Surviving Modern Life with a Flip Phone (Barely)
tim.kicker.dev
Mama was right: Smartphones are frying our brains. App locks, screentime reminders, digital detoxes: we’ve tried them all. Nothing sticks because hone

I’ve been using a flip phone as my daily driver for a while now. The smartphone is still around, but it mostly sits in a drawer until bureaucracy or banking apps force me to use it.

For me, the benefits are clear: less distraction, more focus, better sleep. But I know for many people it’s not so easy. Essential apps, social pressure, work requirements… these are real blockers.

I’d like to start a discussion (almost like an informal poll):

  • If you thought about switching, what’s the single biggest thing that holds you back?

  • Is it banking? Messaging? Maps? Something else?

I’m genuinely curious because if we can identify the main pain points, maybe it’s possible to work on solutions or even start a small project around it.

So: what would need to change for you to actually give a flip phone a try?

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    7 hours ago

    well, I work in IT. So I am required to use apps like Teams for mobile and DUO 2FA in order to authenticate my laptop sessions.

    Now, could I use only SMS/email 2FA? Technically yes. And I could just have Teams on my work laptop and have that nearby all the time, but it would be extremely inconvenient. Navigation would also be a big problem. Due to the nature of my job, I frequently have to visit a large number of different sites around my area. Having to open my laptop each time I need to go somewhere, open up a map site like OSM or Google maps to get the directions, print them off or write them down, then follow them manually hoping that I don’t encounter random slowdowns or closures in an area I am not familiar with is basically a non-starter for me.

    As for personal use, navigation rears its ugly head again. I often will be traveling with friends or family and we decide on a whim to change our destination for dinner or hangouts after based on times, appetites, budgets, closures, etc. Having a map app on my phone makes that easy to do. It would be impossible to do that without it, unless I had a near exhaustive knowledge of my whole city and surrounding suburbs.

    Honestly navigation is the #1 thing. Random other stuff comes up, like my mobile password manager Bitwarden, or my various apps like my City’s bus/metro app, and my city’s parking app. Both of which again, I could make do without, but it would be extremely tough and inconvenient.

    I’ve decided that the happy medium for me is to use as much FOSS phone tech as possible. That way at least the tracking and data harvesting is minimized and I am generally not supporting megacorps.

    I use GrapheneOS, with mostly FOSS apps. The proprietary apps I do use are isolated with GOS’s special sauce. I use Magic Earth for my navigation, which while not open source, the data sets they use are, and they are not google, and based in the EU, so far better privacy than Google’s trash.

    I wish I could switch to a flip phone, I’ve seriously considered it many times over the last several years. But for my lifestyle, it’s just not feasible. The best balance for me is to compute ethically on my mobile. I have thought about going for the weekend with just a dumb phone, that might be possible, but I’ll have to see.