Making a big change never feels easier than on that first day. High on your own determination, you make some great gesture of triumph. You throw out the cigarettes, pour the booze down the sink, or meal prep a week of no-carb dinners, whatever it is, it's symbolic. You're defiantly planting a flag and saying "things are gonna change around here." For me, this act of defiance was imagining how I would destroy my smartphone once I'd rid myself of its influence.
In the afterglow of recognizing that my problem wasn't just the platforms on which I was wasting my time, but the device I was using to access them, I'd felt unstoppable. Soon, I'd thought to myself, that vile little rectangle will be gone. I was certain that once I figured out the particulars, my phone would be a thing of the past and without the option to waste time, I'd have defeated one of the great villains of modern life.
Making the list was cathartic (almost as cathartic as imagining any of these playing out in real life) but once I was done, I was left staring at the horrid little thing thinking, Now what? Do I just...stop? I checked my phone.
This is where big changes get harder. In the aftermath of your moment of defiance, returned to the habitually driven nature of everyday life, you're left with only your routines and the quiet, constant, itch to follow them. When no one else can see you, it's easy to revert back to doing things the way you usually do them. My hand still instinctively flew to my back right pocket anytime I was left with a little more quiet than my dopamine-addled mind was used to and now each time it did, it brought me a newfound shame. I'd verbalized my desire to be free of my phone and now each time I failed to exercise that freedom, I felt like I'd failed myself.
And the world wasn't content to make quitting easy. I considered starting with small phone-free trips around the neighborhood, but each one was quickly foiled. On a phoneless trip to the grocery store, my pregnant wife sent me a list of things she was hoping I could pick up for her, not knowing that the list was sitting unread a floor above her. I arrived to the gym in full luddite fashion only to remember that without music, I'd be stuck listening to half-legible Top 40 hits and overhearing bits of content being filmed by broccoli haired TikTok bodybuilders. A quick walk around the neighborhood led to me missing a call for a delivery I'd been waiting on for weeks.
"Just stopping" wasn't going to be an option. As much as I was prepared to exchange a little convenience for control over my time, I wasn't prepared to venture back into pre-phone life. In addition to the raw convenience of having access to a device that every modern adult has, communicative norms have shifted as such that vanishing from all messenger apps, group chats, and text chains would put quite the damper on my social life. There were dozens of things my phone did that had become daily necessities. I couldn't just overhand my phone into a Cybertruck, I'd need a line up a replacement first.
As the solution is for most people looking for straightforward answers on the internet, my starting point was Reddit. I'd read about the Dumb Phone movement before so I had some vague ideas of where to get started in my search. Over on r/Dumbphones, there were 127,000 users as frustrated with smartphones as I was and a primer specifically designed for people looking for a way out. An early adage I read there that served me well was that "There's no such thing as a perfect dumbphone."
Setting aside all the things I wanted my new phone not to do, I made a mental note of what functionality I actually needed from day to day. I landed on three major functions aside from the basic talk/text combo: Maps (to get around), Rideshare Apps (to get around without my car), and Music (because I like music).
I perused the primer and took a quick stock of what was available, shocked at the sheer number of options available to folks looking to downgrade. I was far from alone in my desire to return to T9 and the market seemed to have taken notice. The dumbphones available tended to fall into one of three categories
The first is Classics. These are offered at low and medium price points (as low as $40 and as high as a couple hundred) and made by companies like Nokia, Blu, and Sunbeam. They're dutiful recreations of their early 2000s counterparts, available in both flip and nugget shapes and given their large, legible text and chunky keyboards, appear to be designed for the elderly. They make phone calls, send texts, and little else. Most of them have some sort of rudimentary web browser that can technically be used to access the internet but if your addiction is so bad as to use it as much as you use a smartphone, I fear nothing can save you.
The second category is Imprisoned Smartphones. These are phones that look and act like smartphones but have a finite number of apps and are designed with minimalist users in mind. They include companies like Gabb, Punkt, and WisePhone. These will have a very similar tactile experience to regular smartphone use in many cases (though Punkt takes a more classically tinged approach) but offer everyday staple apps like Spotify and WhatsApp. These come at a higher price point, with the low end usually being over a hundred dollars.
The final category is Conversation Pieces, beautiful high-end and high-price smartphone alternatives made with aesthetics in mind. These are for people who are chasing the high of having an iPhone back when they were relatively new. The poster child for this group is the near-infamous Light Phone, whose e-ink screen, beautiful design, and growing reputation command a nearly $400 price tag.
As someone who's blown through his fair number of New Year's resolutions over the years, I knew better than to start an undertaking like this with a big purchase. I'm sure the rush of having the prettiest phone on the block would be great but in the event that I were to decide that quitting smartphones wasn't possible for me right now, I'd be embarrassed AND out $400. A handful of reviews about the Light phone had made me concerned that the product itself was still 2-3 iterations away from being worth the cost and if we're being honest, something about the whole thing didn't sit well with me.
Paying smartphone money for smartphone aesthetics on my dumbphone felt like a trap. I believed then (and still do) that a big part of the transition from smart to dumb phone is understanding that slickly packaged convenience is not necessarily making your life better. If you don't accept the basic idea that a life spent tethered to a device isn't a happy one, you're just swapping a product for a product, a company for a company. The creation of a cottage industry around people who want less phone is in and of itself a continuation of the tech industrial complex, it accepts that the terms of engagement are tech's to make and that we are bound to the consumer's fate, ping ponging from pretty $400 product to pretty $400 product as the pendulum of our shared taste swings back and forth between smart and dumb. Alluring design, big promises, and a high price tag is what got me into this mess and I didn't trust it to get me out.
The imprisoned smartphones didn't leave me particularly optimistic either. While I have no doubt that it's possible to build a phone that looks like a smartphone and behaves like a dumb one, I think the tactile similarity between my old and new phone would make it feel like nothing had really changed. Even after deleting all the social media apps from my iPhone, I still found myself absent mindedly opening lesser used apps just to pass the time. My gut told me that if I was going to get out of the woods, I was going to do it with a classic. So, as an ode to my last good phone, my beloved 2007 Motorola Razr, I decided to get a Nokia 2780 flip phone. I found a new one at Best Buy for 75 dollars.
The 2780 looked slick enough to not embarrass me, but not so slick as to be a constant magnet for unwanted conversation. It lacked access to popular apps like Uber or Spotify, but had Google Maps and room for a microSD card that could store a few hundred mp3 files and the ability to connect to Bluetooth headphones. It was a little more bare bones than I'd originally hoped for, but I put the number of a few local cab companies that take phone appointments into my contacts and hoped for the best. Starting cheap and working my way up as needed seemed like it couldn't go wrong.
Excited as I was to get started, my new phone was still a few steps from functional. My research on reddit had led me to multiple stories of people who'd dealt with SIM card issues when making the switch. As it turns out, some SIM cards don't work in certain dumb phones. Others can be put under a security freeze when swapped from one phone to another too quickly. The idea of getting a new carrier, and with it a new phone number, seemed ridiculous to me but I'd already put this much work in and I knew now that my defiant gesture in this change would need to be more than making that list of ways to kill my phone. I was in it now and I had to finish the job.
Burnt out on the act of decision-making, I did some quick searching on r/Dumbphones to find a suitable carrier. Enough people talked about having good luck with US Mobile that I decided to go for it, buying a yearlong plan with unlimited talk/text and enough data to keep my maps access reliable whenever I needed them. I paid for it all at once, placing the total cost of the whole experiment around $300.
A few days later, my new SIM card arrived (the Nokia is incompatible with eSIMs) and I got to work setting it up. My iPhone now sat in a glass jar, its own little Magneto prison, and watched intently as I poked around in the innards of its replacement. It stared as I clicked the SIM into place and powered the Nokia on for the first time. It was not content to let itself fall by the wayside so easily.
NEXT WEEK: The Fine Line Between Convenience And Excess
I have the phone, I have the carrier, I have the vision, I'm free...right? Right??
THE DANIEL REPORT
(AKA the part where I tell you what else I'm up to)
I've been so thrilled to see how much people enjoyed the first Dumbphone Diaries installment. A lot of you are new here so just know that there's more where these came from. Brain Worms is focused on the internet's slow decline, its effect on our lives/politics, and how we as individuals can mitigate its negative impact on our day to day lives. The Dumb Phone Diaries are only the beginning of a much bigger personal project to eventually cut myself loose from the grasp of screens altogether. Spoiler alert!!!
IN OTHER NEWS: My Wife and I Made A Card Game!
Julia and I have been working on a card game concept for awhile and we're going to be crowdfunding it this June. It's called WHO'S A GOOD BOY: THE GAME WHERE DOGS CAN SIN and it's a fun, simple, game with funny jokes and adorable dog art. I'll be talking about it more as it gets closer, but right now the most helpful thing you can do is pre-follow the campaign. This way, you'll get a notification at launch that the game is available if you want it. Despite current tariff nightmares, we've been able to make a game that's physically simplistic enough to sell for just over $20.
IN OTHER OTHER NEWS: SINNERS IS GOOD
I saw Ryan Coogler's incredible SINNERS yesterday and recommend you do the same! There'll be a subscriber only essay incoming this week or next about what the movie has to say about American culture and how I think the director's time working with Disney enhances the film's subtext.