Living without a personal smartphone

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Individualised
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Individualised »

Catyak wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 6:23 pm If it's off topic, why not create a new thread? This is the off topic board after all.
There is an expectation that off-topic threads in a forum still bare some relevancy to the main topic. This thread works because it's talking about technology, and the specific topic ("living without a personal smartphone") is relevant to many people here, as many people here choose to interact with technology in a more old-fashioned manner - this is an NES development forum after all. I don't think many people here would be interested in a thread about some random guy.
assemblyx69
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by assemblyx69 »

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Last edited by assemblyx69 on Fri Apr 21, 2023 11:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
tepples
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by tepples »

Liam Mays of CNBC reports in the article "Dumb phones are on the rise in the U.S. as Gen Z looks to limit screen time" that feature phones, which offer talk, text, GPS, maybe a camera, and not much more, are gaining market share among younger subscribers in the United States.

Comments to Mays's article on Slashdot mention another approach. Because carriers have eased off their former "cramming" practice of forcing an expensive monthly data plan on smartphone subscribers, a subscriber can use a low-end smartphone as a dumbphone without as much notification distraction.
turboxray
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by turboxray »

tepples wrote: Sun Apr 02, 2023 8:46 am Liam Mays of CNBC reports in the article "Dumb phones are on the rise in the U.S. as Gen Z looks to limit screen time" that feature phones, which offer talk, text, GPS, maybe a camera, and not much more, are gaining market share among younger subscribers in the United States.
I feel like that's just literally "counter culture" in action. As things get more "hi-tec" in society, you'll see some segment of counter culture "lo-tec" or "lo-fi" response. It's never a majority representation though. But I wonder if covid had a helping hand in this, specifically for gen z.

A segment of Gen-z also has this fantasy/obsession with low tech 80's stuff too.. records, but also walk-mans, shitty earphones to go along with it, thrift-shop scores, etc - it's their small take on the millennials "hipsters" fad. At least, in the US.
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Pokun »

That's a pretty funny thing to say on a forum dedicated to low-tech '80s stuff. :)

But I don't really think it's counter-culture to use technology, old or new, in the right way. I think blindly using new technology just because it is new and "is the future" is what's bad for the culture. People really need to start to think instead of jumping on every bandwagon they see.

Promoting dumbphones that are good at what they are dedicated to do, namely phoning, sounds like a very good idea. Not everyone are in need of a smartphone that gets slower the longer you use it and needs to be replaced every other year, my grandparents definitely couldn't use one.
Requiring people to own a smartphone and install bloated apps here and there (as is very common in Sweden) is what I call counter-culture however, as you don't give people a decent alternative and tries to force culture in a way that simply doesn't work very well.

Apple's recent trend to remove the headphone jack on their phones to push highly inferior Bluetooth headphones is another example of a counter-culture thing to do. It's not something the customers wants (a de facto standard), it's just what the manufacturers of those wireless headphones wants and forces onto people who are dumb enough to believe their shit.


Sweden had some really serious problems with its education system lately, which is believed to originate in too large education reforms in a very short time (and stubborn people in power refusing to believe the research results in front of their noses for a long time). Smartphones and laptop computers has become a new problem lately (gen Z's future is pretty much screwed), as more and more schools are starting to use computers instead of the usual pencil & paper, despite recent research being pretty clear on that it is very bad for child education to not mainly use pencils and keep computers to computer class (or other areas where it is actually useful).
This is another good example of utilizing new technology in the wrong way where old technology is superior. Bamboo and reed pens existed since at least 3000 BC and still works mighty fine, and cave drawings goes back around 40 000 years.
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by turboxray »

Pokun wrote: Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:52 am
That's a pretty funny thing to say on a forum dedicated to low-tech '80s stuff. :)
No. No it's not. There's a difference between what counter-culture represents as a societal function, and people who come together over nostalgia. Just because I mentioned 80s, does not mean the two are exclusively connected.
But I don't really think it's counter-culture to use technology, old or new, in the right way...

Apple's recent trend to remove the headphone jack on their phones to push highly inferior Bluetooth headphones is another example of a counter-culture thing to do...

Bamboo and reed pens existed since at least 3000 BC and still works mighty fine, and cave drawings goes back around 40 000 years...
What..??? I don't think know you understand what counter-culture is, which means you entirely missed the point of my post.
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Pokun »

turboxray wrote: Sun Aug 20, 2023 1:24 pm No. No it's not. There's a difference between what counter-culture represents as a societal function, and people who come together over nostalgia. Just because I mentioned 80s, does not mean the two are exclusively connected.
I see your point.

What..??? I don't think know you understand what counter-culture is, which means you entirely missed the point of my post.
Then what did you mean? That they uses typical '80s nostalgia (which they are too young to have nostalgia for) as some sort of rebellion against recent trends?
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by coto »

Pokun wrote: Sun Aug 20, 2023 5:02 pm
turboxray wrote: Sun Aug 20, 2023 1:24 pm No. No it's not. There's a difference between what counter-culture represents as a societal function, and people who come together over nostalgia. Just because I mentioned 80s, does not mean the two are exclusively connected.
I see your point.

What..??? I don't think know you understand what counter-culture is, which means you entirely missed the point of my post.
Then what did you mean? That they uses typical '80s nostalgia (which they are too young to have nostalgia for) as some sort of rebellion against recent trends?
American culture:
80s = expression to say things were unique, techy, original.

Japanese culture:
a trend on the West to highlight technology moving towards original concepts such as Nintendo NES. Yes, people from Japan did masterpieces.
And no, don't let it go to your head. Not healthy from the creativity POV.
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by segaloco »

So I've been without a personal cell for about two years now I would say. What makes it work is I do have an assigned phone number in the form of a work phone, so the few places in my life I am absolutely required to own the private service that is phone service I can make do.

That being what it is, I've found that I only *need* a phone number in a few circumstances:

Bank Account - I get very strange looks from bank tellers when I ask them every 6 months or so hey can I drop my phone number, can I engage as a customer in this bank without purchasing this particular private service from another company, and they never acquiesce, saying that having a phone number is required. So this is requirement number one, banks force you to purchase this private service.

eBay - Purchasing anything on eBay, even as a guest, requires entry of a phone number. Sure, you could enter a fake one, but they, like the banks, are operating under this assumption that their customers automatically must pay for this particular private service.

MFA - I already don't like MFA, I think its well intentioned but poorly thought out. In any case, many, maaaaany authentication providers using MFA require one to use a phone (really a mobile device capable of receiving SMS messages) as the second factor, without any other option. I very specifically forced the requirement that our MFA for products at work *must* offer an email option for this reason, and it has saved us several times over with our customers already. Luckily although I list it I can only think of one MFA I use that requires this of me, as I don't engage with Web 2.0 social media (aside, social media is a more general term than we use it for. This forum is social media. I've never found a good catch-all that specifically pegs Facebook, Twixter, Tumblr, etc. but distinguishes them. I like "social media" just not the way those sites do it, forums and email lists ftw)

What irks me is that in these and pretty much all other circumstances I've been "required" to have a personal cell could be alleviated via email. Need to contact me with alerts? Email. Need to verify my identity via second factor? Email. Need to uniquely identify me amongst a gaggle of other folks? Email.

My work phone is pretty much chained to my desk, it does not go anywhere with me, it is for all intents and purposes a "desktop" smartphone. Has this lead to some challenges? Sure, but challenges that looking back have been well worth it to get out of the cellphone cycle. I have computing stuff I still use going back decades, the thought of tossing smartphone after smartphone every couple of years because the industry keeps shoving obsolescence down our throats is just intellectually insulting. The industry could build their technology like tanks, like telephones from the 60s, but it doesn't happen because now they're selling the service *and* the means rather than the means being included with the service (as was the case previously, paying AT&T your monthly phone bill *WAS* paying for your phone and any repairs it needed. AT&T *wanted* to give you a rock solid phone. Thats less replacement and repair costs cutting into the bottom line of their service business!)

The phone number aspect, the one thing still separating smart phones from other computing devices by and large, just needs to be sunset already. It is a networking protocol from a previous era that we have the technology to move past by now, but that also presents a nice means of continuing to strangle a particular market. To put it another way, literally the only value add of the specific "smart phone" tier of Android and iOS devices is the ability to place POTS calls and interact with the SMS network (easily...). There are countless means to use the conventional internet now for those sorts of things, but the profit motive here is towards the end of keeping this particular market as cornered as possible. Imagine instead if the current direction was figuring out how to use the existing smartphone cell "fabric" of towers, satellites, etc, to offer general internet services. Granted, we're part of the way there with things like hotspots, but that whole side of telecommunications is still very narrowly focused on "telephone service".

It's all so complicated though, but a near and dear subject to my heart. At the end of a day I am a "smash your smartphones and go play in the sun" kinda person when it comes to this sort of thing. And I didn't even get into my takes on the psychology of little blue light emitting screens, "scrolling addiction", the "app store model", and obvious privacy issues with carrying a net-aware GPS with AV capabilities everywhere you go.

Tl;Dr Cellphone service is an abusive misuse and misassignment of technical capabilities for the sole purpose of keeping a steady stream of cash flowing into the telecom industry as a "required" feature of everyday life. Ongoing use of POTS numbers and SMS messaging over email is helping maintain this disparity. The cellphone telecom industry has morphed from providing services and facilitating ownership of the devices to *use* those services to capitalizing on you being forced to buy that piece of hardware to use the service. The "smartphone user" is a hostage of the telecom industry. Granted, that's all my hot take, I don't work in telecom, accept or dismiss my views as you will.
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Bregalad
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Re: Living without a personal smartphone

Post by Bregalad »

As many of you guys, I have been able to avoid smartphones completely until the end of year 2020, when they scrapped the 2G services in Switzerland. At that point, my only choice was either live without a phone at all, buy specifically a phone designed for elderly people who can't handle smartphones, or have a smartphone I could get for free from somebody who had got another model.

Living without a phone would make it very complicated for some social situations, and almost impossible to find employment, as I was a job-seeker back in 2020. It also makes it hard to meet with people because each party expect the other to call or message the other if something unexpected happens. No matter whether you like it or not it is like that, socially without a mobile phone, you'll have a very hard time to find a job, and a very hard time to hang out with people, and in both cases the other party will put the burden on you not to carry a mobile phone with you. There is also the double-authentification needed for banks, and which is getting increasingly popular for other services as well, which I believe was already mentionned.

Having a phone specifically designed for elderly people could have been possible, but it would have been a stupid move. Not only would I have to buy it, but also it would have less features than the still-working 2007 cellphone I owned back then.

In the end switching to a smartphone, no matter how I genuinely didn't like them back then, was the less costly option. And then I became one of those horrendous people using a smatphone on an everyday basis.... The only thing I could do is make sure I use an Android variant that tracks the user a little less than the default Google variant. I also do not use any Google account.

And I'd have to admit that it's so practical for some everyday stuff I would have a hard time going back. I use it for public transport (both to buy tickets and to be aware of perturbations) and for weather forecast on a regular basis, and also to send text messages that are actually free when the ones I'd have to exchange via SMS would have costed me CHF0.20 every time, and without even knowing if the other party even read it, which once again is unpractical to hang out or meet people.
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