[bdangubic]

you can accomplish a whole lot of the same keeping the phone and deleting all social media apps and accounts (what I did). I still use my phone as a map and camera and many other things … my screentime went from 7+ hours to hardly ever over 40 minutes daily

[uncharted9]

I keep coming back to the sites on my phone's browser. I have tried using various firewall applications to block network traffic. But it's hilariously easy to get around them.

[caseyy]

You can actually disable the browser in a pretty serious way in iOS. First, ask your spouse/friend/colleague to set up parental controls on your phone and have them hold onto the code. Second, remove Safari through Content & Privacy Restrictions. Third, set up Downtime in whitelist mode to run all day. This way, Safari is disabled and an alternative browser cannot be installed from the App Store. If you want full control of your phone back, you'll need to ask your spouse/friend/colleague for the code – totally doable but now it's pretty difficult to get around the restrictions.

Something similar should exist for Android with regard to parental controls. Though for Android, I suppose you could also just uninstall/disable both the browser and the Play Store through adb.

[uncharted9]

Parental controls on Android are a bit more complicated and require another Google account. I'll take the latter route. I'll just install something like Firefox Focus, which clears browsing data on exit. It will help for one-off searches or an app that launches the browser for some process. I'm not sure if disabling the Play Store is a good idea. It might cause problems with updates. Right?

[natsucks]

Turning GrayScale mode on also helps.

[throwaway2037]

Woah I never heard this before. Very novel. Is the theory here the grey scale is less visually stimulating compared to full colour? LOL, it almost makes me wonder if we need a Duplo mode that makes everything crap 8-bit colours and low-res to scare people away from their phones.

[caseyy]

That’s a part of the appeal in E-Ink phones.

[johnchristopher]

That's not the point. The focus here is on removing the smartphone out of the system, not removing features from the smartphone.

[bdangubic]

that is actually not the focus. phones in it of themselves are not actually a problem, what we do with them is. you get phone companies to provide under-16 phones which have ability to call, text, use Map and limited browser capacity and not a single soul would complain about kids having phones on them. not a single soul might be a stretch as of course there’ll always be someone but you get my point…

[johnchristopher]

That is actually the focus of my question and comment:

> > *I threw away my smartphone 4-ish months ago,*

> *What did you replace it with* (if you did edit: scratch that, I brain froze and was thinking of "did you replace it with a regular phone") ? Most accounts I read of people ditching their smartphones mentioned they started carrying an ultra light laptop or small candy bar computer (for instance). Basically increasing inconvenience to reduce usage.

Now if you could stop hijacking the thread and assuming I don't know smartphones can be tweaked that'd be cool.