the dumbphone idea is nothing but an idea
A few days ago, I watched a retro buyers’ guide for iPods. I was considering an iPod Nano 7 as an offline music player with Bluetooth capabilities with no internet access. Only problem is, these devices are old, can only be purchased secondhand and are hard to repair. So if the battery hadn’t been charged in a while and I charge it, it might inflate and burst through the fragile screen. The only advantage an iPod like that carries over my Apple Watch is that it’s easier to flash my music library to from my Mac instead of relying on Bluetooth transfer from my iPhone. So, when I sensed the futility in wasting time on these retro guides and devices, I went to the Sidephone page, which sported a sundial like the iPod Classic, to check its price again and whether it shipped to my country of residence.
I was starry-eyed at the sundial that it comes with because that phone could be a more sophisticated music player and probably a main daily driver. My sister walked in on me, saw what I was looking it, and then asked me why consider such a limited phone. I explained my reasons, then she asked me what apps that phone had. Through the course of the conversation, we got to a point where I was giving her a „what’s on my phone?“ tour through the limited set of apps on my current phone. When I got to the banking, government ID, social security, public transport, password management, and MFA apps, she promptly asked me: „Well, can that phone run those apps?“ And I said, no, it probably can’t. And probably never will.
Then it dawned on me anew that the thought of going dumbphone, or semi-dumbphone in the case of the Sidephone, was nothing but a thought. It will never be realized as long as I don’t plan on making my choice other people’s problem. My friend Pirate, who had been using a dumbphone for a few months, discussed the outsourcing nature of that decision in one of his recent posts „To Smartphone or Not to Smartphone“. This is further corroborated by Ava’s wife’s experience never using smartphones in „my wife and her dumbphone,“ where she wrote: „Despite all Requests never to drop off something [in DHL’s package lockers] occasionally Deliveries still end up there and Ava has to handle that for me every Time.“
Over a year ago and after she posted „dumbphones as a new status symbol“, me and Ava emailed about all the ways in which we are so dependent on some apps on smartphones that hinder our move to dumbphones. If I ever went dumbphone, it would mean I don’t need the above apps (banking, government ID, social security, public transport, password management, and MFA) which would mean someone else does the banking for me, I never need to ID myself online, because again, someone else does it for me or an analog, less convenient alternative exists, and I don’t use public transport because I have a car.
All this is a privilege (the car’s a downgrade, though) that makes dumbphones a clear status symbol in my eyes. It says that you can fly through this world without all the mandatory software that life under this system makes necessary. Going dumbphone is thus so easy enough to attain as to make them within sight, yet always out of reach for any ordinary person.
And in any case, going dumbphone would only address the problem for me, one that not only affects me. This would be yet another instance of individualizing solutions to collective problems; problems that could be more effectively and conveniently addressed for us all instead of each of us unnecessarily chasing a solutions of our own.
So I guess I’ll always keep looking at the other side and toying with the idea of pulling the trigger yet knowing full well that I realistically can’t.