Privacy Matters

I may be stating the obvious here but it's something that I've discovered through many explorations. See, I'm somewhat obsessed with various gadgets and recently I focused mostly on finding the perfect dumbphone that would fit my needs and be this quiet digital companion. My journey was (and still is) quite long and I had a chance to play with a few seemingly interesting devices. Now that I think about it, I'm definitely addicted to technology and I tend to buy stuff that I shouldn't. With that confession out of the way, let's see what I found.

Light Phone 2

I first heard about dumbphones and digital minimalism when the Light Phone 2 appeared on the market. I promptly read Cal Newport's book “Digital Minimalism” as I wanted to know more about this movement. Soon I also discovered the whole dumbphone community on Reddit and Jose Briones' YouTube channel. Unfortunately the device itself was kind of a let-down. Sure, I could call people, send texts (though a bit awkwardly), listen to podcasts and use maps. At the same time I missed so many features of a modern smartphone that I quickly gave up and sold my LP2. If you're wondering, here are the features I just couldn't live without: secure messaging, 2FA, camera, quick texting, banking, to-do list, translator, and possibly a few more. By now it's obvious that I need some smart apps on a daily basis.

Dumbphone + tablet

Ok, so I had this idea that maybe I could manage with a simple phone and a separate smart device, i.e. an Android tablet. I must say that I don't really regret getting one as it's quite useful whenever I want to read some articles or watch a show on the go. But as a companion device it works terribly. Let me give you just one example. Imagine you need Signal or some other secure messenger. You can install it on a tablet but then actually using it on a 10 inch screen, while holding a not-so-light device is just impractical. It could work with a smaller tablet or a bigger smartphone but I decided it just introduced more complexity. Remember: the goal is to achieve digital minimalism, not digital clutter. And for me it's just not acceptable to have to check multiple devices to see if I've got any pending messages or notifications. Still, I couldn't resist and tried out a few more dumbphones.

More dumbphones

During my (cursed) journey I tested the following devices:

• Hisense A9: not really a dumbphone but I just love e-ink screens so I had to know how it performed. What threw me off was Chinese bloatware and outdated version of Android.
• Qin F21 and F22: due to their small screens these could be considered dumbphones, especially once you get rid of unnecessary apps. What actually annoyed me was both the screen size and physical keyboard, which impacted my typing speed considerably.
• Punkt MP02: IMO, the phone with a flawless design but poor software. I still own one as a spare / weekend phone but I might sell it in the near future. The biggest selling point of Punkt is its implementation of Signal called Pigeon. I just wish it wasn't so buggy. Plus, if you consider the abysmally small screen size it makes for a poor experience with both text and multimedia messages.

What's next?

Right now I settled on my good old Pixel with a curated selection of apps. Sometimes I switch to a minimal launcher like Unlauncher from F-Droid but I mostly use it with the defaults that GrapheneOS provides. Looks like this kind of setup works for me though I really wish there were more interesting devices out there. By interesting I mean: well designed, easily repairable, and with a different form factor. I guess I've had enough of slab phones. But maybe it's for the better. You know, the more boring the device, the less pull it exerts on you. In other words, my dumbphone journey took me there and back to where I started.

Reply to this on the fediverse: @michal@101010.pl