Anyone ditched their smartphones and gone back to basics?

I might be missing some.of the functionality of WhatsApp but I only use it to communicate with people I actually know and don't use it as a scrolling feed type app like FB/TW/insta. So it's not something you can open and mindlessly waste time.on

Yeah, likewise. Just replaces text/phone for me. If WhatsApp made a WhatsApp only phone i'd buy it

This is cool

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Ohhh snap. Music streaming was the one thing I miss with the 8110 - can sd card music but its a ballache..

WhatsApp was a deal breaker for me as it is the platform I use the most for organising social life - messaging only but as above..

I’m deeply distrustful of WhatsApp because of the twats who own it

Whatsapp is a weird one because it was probably the most useful app I had and and the one I miss the most.... but also the one that broke the camels back. Because my work use Whatsapp in lieu of real management it means that your personal phone gets hijacked.

I do miss firing pictures and videos to friends easily but I am really glad that because my phone takes terrible photos I use my proper camera more and most importantly take all the photos off and upload to my computer/print - The phone just used to hoard 1000s of random pics.

Atleast now if I send a pic to friends/family, I have used my camera. Thought about the pic. Uploaded to pc. tweaked in lightroom. Saved and named in a future friendly format. Attached to email. Sent. Then called/texted to accompany. Anything shite fails by step 3 so I am happy that im sending quality. Plus not getting dick reveal memes and russian bot hooker phishing cons is a bonus.

russian bot hooker phishing cons

is this something you get on WA?

It's important to know broadly what is going on around your immediate physical locality.

Isn't that what your eyes and ears are for? My local news is essentially irrelevant to my life.
"New pensioner care facility opens", "youth squad targets vandalism", "cafe owner unhappy with parking limits" YAWN.

Same.

My news is primarily twitter jokes that I then back-fill using my wonderfully powerful brain to work out what happened. If it seems like something I need to know more about then duckduckgo.com

Android will do that automatically at night. I use it. Wind Down mode or something it's called.

It's also owned by Facebook so if you use it you're also owned by Facebook.

Fuck WhatsApp.

Cool kids use Signal.

Because my work use Whatsapp

and that's why I say "fuck right off" when work wants me to install anything on MY phone.

You want me to use some stupid app, you pay for the phone to put it on and the data account and I'll turn it on 9-5.

Funnily enough, I don't have a work phone any more... winner winner chicken dinner

Not going to read the whole thread but honestly it's not the phone it's social media. Get off social media. Still nice to have a nice phone for maps and pictures and websites

this plus a clear line between work and home

To be fair I think its Skype but as I havent used them all for ages I now just group them all together as one.

I have been a huge smartphone overuser. Instead of giving up my smartphone I've found that figuring out why I'm so bored and dependent on it is more useful. If I do more things I enjoy and find rewarding, I never even think about my phone.

Not meant to be all pious about it, but smartphone overuse is a symptom not a root cause.

For me I never saw my self as an overuser it was more the obtrusiveness of it and never being happy with how much it forced its way into my activities even with restrictions listed above about notifications, uninstalling etc.

As a man with many hobbies and interests I never had an issue with finding other things to do I am very much one of those people who dont have enough hours in the day. What I really gain from not using the phone is the downtime around those activities. Lunch breaks, queues in shops, loo stops, doctors waiting rooms, tired evenings on the sofa. Previously the algorithm was competing to take that time now its present.

I took my kid to the park earlier and was surrounded by parents scrolling/working/calling/tweeting. Those moments playing with your child are the most rewarding and if that doesn't encourage people to question what they are doing with the phones then I think there is a larger issue.

I don't think most people need to give them up. I just don't use one because I simply don't miss it. I would say to anyone reading this that if the thought of exclusively using a basic nokia for 1 week seems impossible then you need to try it.

I can totally see your point. Maybe that's just how it works for me.

Yeah its all a spectrum of sensitivity I think. There are people I know who I think have a problem and they don't see it. Then for me I didnt have a real problem but was far too sensitive to it.

What is really critical here for me is that if you are under 30 then you likely wont know any different and that makes it all the more important question it but also less likely to question it.

I used one of my old Nokia’s that somehow still worked last time my proper phone died. Used it for about a year - the amount of time I got back from not checking phone while having a poo was incredible!
Camera was the thing I missed most - everything else I could live without

Apart from the battery life on those is pretty dire by all accounts.

How do people without smartphones check how much into their overdraft they’ve gone on the fly?

And this is a good point, what do people without smartphones do when they’re on the throne?

I have so many questions

Read the argos catalogue?