[zibzab]

As the author points out, buying a simple a android phone and disabling most of the "smartness" is a much better option.

This is what I did and it works surprising well. I still have a decent camera and can use my banking app etc.

You could say that I actually have a pretty decent phone I just disciplined myself to use it as little as possible.

Edit: the part I am really missing is the compactness of a dumb phone. Years back I had a tiny Xperia Mini and liked the size of it. I would love to see a successor at around $300-350.

Please make it happen Sony

[jamix]

> I just disciplined myself to use it as little as possible.

By now, I have no illusions of being able to discipline myself to that extent. Even with many time-sucking apps uninstalled, there's always a fast browser on the smartphone, and it's a big temptation by itself.

[hughrr]

I think it’s perfectly healthy to use it all the time as long as you don’t sit there doom scrolling on instagram. It’s not what it is but what you use it for.

This morning I’ve had mine in my hand since I woke up. I’ve done my schedule for the day, worked out a food and exercise plan, organised an evening out with my friends, done my finances, edited a couple of photos and given my daughter delivery estimate for her new iPad. It’s just gone 08:05 so I’ve got half an hour to shitpost on HN :)

I am completely set up for a productive day.

[GoblinSlayer]

How a shovelphone is better? The author mentions 5 days is great battery life. My old dumbphone with halfdead battery has 5 days life, and it's short, used to be 15 days or so.

[kalleboo]

I don't know how things are these days but when I was doing the digital nomad thing I had an old android with my home SIM in it in order to accept calls if anything important came in, and just by disabling data and wifi it would last a week on standby. Smartphones have huge batteries that they waste on keeping always-on TCP connections going. Remove those and it should last forever

[zibzab]

I consistently get 4-5 days on my "shovelphone". Well, maybe its not a shovelphone. It's a 2021 midrange phone from a respectable manufacturer.

I just happen to use it as a simple phone with most of the crap turned off. Which maybe explains the improved battery life.

Edit: right now at 10% after 4 days and 16 hours. 8 hours of screen time. Top app was Microsoft Teams (56% of my battery usage).

[barrenko]

This is akin to adding types to dynamic languages. It just doesn't work.