Consumers have implicitly accepted the intrusive advertisements, privacy violations, overstimulating notifications, and seedy business model built of dopamine addiction as part and parcel of mobile technology. Long term smartphone use is associated with poor working memory, poor navigation skills, restlessness, sleep apnea, financial loss, privacy issues, computer security issues, and many other problems. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Many of the tasks we have grown used to performing with fragile, glitchy apps, can be accomplished with a paper pocket notepad, or even done with some mental effort alone.
Indie cell phone manufacturers Punkt and Light Phone provide minimalist cell phone models, that are designed to reduce the distractions that have unfortunately crept into modern smartphones. In contrast to smartphones, these "dumbphones" prune away many extraneous features to arrive at svelte core. The dumbphone empowers users to regain control of their lives.
The Punkt MP02 software can feel choppy and unpolished at first. Its Pigeon Signal client frequently breaks every few months. Many basic features like Snooze designed in an overly ornery way. Notably, the existence of an active alarm forces a ridiculous notification onto the home screen. In some ways, smartphones like Android and iPhone offer more control over notifications. Perhaps the Light Phone II has a better execution of the promised minimalist interface. Users commonly cite low hardware quality for the screen, accumulating scratches and broken pixel lines over time. Recommend purchasing an MP02 case to reduce the risk of screen damage. The manufacturer disabled adb access, so the MP02 is far less configurable overall than the average Android phone. The entire design seems to be take it or leave it.
Dumbphones generally weigh less than smartphones, and the reduced screen time for dumbphones translates to longer battery life for basic calls and texting. It's not a happy time when your do-everything smartphone is out of order. More broadly, moving these features back off of phones onto other devices, should result in higher quality phones and more redundancy in case of emergency. Going backwards in time can depart from fragility of ultramodern systems.
Fewer features correlates with fewer bugs. Fewer computer viruses. Fewer notifications. They free up time for you to spend however.
Dumbphones are an example of intentional objects, that use more manual, mechanical processes to inspire deep reflection. When transitioning back from smartphones to dumbphones, expect to be stressed initially, by massive shifts in habits. This is an opportunity to adopt new, healthier habits and examine the role that technology plays in your life.
Just because a phone is "dumb" does not mean it is only a device for simpletons, or that it is bad technology. It just means that the phone manufacturer chooses to not implement certain smartphone features. We use the term "dumb" to differentiate from "smart," because too many "smart" technologies fail to deliver their lofty promises. A truly creative device doesn't need to explicitly market itself as "smart," it just is.
Many high quality dumbphones charge via USB-C. This was true even while Apple was bragging about their "most advanced [Lightning charging] iPhone" models year after year. In some ways, dumbphones steal the prize for modernity.
There are dumbphones with 5G support, dumbphones with touch screens, dumbphones with QWERTY keyboards, dumbphones with T9 dial pads, dumbphones with full Android + Google Play Store, dumbphones with e-ink displays, so on and so forth. Each model makes a difference choice about its precise feature set.
When you choose a dumbphone, dedicate time to research its true capabilities. Plan for the kinds of smartphone activities that you have taken for granted. And know that some pains will be suffered detoxing from smartphones, severing your digital umbilical cord. With patience, intentionally reverting to old ways will uncover new facets, new ways of thinking that break the mold.
Expect the unexpected!
You can't get spammed with digital ads, if the device doesn't support ad spamming.
Light Phone II and (Next Generation) MP02 support ordinary USB-C charging.
Neither support Qi wireless charging. Which means one less item to carry, the Qi block, when traveling.
The MP02 may ship with a very low battery that shuts off after a few minutes. Unfortunately, this interacts badly with lithium battery chemistry's inherently nonlinear discharge rate towards the end of its charge, resulting in the battery falsely reporting a much higher charge than it actually has. In order to avoid damage or data corruption, plug in the phone and let it charge to full before continuing to set it up for the first time, especially prior to installing any updates.
Smartphone and dumbphone users both get rather confused about battery usage. Let's clear this up once and for all: The top two battery draining activities of a typical phone are antenna usage and screen usage. You could buy the most expensive mAh rated battery, but it will rapidly drain to zero the longer you use your phone. Talking on the phone, texting, reading online recipes, tethering, playing games, watching videos, or simply looking at the screen too long, will drain the battery.
Every year, phone batteries get better. But the applications get more complicated, and we're back to square one. Some years you see new phone models coming out with worse battery life than the previous years' models. Manufacturers will shrink battery capacity in a desparate attempt to make the phone sleeker. The end result is that we have all been running in place in terms of phone battery life. An ereader can last for a month, but phones still die after about 12 hours.
In practice, all phone models exhibit comparable battery life, which must be budgeted like anything else. The less you depend on your phone, the more reserve battery charge you have leftover for emergencies.
Portable electronics trend toward lithium ion batteries, whose chemistry is both powerful and dangerous. Powerful because it can provide a high amount of charge needed to continuosly run complex gadgets. Dangerous because a mishandled lithium battery may explode.
Lithium batteries do not degrade from charging too often, a common misconception. However, when left empty for too long, then the battery may have difficulty recharging, and can become unstable.
Do not charge a battery in too small an enclosed area without sufficient venting. Or else the battery can quickly become very hot, eventually exploding.
Do not put any lithium batteries in checked airline luggage. Unlike the passenger cabin, the cargo hold underneath depressurizes to a much greater extent. This can trigger an explosive chemical reaction in lithium batteries.
Do not directly wire the positive and negative terminals of a lithium battery, which can result in them violently exploding. That seems to be lithium's favorite hobby.
The Light Phone II has a touch screen keyboard.
The MP02 has a physical T9 keyboard. The arrow keys navigate either up and down or left to right, depending on application context. The Punkt (.) button in the middle confirms selections. The back button erases text entry characters, or departs from nested menus. The Hang Up Button can terminate calls and jump to the home screen.
The MP02 octothorpe button switches between numerical, autocompletion (gross), and ordinary T9 mode. Repeatedly press one of the dial pad buttons to cycle through options. Some apps force capitalization at the beginning of entries. Octothorpe, when pressed quickly, can adjust capitalization. Zero can insert spaces. Some apps offer an additional menu of symbols triggered by the star button. Other apps trigger an additional menu of symbols by the zero button.
Cell carriers enroll phones in the Network Time Protocol, keeping everyone's clocks accurate to the second or better. This provides a defensive measure to backup most carrier fees, though of course some carriers are unscrupulous about additional surcharges. Accurate time keeping is important for clarifying individual call and text communication timelines, and often factors into legal proceedings.
Many electronic devices support world clocks, the ability to display a second time zone to track another part of the world concurrently with your home time zone.
Unlike more expensive appliances, dumbphones continue to update the clock after powering down.
The various MP02 dial pad buttons do not wake the phone to the lock screen. Only tapping the power button at the top of the phone does this. This has the advantage of conserving power, by avoiding accidentally waking the screen in your pocket as the buttons occasionally get bumped.
The MP02 requires pressing the Punkt (.) selection button at the end of the lock screen PIN.
Most of the world has transitioned to GSM technology for cellular service, however some legacy US networks still use CDMA. The very newest 5G networks use mmWave. And if you happen to reside in a space smack dab in between two distance cell towers, then you may be limited to WiFi calling and text messaging.
Before buying a phone, conduct research regarding the carrier coverage for the different areas you commute between. The FCC provides an interactive cell coverage map for this. Then examine phone model specifications to confirm compatibility with your locally available carriers.
Google Fi is a popular US cellular carrier service featuring automatic routing between multiple other carriers, notably T-Mobile, Sprint, and US Cellular. This helps users receive a stronger signal compared to subscribing to just a single carrier.
Punkt MP02 supports basic Google Fi connectivity at the SIM level and requires no special configuration to work.
Unfortunately, Google Fi assumes a full smartphone device for managing carrier settings. For example, block lists and spam rules may require a conventional smartphone. Some Google Fi details, such as billing or usage metrics, may be available in a device with a Web browser. But the more important consideration with any carrier and a dumbphone, is that the carrier service may automatically block calls and texts, some communications of which are not in fact spam, without a clear indication that they were blocked. If you have amy reason to suspect you are missing some incoming calls or texts, consult your carrier to gather more information.
Pick up the phone, dumb-dumb!
Light Phone II includes a physical volume rocker control.
MP02 includes digital settings to control volume in software. Volume controls do not appear to have much effect, either in previews or when notifications actually trigger.
- Most of the Americas:
911 - Most of Europe:
112 - The rest of the world: varies
Both MP02 and Light Phone II support tracking contact information.
Light Phone II supports cloud synced contacts. Though, as with any cloud service, there are often random lag spikes and bugs.
MP02 supports manual import and export via USB-C. The manual warns about how the model does not implement any contact deduplication or contact merging features. Keep regular backups, such as with Google Contacts. Once the initial collection of contacts are added to the phone, only export and import select individual contacts, in order to avoid duplication. If needed, erase all phone contacts and replace in bulk from your backups.
Note that Google omits the account level country code prefix when exporting contact phone numbers.
Dumbphones support blocking scammers and spammers, just like smartphones. However, blocked numbers may not necessarily sync from either the carrier or cloud services; block lists may need to be manually reapplied.
Both MP02 and Light Phone II support Bluetooth for external wireless headsets.
Light Phone II has a small drive for manually storing audio files.
MP02 has some limited support for audio files, and some users are having luck replacing stock sound effects by copying over the files via USB-C. But the model does not include audiobook or music apps. You can listen to the wind, or use an external device.
Smartphone messaging has fragmented into a mess of hundreds of incomptable platforms like Cisco Webex, Discord, Facebook Messenger, IRC, Skype, Slack, Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, just to name a few. Dumbphones restore community by reverting to the basic SMS network.
In addition to basic SMS, Light Phone II supports MMS for accurately replying to group SMS messages.
For group messages, MP02 encourages Signal, which safeguards the messages using end to end encryption. However, MP02's Signal support is historically spotty and is currently broken at the time of this writing.
MP02 does not support sending or receiving SMS emoji.
Some consumers get emergency alerts from Twitter and other social media platforms. In fact, US consumers of all kinds of modern cell phones, including smartphones and dumbphones, benefit from Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). These are typically sent via 4G or faster data connections.
Most US cellular carrier companies support WEA announcements for important municipal bulletins, such as Amber alerts, severe weather alerts, and national emergency alerts. WEA is typically enabled by default, so no special action is required to setup WEA on smartphones or dumbphones.
IFTTT provides a simple Web interface to create custom, automated SMS integrations for a variety of tasks conventionally implement as smartphone applications. For example, IFTTT allows Google Calendar to trigger SMS notifications when events start, replacing push notifications. As well, IFTTT can forward Weather Underground forecasts for today and/or tomorrow's weather data as daily SMS messages, replacing weather apps and widgets.
Twilio provides a fine grained API for building more advanced SMS and voice applications.
Light Phone II supports basic cloud calendar sync.
Other dumbphones like MP02 present extremely limited calendar features. The paid Apostrophy Services DailyView calendar is both read-only and lacks automatic notifications, so don't expect to be tapped on the shoulder by your phone to keep up with meetings.
You may adopt a more Bohemian lifestyle, treating the day as a whole unit unto itself, appreciating time at a grander scale. Free your mind to look at the world on the scale of eons, beyond the simple rise and fall of melodrama.
If your civic activities do have a hard requirement for hourly and minutely time management, it is also possible to opt into SMS alerts for dumbphone calendar reminders, and many other thing besides. See SMS Integrations.
Each night, review tomorrow's planned calendar events on an external device. And/or use a paper calendar.
Many teleconferencing applications like Zoom provide a traditional phone number you can use to dial into the meeting.
No video? Keep Webcams off. And/or connect with an external device.
And now we enter a realm of anxious paranoia. What if I get lost? What if someone is spying on me? Oh no!
In terms of navigation, the Light Phone II model provides turn by turn directions. Generally, prefer printed, paper maps. Paper maps don't ever need to be rebooted.
Both Light Phone II and MP02 include a GPS module, however do not assume that translates to full map navigation. Rather, the essential purpose of the GPS unit in modern phones is more for the benefit of municipal emergency services. When you call or text US emergency services, their system can then query your location through the GPS module. GPS also assists NTP with automatically updating time zone information during travel.
Lose your phone? Have a friend call it. Try not to leave it on silent mode, or at low battery, too often. And take care especially not to lose the phone outside of your cell coverage area.
In terms of privacy, all cell phones are fundamentally vulnerable to location tracking. This happens for two reasons. First, because of how cell towers triangulate your position. As you move around, your phone frequently pings to identify nearby cell towers. The towers then negotiate which one will be temporarily responsible for routing calls and data to your phone. Three towers receiving these pings are enough to draw a circle with you at the center. In fact, these pings are also the reason that phone batteries drain so quickly in areas of poor cell coverage, because they try so hard to reconnect back to the grid.
The second reason that phones are vulnerable to location tracking is that modern software antenna controls no longer behave intuitively. For example, iPhones may not power down antennas when you enter Airplane Mode, nor when you instruct the phone to disable WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, or other features. Phone engineers have realized that it is technically more convenient at a low level to treat these instructions as mere requests. In other words, if you tried to rob a bank with your WiFi "disabled" then your phone will likely continue generating uniquely identifiable WiFi digital fingerprints regardless.
Assume calls and texts are monitored. End to end services like Signal can provide additional protection, though NIST is expected to approve precracked ciphers on behalf of Five Eyes, not to mention frequent mistakes in cipher implementation...
Federal authorities are rumored to have near supernatural powers, activating phone mics even when the phone appears to be powered off. Some models have removable batteries, reducing this risk further. But ultimately, the only way to wipe the totality of your cell phone footprint, is to not use one.
Use credit card, paper checks, cash, coins. Take turns paying for each other's stuff.
Where required, direct debit, PayPal, Venmo, Square Cash, Stripe, cryptocurrencies, and other electronic financial services may be accessed by an external computer.
Smartphones are primed to automatically decode QR codes as soon as their builtin camera passes over one. This gives attackers an advantage, generating malicious stickers they can slap onto public spaces. For safety, we recommend approaching QR codes with caution.
ScanQR can decode QR code images on an external device. Or ask your server for a paper menu.
When sharing data, deemphasize QR codes. Instead, use short, memorable URL's. For example, TinyURL can convert a long URL into a very short one, suitable for sending over SMS.
Specify SMS codes as the preferred method of two factor authentication (2FA). If this is not possible, contact support staff and request this security capability.
As a fallback, some 2FA systems implement email codes, such as read on an external device.
Some obtuse services only allow SMS codes as a secondary mechanism after TOTP or push notification 2FA is setup. In that case, try configuring an external tablet or BlueStacks desktop TOTP/push application, then configure a secondary SMS 2FA method on the same service. After the SMS method works, consider disabling TOTP for that service.
The MP02 and Light Phone II support creating an alarm. Alternatively, use an external device, such as a digital watch with an alarm, or a travel alarm.
Advise going to bed at the same time each night, until your body naturally wakes up in time for school or work.
MP02 supports setting a timer.
For Light Phone II and other dumbphones, you can set an alarm the equivalent time in the future, or use a sports watch bezel, a travel alarm, an egg timer, another external device, or attentively monitor your subject for the duration.
To-do lists and other notes can be tracked a variety of ways. The MP02 and Light Phone II both include basic note taking applications. However, expect limited support for synchronization with cloud or external devices.
You may choose to manually write out MP02 note tasks onto Microsoft Todo, or Atlassian Jira for engineers. You can write out more persistent general notes to to Google Keep, Gist, or your preferred journaling service.
Light Phone II supports voice recording, though the storage capacity is miniscule compared with the average smartphone.
Generally, any phone can write down a note in the form of texting yourself. These may appear in duplicate.
Enjoy ebooks on a separate device such as a Kindle. Or pick up a paper book!
Both MP02 and Light Phone II support creating WiFi hotspots, for connecting external devices to the Internet over a 3G or faster data connection.
Both support tethering in terms of creating their own WiFi network, which your other deviecs then join. MP02 furthermore supports USB-C tethering, allowing the phone to continue charging while serving the WiFi network.
Cative portals are custom Web logic that authenticates WiFi users after they've already connected to the WiFi network. In the best of times, captive portals are bug riddled experiments in disaster. On a mobile device, smart or dumb, captive portals are live hazards. Recommend to technical staff replacing captive portals with plain ordinary WiFi networks, in order to reduce integration problems.
Dumbphones in particular may have limited or no Web browser capability, and are the most likely to experience issues when connecting to a WiFi network that demands a captive portal. Recommend stepping through the captive portal with an external device, a fullblown desktop computer if necessary. Or using a cellular data plan. Or skipping the Internet entirely.
Some dumbphones have basic cameras. Neither the MP02 nor the Light Phone II do. Use an external camera... or just enjoy the moment.
On another device, install Shop, using BlueStacks if necessary. Optionally, enable SMS or email tracking notifications. And/or create a Google Sheet table with some columns for the tracking ID and package contents.
- Uber
+1 (833) 873-8237 - (Add other local, 24/7 taxi services to your contacts)
Or coordinate with friends and family in advance.
- AAA
1 800-222-4357
Order meals, groceries, haircuts, movie tickets, etc. from a website or app on an external device. Or identify the business phone number and call the venue to setup your order. Or walk in.
Pack an Anduril.
Local auto start.
Also known as mirroring. Unfortunately, there are two competing protocols for this, Google Chromecast and Apple TV. Both require a dedicated, compatible receiver. There are third party apps, but their support is patchy at best.
(Android) based dumbphones could technically tap into their innate ability to take screenshots and stream those as a motion picture. However, screenshotting and images as a whole are blocked on many dumbphone models. The idea is to depart altogether from digital media and return to your roots.
Consume on an external device. Ideally with blue light reduced, and the device put away an hour before you go to bed.
Or better yet, find a more productive use of your time than endless scrolling.
Amateur "ham" radio, Mastodon, and Meshtastic, offer distributed communication networks that rival Facebook cell phones alike, with too many advantages to mention. Who needs a cellular grid when you can build your own antenna? But that's for another document.