[zephyr9]

I switched from an iPhone to Nokia 515 two years ago and vowed never to go back. If I wrote a blog post like this it would probably just be, "Living smartphone-free in the 2020's is like having a superpower, it's utter joy and freedom and and everyone still with a smartphone is a total sucker."

Then a couple of weeks ago I felt the social pressure and lack of a good camera so I bought an iPhone 12 mini. It was awful. I returned it 48 hours later and am now back with my beloved Nokia.

The grass really is greener this side of the fence.

[octoberfranklin]

Does your phone still actually work?

You must not be in the US... that is a 3G phone and the 3G networks here are either shut off or in the process of being shut off.

https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_515-5663.php

[zephyr9]

I'm in Australia and I think there's a law that carriers need to keep an amount of 3G coverage. So we will likely lose 4G coverage before 3G. Regulation FTW!

[angus-g]

I think it might only be around for another couple of years -- Telstra is switching theirs off in 2024, and Optus is pretty soon too.

[octoberfranklin]

Government-granted spectrum monopolies... two wrongs make a right I guess.

[barbazoo]

I'd be very interested in a dumb phone that works in North America.

[bowmessage]

Out of curiosity, what was awful about the recent iPhone experience?

[zephyr9]

My feeling is that tools should be transparent in their use, as in, when you use a hammer to hit a nail, the hammer essentially disappears. And while I think the iPhone of Steve Jobs was like this, I'm pretty sure that Apple intends the trajectory of the iPhone now to be less like a tool and more like an assistant, e.g. it should offer suggestions, preempt your actions, that it should "think for you". It makes it feel like there's a third-party (Apple/Siri) stuck in between me and other people. This feeling has probably crept up gradually enough that most people with smartphones don't notice it, but going from a dumb-phone to smartphone was like being hit with a hammer.

[rootsudo]

iphone 12 mini also has many apps that still do not work correctly, or show proper resolution and thus apps are unusable.

plus using it to type and such is really a big annoyance. the keyboard is smashed in the lower 20% of the screen.

[gnicholas]

How do you deal with getting around (public transit timing, driving directions/traffic, uber/lyft) without a smartphone?

[Beltalowda]

I just write things down on a piece of paper; or just "yolo it". It works well enough, although lack of GPS can be inconvenient at times, I find it's not a huge deal – this is how almost everyone got around up to ~10 years ago.

I never used taxi services anyway; bus services are pretty good here, and I cycle.

A bigger issue is that a lot of services are "smartphone-only", and can't be done with a regular computer; sometimes this makes sense, sometimes less so. I partly get around this by running Android emulator on my computer when I really can't avoid it, which works "well enough". This will only get worse in the future.

I dislike telling people I don't have a smartphone; people look at you like you're some sort of freak. Recently someone told me that "I do not belong in modern society" shrug. I guess it's not inaccurate, as I dislike a lot of technology and feel it makes our lives worse in many ways (in spite of working as a programmer, but that's just for the money at this point; very hypocritical, yes).

Right now I have a "true" dumb phone (or at least, as dumb as you can get), which can just call and SMS and that's it. Oh, it also has snake, of course, and curiously it also has some other games you need to "buy" for €5 or so. IIRC the EU will switch off 2G in 2024 or so, so I guess I'll have to buy a slightly less "dumb phone" by then. We'll see.

[Freak_NL]

My wife and I will have to buy one soon, because it is pretty much the only way we can establish a line of communication with other parents of my young son's peers at kindergarten (he's nearing 3). Not doing so would stunt his growth on an emotional level, because we would deprive him of things like play dates and such. Not due to malice on the part of other parents, but because not having WhatsApp (here in the Netherlands) is not something other people can always grasp. We can choose who we interact with, but we can't choose my son's friends parents.

It's so incredibly silly how owning a smartphone isn't even a matter of preference any more; people just expect everyone to have one. I don't really need one, despite loving train travel and independent exploration on holidays. Paper maps work fine, preparation using a normal computer too.

[Beltalowda]

Yeah, social stuff like that is an issue. I currently use Telegram to keep in touch with some friends; the big upshot of Telegram is that after registering, you can use web.telegram.org or the desktop app without having your smartphone (or in my case, emulator) powered on. There's no E2E encryption, but that's fine. WhatsApp, Signal, and most other solutions really are tied to the smartphone: web.whatsapp.com will route messages through your phone; it's really annoying; I wish they would just E2E directly from your laptop, but I guess that's too obscure of a "market" to cater too.

You can still use it with the Android Emulator though; there's a bunch of solutions for this but I just use the Android Studio one. It works, but you need to keep the emulator running and isn't especially convenient.

I feel like tying a lot of things to these proprietary platforms that are impossible to integrate with independently is essentially redoing the mistakes of the 90s and 00s that we had with Microsoft where you more or less had to have Microsoft Office or you'd have a hard time reading/editing those .doc files sent to you (eventually OpenOffice.org was kind-a okay at it, but still far from perfect).

I don't even mind non-free software as a matter of principle, I just want the freedom to use an "alternative" system like my Linux desktop or maybe some eclectic device like PinePhone or those modern PDA things or whatnot to participate in basic stuff, instead of being forced to shell out money to one of those huge tech giants with a bazillion dollars to purchase thingies I don't even like.

[Freak_NL]

> […] but I guess that's too obscure of a "market" to cater too

Oh no, this is on purpose. WhatsApp, Signal, etc. want to maintain control of the clients at all costs because of user tracking and monetization. If this wasn't the case, they would allow some form of non-smartphone access. As it is they keep their API's closed and ban anyone trying to use any form of third party tools.

In the case of Meta (WhatsApp) this is about keeping their silo-suite closed. People may hate Facebook, but if they can keep these users via the popular WhatsApp, they can keep up their numbers. What Signal really wants is anyone's guess. Something to do with that shifty cryptocoin I guess.

> I just want the freedom to use an "alternative" system like my Linux desktop or maybe some eclectic device like PinePhone or those modern PDA things or whatnot […]

Absolutely.

[Beltalowda]

Maybe; I don't know. Telegram has the same incentives (and I believe they have some crypto wazamabob as well). I think it's much more likely that it's just easier for them: abuse is a serious issue and the more "closed" a platform is, the harder (not impossible, just harder) it becomes to abuse it (see: email). And not having to worry about third party integration/APIs, compatibility, documentation, etc. also makes their lives just easier.

Getting all of this to work well with E2E requires extra thought (how do you make messages available on two devices?); Telegram hasn't nailed that either. I don't especially care about this, but a lot of people do.

Essentially, there are basically no practical upshots for them, and it's just more effort.

[zephyr9]

> It's so incredibly silly how owning a smartphone isn't even a matter of preference any more; people just expect everyone to have one.

Most of society has transitioned now to just being custodians of smartphones -- moving the smartphones around, feeding the smartphones their various diet of information and imagery, tending to their demands for attention and updates etc. Surely it will be an unfamiliar experience to have just a regular person walk among them.

[darkwater]

> It's so incredibly silly how owning a smartphone isn't even a matter of preference any more; people just expect everyone to have one. I don't really need one, despite loving train travel and independent exploration on holidays. Paper maps work fine, preparation using a normal computer too.

It's just like electricity, or having/not having a landline phone 40 years ago.

[sneak]

We will never be free of WhatsApp if we continue caving and using the service, making it more valuable to others.

Every time you cave and use Facebook spyware, you make it harder for the next person.

Stop using tools that make the world worse. Tell your contacts to install Signal instead.

You must be unreachable on WhatsApp, so that the utility of the app is not increased for others.

[Beltalowda]

Signal is just as smartphone-tied as WhatsApp. It's actually worse, as there is no web version and the desktop app is flaky. So there is no improvement here at all in this regard.

[yusmary]

Signal is also shitty in the sense that it announces your presence to anyone that is using the service prior to you and has your number.

If you only want some people to know you are there, you are screwed

[sneak]

This is hugely incorrect. Signal is private, WhatsApp is not.

Go read the app privacy labels if you don't believe me.

[Freak_NL]

That's what I do currently, but when some other kid's parents are organising a birthday party I can of course ask them not to use WhatsApp, but then my kid will be the kid with the parents who want to make things hard for everyone.

If this means that I have to get WhatsApp just for those things, than I can hardly refuse without making my son a social recluse.

[sneak]

No, you are the one parent who isn't making things hard for everyone. It's people demanding you and everyone else in society use Facebook spyware who are making things hard for everyone: not just your class, but all of the people of the world.

You don't make things better by making bad choices.

[zephyr9]

You'd be surprised how capable your brain is when you just trust it to remember directions. A couple of times when going to a place I've not been before I've drawn a little map, but you can always ask someone for directions to a specific street. It's actually a nice feeling to find your own way when there's the possibility of getting lost.

Buses and trains have their times at the stops/stations, or for less trafficked routes I just check on my computer and remember when I need to go.

Uber/Lyft are vile and I don't use them.

[jabbany]

Figuring out directions (driving, walking, transit) is actually quite easy in most cities. My approach is to just lump specific places into general "areas", get familiar with how to get between areas (transit/driving options) by thinking about their absolute positions and connections that exist, and then for unfamiliar places, look it up on a map before leaving.

The only thing I miss with navigation is real-time traffic. Which, all things considered, is just a "nice to have".

[ikr678]

Our brains evolved to wayfind from landmarks (there's a part of the brain largely dedicated to it, found from studies on cab drivers). but using GPS navigation changes how you remember a journey you havent made before, and makes you much less likely to retain it. The screen will show you as the centred object, and your map and reference points shift on the screen relative to you.

With say analog map navigation, your position moves (you trace with your finger/update it mentally) relative to fixed landmarks on the map, so you get a better sense of their spatial relation to one another.

[kbrannigan]

You see! Back in the days we used a spongy organ between our ears called the brain of something. It's like an organic computer that remember things.

[octoberfranklin]

Standalone GPS units still work just fine; same with public bus timetables.

You might have to give up uber. It's worth it though.

[GoblinSlayer]

I order taxi with a call. Trying to avoid monopolistic services too.

[GoblinSlayer]

Wouldn't you get a better and cheaper camera if it's really a camera and not a phone?

[zephyr9]

Short answer, yes, long answer, it depends.

A lot of camera capabilities hinge on the physical size of the sensor, i.e. how much power it consumes to shoot and how much heat it generates. An iPhone camera sensor is tiny and so can do pretty amazing things like shoot 1080p 240fps slow-motion. Trying to do that with a 4/3" sensor is more demanding. I need slow-motion for my work.

[MerelyMortal]

The best camera is the one you have with you, and I hate carrying around extra stuff in my pockets, thus I like having an all-in-one device.

[pasdechance]

The 515 is gorgeous too

[zephyr9]

Heck yes. Whenever I find myself saying "sorry I can't do that with my phone" and I pull out the Nokia to illustrate, people swoon over it.