Why I Want a Dumb PhoneI want this phone.
It ain’t smart.
It’s no Galaxy S4 or HTC One S or iPhone 5.
T-Mobile introduced the 768 this year. It weighs 3.5 ounces. The phone features Bluetooth connectivity, an FM radio, a 2-megapixel camera, and it has 3G for faster texting and picture messaging. I can play music on the phone. I can still email if I want.
I wouldn’t use the phone for facebooking, tweeting, instagramming, or other social networking — but I’m doing that less and less on my current HTC phone so I’m not worried. Besides, I have an iPad for that. If I want to take lots of pictures at better resolutions, I have a camera.
I bought my first smartphone — a BlackBerry Curve 8330 — in August 2006. That’s the last time I owned a clamshell or flip phone. That’s the last time I didn’t need the ability to download apps to the phone — because the phone had everything I needed a phone to have. That’s the last time I paid a monthly fee that didn’t require data transfers.
Technology is not going anywhere and, in my quest to downsize my life and be productive, I don’t want to be tethered to the internet wherever I go. I’ll still take a phone with me when I go out to eat or for a drive and you’ll still be able to call me or text me but if you email me or tweet me and expect a response, you’ll get that response whenever I next use my desktop or other supported device.
I want to return to the living. This is not about discipline and not using certain applications. This is about not needing social networking or cloud applications 24/7. I want to return to the joys of listening to music without the need to hold up a sound app to identify the song. I want to buy a product without instantaneously scanning a QR code to read its reviews.
I do not want to carry a supercomputer operating system in my pocket anymore. Smartphones have their place in people’s lives but I want to take my life back.
I think this is a smart decision.
I’m going dumb and I welcome fellow dumb humans to comment below.
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