that maybe you can do without, rather than leave you with an inferior camera experience that may ultimately serve to tempt you back to a smartphone that’s better at capturing and viewing images.
You may even find the reality that you can’t take a picture of the moment more freeing than knowing you can and having to decide.
Finding Your Way Around
How you feel about doing without GPS has much to do with your mindset. After all, before a decade or so ago, all of us above a certain age went everywhere without navigation in our pocket. If we had a dedicated car GPS or a printed-out set of directions, that was enough. Depending on your mindset, that again can feel like enough.
For many of us, having navigation on our phones is less of a need and more of a security blanket that makes us feel more comfortable going out to explore. If you’re aware of this, you can take other steps to replicate that feeling of security. Learn key landmarks, save local emergency contacts, or maybe have a physical map.
Personally, I spend most of the time in areas I already know and rarely need a navigation device. It’s easy to plan ahead and get my hands on one when the need arises.
You may have a car with built-in navigation. If your maps are outdated, another option is to turn your abandoned Android smartphone into a portable GPS unit using one of many available offline navigation apps.
This also works if you’re walking around town or relying on public transportation. Car drivers may also consider that some of the dedicated GPS units available today are much better than the ones from yesteryear.
Dealing With Boredom
We’ve grown accustomed to the idea that each new phone should do more than our last one, or do it all better, if not both. The idea of doing without something, or doing a poor job of something, is sold to us as a loss.
But when it comes to our phones, do these devices really need to serve as a source of entertainment? It’s partly this desire for our phones to be fun that enables them to be so addictive in the first place.
The more spartan of a dumbphone you go with, the more you will stop seeing your phone as a source of entertainment. This will by default push you toward other activities for leisure.
Do you want to read more books? Spend more time exercising? Build something? Paint something? Sing? Once your phone starts serving as a poor source of entertainment, it becomes less of a distraction from the activities you probably have long wished you would do when you were bored instead.
Or you will divert to your laptop or a TV to serve as your time suck instead. Switching to a dumbphone can help you engage in more meaningful activities, but it’s hardly a panacea. There were ways to waste time before smartphones were invented, and there are now legions more entertaining non-phone devices than there have ever been.
Returning the Phone to a Single Purpose Device
The modern smartphone has become the thing that does all things. You’ve probably grown accustomed to reading the news, watching TV, playing games, checking the weather, balancing your budget, and listening to music all from a single device. Occasionally you even use that device to communicate with other people.
The way we interact with phones has shifted so much that it can feel refreshing, if not initially unsettling, to have a phone that you use almost exclusively as a phone. And with some of the handsets available, maybe now will be the time you give it a shot?
