Jr and I have spent the last year paring down our smartphone usage. This last December, we found we were using the phones about 30 minutes a day. When I realized last month that Jr’s phone would stop getting security patches in August of this year, I was not looking forward to dropping another $500-$800 on a phone that we’re trying our best to not use.
So I moved to a featurephone.
I have a few basic needs:
- Need to be able to play one album to wired speakers: I run sound for the dance school
- Group texting: surprisingly, this is still an uncommon feature in 2024
- Rudimentary maps app I can use for walking
- Calendar with alarms that syncs to some online service
- Allows tethering my laptop
- Battery lasts a full day
Nokia 2780
Initially, I tried the Nokia 2780. This is a flip phone, running KaiOS, a browser-based mobile operating system.
Checklist:
- Play one album to wired speakers
- Group texting
- Maps for walking
- Calendar with alarms
- Allows tethering my laptop
- Battery lasts a full day
Other neat features:
- $70
- Camera with flash and geotagged photos (remembers where you were when you took it)
- Displays photos sent over SMS
- Email client, synced to Google Mail
- Possible to write JavaScript apps for things like playing ebooks
- Alarm clock
Bummers:
- USB C charging port is still directional and won’t charge in one orientation of the cable
- Dings for dumb reasons like “battery is full”, with no clear way to turn that off
- Music player won’t play to wired speakers (but wired headphones are okay: I don’t understand how they did this)
- JavaScript apps cannot use “native” controls: you have to scroll a cursor around with the d-pad
- Larger than flip phones used to be (but still smaller than a smartphone)
- Predictive text input makes you send “G will be there” instead of “I will be there”, unless you’re vigilant
- Some built-in apps, and all store-installed apps, have ads
- Google is all over the shortcuts, even when it doesn’t make sense
- OS will probably never be updated
Jr wound up taking this device, and seems to be fairly happy with it. For me, it was pretty good, but I felt like it could be better.
Light Phone 2
This is actually running Android with a custom front-end for displaying on a small e-ink screen. You can hack it to run any Android app, apparently. I’m going to try hard not to do this.
Checklist:
- Play one album to wired speakers
- Group texting
- Maps for walking
- Calendar with alarms
- Allows tethering my laptop
- Battery lasts a full day
Other neat features:
- Will auto-forward MMS attachments to your email
- Small: fits in my jeans watch pocket
- E-ink display looks cool
- Lots of the setup you do is actually on a web page you access with your computer
- Alarm clock
- Podcasts built into the core OS
- Allows typing some Latin diacriticals like ñ and ç
- Gets regular updates: seems like about 2 updates per month!
Bummers:
- $300
- USB Micro charging adapter
- Music is organized as a flat list of every song you added
- Percent button on calculator makes no sense to me
- Sends notification tone when it pairs to Bluetooth or regains signal
- Does not sync messages over bluetooth to the car
- Does not sync contacts over bluetooth to the car
- You have to turn it on to see if you have any notifications
- No camera
- No ability to display images
Where Things Stand
Jr has the Nokia 2780 and so far likes it. I suspected this would happen: it feels more “fun” somehow, and the camera is a big deal.
I’m enjoying the Light Phone 2. It checks all my boxes, and… that’s about all there is. $300 feels like a lot, but if I can keep it for 2 years, I’ll be spending the same amount per year as I did on smartphones. If I can keep it for 5 years, it will be much cheaper.
I’ve also started tossing an old digital point-and-shoot camera in my bag if I think I might want to take photos. It turns out I don’t take many photos these days, now that Jr is off at college.
More interesting to me is that I still need a smartphone. Or at least, I still need something that can run Android apps. Specifically, for:
- Depositing checks
- Authention app for work (!)
That’s actually all: everything else I need, I can run in a web browser. But they won’t let me deposit checks with a browser.
I can run Android apps on a Chromebook, so that’s what I’m doing. I’m switching over to my kid’s Chromebook, which has a better camera than the 8-year-old one I’ve been using: this will help with video calls. It’s also smaller, lighter, and has a newer battery, so it’s a bit of an upgrade. It can still run Linux, too.
While I was messing around, I set up the Plex app, so I have some stuff to watch on my next train trip.
Will this stick? I guess only time will tell!