I thought this one was weird, personally. The App Store is among those I use least on my phone. I only open it when there is a specific new app I want to install (which is rare; I have maybe a dozen apps installed that didn't come with my phone). I easly go months without opening the App Store.
Are there people just browsing the App Store daily?
I've been playing around with the idea of getting an old iphone just for car play and dumbphone purposes. However, I always discarded the idea due to the lack of control iOS gives you in restricting and customizing certain things. But now, this Apple configurator gives me a bit more motivation to make that jump, even though I probably wont be able to use it for all my specific needs.
I also ended up experimenting for a few months with the Samsung G1650 which runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow. I was able to get apps like Termux and other utilities on it which made my experience what I wanted while also not compromising on having no modern messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal. It wasnt a complete dumbphone per se, but it was almost impossible to doomscroll or browse the internet on that phone.
In the end I stopped using my G1650 due to the fact that it was too tedious waiting 5+ minutes for poorly optimized apps like Spotify/Taxi apps to load. Also, the phone became expontentially slower with more storage being used, which is expected since wasnt really made to storage gigs of message and media logs.
This is interesting because I suspect most people use their phone while doing other things. I’m in a meeting commenting on this article with my phone. I’ve got maybe 15min a day of “I’m only paying attention to my phone” but I have 4-5 hours of phone screen time. Maybe I’m unusual though.
I think focusing on numerical stats here is also a bit of a problem and while making these guardrails might help some people but the main issue should be addressed (overconsumption/addiction).
I wonder by reducing the screen time of the phone, how the screen time of the other devices (computer/tv/etc) changed.
So really, the phone is often a "second monitor".
Similarly, I felt I needed it to “keep in touch” with people, but I ultimately decided the psychic tax was too high to maintain some lukewarm friendships when I have perfectly good ones in meatspace.
Doesn't seem like this is possible anymore?
I also turned off all notifications from all my apps, period end of story. My battery lasts for days and its not completely distracting. Made a huge difference in my ability to focus.
>installs e-reader apps, password apps, ridehailing/rental apps, music apps, gym apps, dev apps, home apps, "Your Internet Provider" apps (?)
???
I get that some of these are essential, but including home automation and gym apps is really pushing the definition of a "dumb phone". It just sounds like the author wants to avoid installing tiktok and games when he's talking about a "dumb phone".
Ultimately all of these apps were essential for me. "Your Internet Provider" is a funny one -- for some reason XFinity kept failing to charge my credit card. I would come home to find an angry girlfriend without WiFI. I had to install the app to keep some tabs on it, until their autopayment bug was fixed.
One thing I like about this setup is that you can decide which apps are 'essential' for you.
There's no web portal? If so, having the app might make the experience more pleasant, but it's hardly "essential".
I originally did this because the negative experience of losing the internet was really high, but on reflection I think I'll have other warning signs. They did try to call
I'd argue you can just stick to default iPhone apps and be fine.
1. Remove all social media apps from iPhone 2. Use Opal in deep focus mode to block apps and websites (I can't exit the deep focus mode - but I allow myself a 2 hour window when deepfocus isn't active) 3. Keep my phone inside my bag - out of sight out of mind 4. Remove "tap to wake up" in settings - you'll have to click the side button to see the screen 5. Deleted slack and email - was hesitant about missing important notifications, but decided to try for a week and realized it made no difference to my work
I have been using a profile-based restricted iPhone setup for about 6 months now, and this has been the biggest holdup for me. I've pretty successfully blocked almost everything distracting, but I'm pretty good at finding ways to bypass my restrictions. e.g., I'll find an alternative Reddit client (like Redlib) to bypass my Reddit blocks.
The obvious solution is to use a whitelist instead of a blacklist, but then you completely lose the ability to scan QR codes in the wild.
I'm thinking of building a browser designed for this purpose. Your browsing can begin at certain pre-defined entrypoints, like a news aggregator or a QR code, but you can't manually enter arbitrary URLs or use search engines.
I would definitely use this.