I cannot love this comment enough! We can learn how to live without all the apps and conveniences. I went from my iPhone 13 mini to a Nokia flip phone. I got the Kompakt because I love the form factor and it has standard texting as opposed to the T9 texting on the Nokia.
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I think the Kompakt strikes the best possible balance with its small B&W eink screen, because, on the one hand it is super pleasant to use it for simple tasks ; on the other hand, it is constraining & dissuasive for more complex ones. (well… I receive mine on Monday actually, but I guess it is the case)
I can give my testimony of a person who has been struggling for 25 years with Internet addiction. I have tried SO MANY different combinations of ways to mitigate this issue.
In the end, I figured out :
- self control is IMPOSSIBLE for me
- getting a bad quality device (slow, unsupported) won’t prevent me from using it – I’ll just waste more time
- some kind of parental control won’t work either as I’ll always work around it or disable it
- putting the device aways from me (in a safe for instance) won’t work as there is always one day I’ll need it. There is always a good reason not to put it inside.
- A password etc. won’t work. I’ll always end up asking my wife
because I have something crucial to do at a given time and she’ll eventually get fed up with it and stop generating new ones - some kind of phyisical locks like the unpluq RFID tag won’t work either. I worked around it (and spend my time trying to find the optimal settings)
- Figuring out a subset of applications and sticking to it is impossible for me : I am constantly reassessing the list and alternating between a minimalistic and a maximalist selection.
What really worked it : just owning an actual dumbphone (a Nokia / HMD flip phone). It is very very annoying to use - yet liberating. (I already mentioned the dozens of major bugs I encounteredin another thread and I realize I forgot some serious ones
I hope the Kompakt will work as I cannot sideload without a computer AND it has a small low refresh B&W e-ink screen. .I think I would still be happy without the sideloading possibility – but there is always a period of time when I need Whatsapp for some reasons. (I wish there were either RCS or, preferably, the Matrix protocol was used by people !).
Now that I think about it, I could probably get away with it with the group chat feature - would still lock me out of the larger communities I am part of. But I can do those on the computer or my Boox Android e-ink tablet. So well. I am not 100% sure about this sideloading aspect.
But I still have to find a solution to my computer addiction. My eyes are in very very very bad condition and apparently… It doesn’t prevent me from using them compulsively.
Edit : I am thinking about something. For those who really want to have no enticement to sideload… Maybe this feature could be a one-time switch during the initialization of the device ? Would be VERY dissuasive
Edit : I cannot believe I have been struggling so many years and not found a proper solution. So much brain rot / wasted time.
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There is an AOSP-based flip-phone series for the USA and Canada that matches your idea. You pick the features that you want among something like 16 models, and you pay the same price no matter which model you choose. Because the OS blocks sideloading, you are committed to the features in the model that you bought.
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@kcr Technology is here to stay. Yeah, we’re not going back to typewriters, but we can be more international about the role that technology plays in our lives.
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For me it helped to install only apps that are available as native apk. Sad that there are only a few companies that provide these files. But I don’t want to install a third party app store. I ended up with WhatsApp and Firefox, which I use mainly to check the timetables for pubic transportation. I don’t need any more Social Media on this device, as the experience will be limited by performance and screen. But that is really good and my display time reduced dramatically by around 3 hours a day.
Doom scrolling makes sick and I’m happy that Mudita Kompakt is the right tool to give me back my life. Meantime I learned, that I am not addicted to Facebook & Co., I have a look on it for about 20 minutes a day on the Computer and can stop by myself without having the feeling to miss anything. This was not possible with my old Smartphone.
But I think there is another reason why I don’t waste too much time on these platforms anymore and this is related to this flood of silly AI content. Don’t get me wrong, I use AI for my daily business and it is hepful there, but when I want to interact with real people, it is completely the wrong place for AI. Now I like real life even more and my phone is just my useful daily assistant. And that is only the case, because sdeloading is possible.
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