[_carbyau_]

The issue is societal lockin - aka network effects. People can't afford to "not buy one" because then they are "the one without".

Banking apps, delivery apps, public transport apps, utilities apps, insurance - so many services have been captured by the big two phone oligopoly that modern life revolves around your phone. The assumption is that you will have one.

Sure, you could decide not to, but you are instantly a societal pariah as every business finds it s so much harder to deal with you - and you don't have enough time in the day to deal with the secondary processes these businesses employ, for every aspect of your life.

[samdoesnothing]

Maybe it's country specific - here in Canada I don't feel like I need a smart phone for anything crucial. There is a trend where people including zoomers such as myself switch to dumb phones for a "digital detox". So it seems perfectly feasible to do so.

[2000UltraDeluxe]

I'm not sure how I'd manage tbh (in Finland).

I was called a luddite for not wanting to follow the "official" schoool Whatsapp group. Online banking is practicably unusable without the bank's own 2FA app.

Many things can still be done in a web browser, but the rest of society is going the smartphone route and it's increasingly difficult to avoid it.

Any non-digital options are aimed at elderly and handicapped individuals; not people who don't want smartphones.

[makeitdouble]

Some people can do it. I'd also ditch my smartphone if I was living in the woods, or had a personal assistant handling my daily needs, or lived in an Amish community etc.

But I don't see the vast majority of people to be able to ditch their smartphone, that's just not a reasonable proposition.

[samdoesnothing]

They don't need to ditch smartphones, there are more options than just an iPhone/Pixel or dumb phone.

But most people including myself just don't care about side loading. For those who do, there are options like a Fairphone, various Linux phones, etc.

[alive0000002025]

A few people can live with just phone calls, but a sizeable majority use some additional apps for texting. Dumb phones won't work here.

1. Many people use a virtual text number, like google voice 2. Maybe even more folks use one or more app based texting services. I bet many users here have several on their phone:

Signal What's app telegram

There are probably 50 texting type apps in this category

These are dangerous attack vectors for people trying to remotely control your phone, but also important to talk to your friends.

I think we need a solution for these types of apps for a popular usable solution. I don't know how to solve the safety issue when running these apps, and I can't just "forward" text messages to my dumb phone.