Hello!
I really use my smartphone too much. Especially when working from home.
Before the mudita pure is released, I would like to try a dumb phone as my main phone.
Do you use one? Which model?
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I went for a Nokia 105 (about 16€ here) and used it for about 3 weeks exclusively. You can make phone calls and write SMS, but be mentally prepared for typing with keys. At least if you got used to a touchscreen over the last years. The call quality was unexpectedly good, the material was sturdy (although I wouldn’t trust it as much as an original Nokia phone from 10+ years ago) and the low weight is just great!
Apart from the troublesome typing experience and the lack of a “mainstream messenger” I really enjoyed the weeks and learned some valuable things about myself. I eventually switched back to my smartphone, mainly because of the touchscreen keyboarda and the lack of a music player, but what can I say… I already notice how I’m slowly creeping back into my old bad smartphone habits 
So I’m still on my way to find a balance.
I can highly encourage you in your plan to switch to a dumbphone! The first days might be awkward, but it is definitely worth the experience. Fell free to ask if you want to know more.
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I have a feature phone based on KaiOS (CAT B35) and use it without any issues for 2 years now. I use only 3 features although: calls, SMS and LTE hotspot tethering. For the rest of my online activities, I have a laptop for my work and a tablet for fun 
. As both of the devices are too big to carry with me and I do not have any social networks, except professional ones as Linkedin, I use those devices really only for the time needed, to do my job or watch some film.
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Thank you for your posts!
I am going to try a dumb phone for the next two weeks, during my holidays. I use too much my smartphone and I want to disconnect.
The drawback is that all my friends are on Signal and with a dumb phone you can’t use this application. I’ll just use the desktop application and see how it works for me.
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I think there are 3 types of communication: 1- everyday casual with friends, 2- work related and 3- important stuff. The first one is creating addiction and takes most of your time. Yes, you have an overview about how are your friends doing and are keeping track on their lives. But much better is to share that in a pub once a week 
(or in a grill party in your garden, to be safe in Corona time) Second, the work related is necessary, but only in work hours and at your work device. The last one, the important stuff, is the main idea of dumb phone, to be always available when needed. Be it on a track in the mountains or in the middle of crowd in music festival, nothing beats SMS in regards of signal strength or power consumption. Signal and other messaging apps need internet to be able to send messages. To join the cell network data, you need much stronger signal and thus energy. Of course you will miss most of the casual communication this way, nobody will write you SMS how you are doing, although its legacy from the past when we paid for every message. The most data plans have free SMS now. If you do have social networks, you can check them later at a proper device (keyboard, monitor), it is not important for the being here and now.
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Ok I think I get it. I think I will not miss something really important if I bypass the everyday conversation with my friends. And I do not have any social networks. My friends already know that I prefer to meet them or call them instead of looking at their posts on twitter or facebook.
I just bought a Nokia 105 (hi mate @steven 
). It is so weird to go back to a phone like this haha
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I did for several years before moving countries, which was around the time that the US started phasing out 3G anyways. Unfortunately I was given a handmedown smartphone upon landing, and have been stuck with it since.
I hate who I am when I have a smartphone, and the pros do not come near to outweighing the cons for me. I keep better organized when I write things down rather than type them. I better remember my on-going correspondences when I’m not being distracted by notifications, and forget to reply to fewer emails, texts, missed calls. I’m more spontaneous when I don’t feel compelled by easy access to services like Yelp to meticulously pre-plan everything I’m going to do. My mind quiets down when I don’t have the internet in my pocket.
Can’t wait to go back to that kind of engagement with life again.
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Yes, I’ve never had a smartphone. I’ve freelanced and worked from home for years and have to be protective of my leisure time, so the “always connected!” selling point isn’t one for me. I’m also not a fan of touchscreens.
I had some difficulty finding what I wanted when I lost my 11-year-old phone last year and needed to find a replacement, which is the main reason why I backed the Mudita project. My current model is a Samsung SGH-A157, which I bought secondhand. I’m pretty well pleased with it, but it’s on 3G/borrowed time.
I hope you enjoy your Nokia 105!
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I’m on the other extreme; I haven’t used a phone for 3+ years. That is to say, I still use a smart phone for about 15 min per week, on wifi, and only as a 2FA utility. I manage my voice communications using a desk phone and VoIP client, and there’s good chat clients like Telegram or Element (via Matrix dot org) that support encryption. Signal doesn’t work on desktop, unfortunately.
However, I’ve tried a variety of dumb phones over the last few years to see if I can get one to fit my use case. The problem is not the lack of apps, but rather the poor UI design and lack of T9 or similar predictive text typing. Texting via multitap can lead to insanity (or RSI) and the development of KaiOS seems to be dead. My requirement for the most part is phone calls and SMS, anything else is bonus.
There are a few older models from Nokia (say 2008-12 era) that include T9 text input and have 3.5G or early 4G (also Samsung, Motorola, Ericsson – just search GSMarena), but that means frequency support for carriers in your area may be limited. Symbian Nokias can still be smart phones, with many well designed and useful apps, however you’d have to go out of your way these days to find and install them. Thankfully my N95 still works adequately when I need it; I could not suggest a better phone than one from that era. The new KaiOS phones could have been an interesting new alternative, but are half baked and have little to nothing in common with the original Nokia. Imho, if f you can get one on the cheap, then give it a try and make up your own mind. I’d just rather not have a phone at all than be bothered by their poor UI/UX.
I wrote a review about my Nokia 8110 experience here, if you’d like to read more.
https://bit.ly/3gYV4aX
If you’re just making phone calls and not SMS, then text input is probably not a concern. We’re still waiting to find out exactly how Mudita will handle this aspect, and I hope they will have some innovative solution, as the majority of other present day “dumb” phone manufacturers have failed in this respect. For that, I would pay premium, and the Pure really looks like a thoughtfully engineered product. I’m excited for it and hope it will be a great success.
Good luck with your experiment, it will take a bit of adjustment to get over the “smart” addiction, but it will make for a richer life experience, even if you’re only disconnecting on evenings or weekends. Get a nice quality notebook and pen so you can start writing things down, it’s a pleasure to use good quality paper and writing instrument. Parker pens can be had for $30 and Midori notepads are only a couple bucks themselves.
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Thank you all for your sharing your experiences! What a great community on Mudita haha
I bought my Nokia two days ago and I’ve been using it ever since. It gives me a real feeling of calm, I am no longer bothered by internet notifications. After showing my new phone to my friends, most of them told me that I was right to change.
Having no phone like @daniel could be the next step. I will see!
@daniel: Signal has a desktop app, I use it on my laptop. And thank you for your blog post, I’m reading it
@theflipside: you had a 11-year-old phone !! I hope my Nokia (or my Mudita) will have the same age one day haha
@boneblack: I am looking for the same spontaneous feeling as you!
I share you a great french video “Has the smartphone destroyed a generation?” : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDbq400rGIw (maybe you can use auto-generated subtitles)
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Ahh! My mistake, you’re correct that they do. However they require you to first create an account with a mobile and I wasn’t willing to do that. And in my head it got confused, as it’s not a viable option for someone to use without a smartphone, just like Whatsapp requires a smartphone to login on the desktop app (at least when I last used it). Thanks for clarifying. Telegram has no such requirement.
If you have the banana phone, check out this page; it’s possible to do a bit of hacking with it. Actually they support a few KaiOS models, but that’s the one I’m directly familiar with.
http://bananahackers.net/
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Using a Light Phone 2 at the moment.
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I hope my Mudita, and whatever phone you settle on, lasts at least eleven years! Fingers crossed. My phone would have lasted even longer if 2G service hadn’t been discontinued in my area. : ( I didn’t set out to have an exceptionally old phone; it just happened to be durable and functional for that long. I’m not much of a shopper and it’s nice not to have to worry about replacing things.
@daniel, I second the recommendation for good paper and pens!
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Light Phone II, here as well.
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Awesome!! I’m so excited to get the Mudita and start comparing them
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I do currently use a dumb phone. Its been almost 2 yrs since I gave up my smartphone. I use a LGA448 flip phone (w T9). It was one of only 2 non-smartphones my telecoms provider had when I switched. 
How do you feel about the quality of buttons after two years of use? Do they have good tactile response?
I am using an unlocked iphone 6s. Actually, it came to me as a gift from my Uncle in UK but it was locked. After unlocking it I use it as my casual use phone.
Hi everyone! Curiosity made me aquire a HTC Magic by the time it was released. Since then I’ve had two more smartphones, one of them I still sometimes use - THL 5000. One day I started to realize that everyone spends a lot of time using the smartphone and it made me realize that I was really not in that wave, since I only use the phone in the most basic way - call, sms, alarms and lantern. So I invested on a rugged and basic “dumb” phone without internet and stuff like it. And it really suits me better as it does not spy on me, it’s smaller in size, and specially one should not hang around with pieces of technology more “intelligent” than he. So I discovered Mudita Pure and loved it… let’s see if the future brings us together!
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I was using a blackberry Passport for a while, that was too smart for me. I then tried using a Blackberry Bold 9900, but my cell carrier dropped support for the bands it needed. I then tried to find a flip phone or candy bar phone with good texting and used the newer Nokia 3310 for a while. I lost that phone and since then have been using a Pixel 3a XL with Calyx OS. I’m not a huge fan honestly. I text my fiance all the time and I hate touch screens for typing. Really hoping the Pure has predictive text.
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