Could you live without a smartphone?

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/technol.../03/08/could-you-live-without-your-smartphone

According to a recent survey by YouGov, just under half (45%) of 18 to 24 year olds say they’d feel 'weird because I would not know what to do' without a phone for a day.

So have we all been so addicted to our phones that we are not capable of living in the here and now? I think so.

I'm (almost) in my mid-50's. I was 27 when I get my first dumb mobile phone (Motorola StarTac if I remember rightly). My first smartphone, an HTC, I got less than 11 years ago. Looking at my iPhone now, I could almost ditch it for a dumbphone. When I say almost, I would have problems with some banking apps - example Virgin Credit Card only exists as an app, so that would have to go. I'd probably miss my music app, I use that a lot as I'm out driving as my job. I've never taken up social media of any kind, so that won't be an issue.

But the point is, having a dumb phone means you get to be more aware of what's around you, AKA live in the here and now. You wont have to respond to every ping or notification, or feel compelled to answer any instant messages, because dumb phones only make/receive calls or send/receive text messages. In the interests of saving money, dumbphones cost a lot less to buy, and more importantly, battery life is superior. I have a Nokia 105 beside my iPhone I use just to ring customers, and the battery last 2 weeks.

Any thoughts?

As you mentioned.. Banking apps are a necessary evil. So is Worldremit.... Then the wife being on social media, kind of pushes the envelope that little bit further... With the costs of mobiles nowadays, the "where is my phone" app is also a necessity.
I totally understand you about one's first mobile, and miss using mine too. Extremely simple to use and with a battery life that stretched for weeks like Ericsson T10...

Energise...... Scotty..........

The smartness (I hate the term) is that it is multi function 'and' programable rather than a limited function rigid pre-programmed device.

They started out as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) at that time phones were still bricks, it was obvious that a PDA could be so much more powerful with communications built right in but the phones were bricks so that wasn't going to happen quickly.

I had one of these, a Pocket Personal Computer, they did have wifi so email and some web browsing and messaging was possible but in those days bandwidth was seriously limited remember most people were still on dialup modems at 56Kbit.



They are handheld computers, all these modern phones, the irony is that the smartness was seen as an addon to the phone calling part of the functionality but in the end the smartness has killed the phone is killing the phone, PDAs Pocket PCs needed always on intenet to become truly useful and now they finally have it people barely need the "phone" part because the smart (program) parts can all do voice and video calls just on the data connection.

I need a handheld computer not a phone, I havent made a personal phone call in months, I need the services that the handheld computer connects to, my banks, my email, news services, I don't really need the phone, the phone is just another service just another program nowadays.

I would estimate that ninety percent of my device usage is related to my financial activity, the rest is some hobby apps and it's use as a camera and now and again I use it as navigation device.

The is my main homescreen on Microsoft Launcher, almost all finance.



And I hate using a web browser on a phone so I almost never visit the forum on the phone.

Personally I would not want to lose that instant access to the banking system and I am not oppressed by constant notifications, it's not really a social device for me.

I'm due to get a new one in a couple of weeks time, the work replaces them on a three year cycle.

My current phone OnePlus 7 Pro in a Spigen case (dual SIM and has my Philippine SIM as well as my UK work SIM).



I want this one to replace it the OnePlus 10 Pro with cameras tweeked by Hasselblad

OnePlus 10 Pro 5G | OnePlus United Kingdom

I've turned off notifications for everything bar phone and banking.

While I understand banks wants us to use mobile devices for security, surely there should be a standard where they must allow access via a web interface as well? Of the banking apps I have, Halifax have both web and app, Virgin Credit Card only app, Starling is a strange hybrid - they allow web login, but needs app on phone to confirm, Tred is app only and finally, Wise are both app and web.

Nice phone. The screen interface is lovely, what font is that?

I had been looking to return to an Android, maybe a Motorola G30 Edge. Have always liked Motorola, unlike other manufacturers, they don't load their phones with bloat. You get stock Android apps, and maybe one or two Moto apps.

Looks like I'm stuck with the iThing for a long while yet.

Yes I don't like the trend towards app only, it's purely a cost cutting excercise for the banks and financial institutions, my main pension provider just shut down the web site I have relied on daily for the last 14 years to track my pension investments AND they failed to provide an alternative as my policy is old and out of date and does not work on their app.

Yeah I just got a 19 month 0% interest deal on the Virgin Money card, I had reached the end of my 15 month 0% deal on my Nationwide card, the Nationwide card is web and app and is pretty good the Virgin thing is purely an app, just spent £1450 on it for my Christmas flight about 3 weeks ago and paid down £300 on it already.

I have an old account from APS that has that strange hybrid sign-in like your Starling although Starling is a much better account.

Wise is pretty good hope it stays that way.

That's just the Microsoft Launcher for Android, it's a good launcher, I am not sure but the font is either OnePlus's 'OnePlus Slate' or maybe 'Segoe UI' which Microsoft seem to like.

The OnePlus 7 Pro has a 90hz screen it is incredibly smooth the new one is 120hz, I've dropped that phone a couple of times but it is still in mint condition after over three years.

OnePlus's OxygenOS did have a reputation for being bloat free, but after the Oppo merger they were forced to adopt more of ColourOS and it gets critisised a lot more these days, plus I have deliberatly stuck with OxygenOS Android 10 because of horrific battery problems being reported by people after the Android 11 update.

However I still really like the OnePlus it has been fantastic, 6GB RAM and 256GB Storage first phone in ages that I havent filled up, and it is just really fast and smooth and the battery is still lasting more than a day after three years of use, the new one is 12GB 256GB disk with a bigger battery I think.

Just took it out of its case, it is very pretty but very slippy as well as it's basically glass.

I'm hoping I can buy this off my work when we get the new ones.

Mine is my alarm clock so I can't ever turn it off

I should look into writing an application for phones that can pre-program a phone and data schedule, i.e. something that can turn off phone calls and data on an effectively calendared schedule, there might already be one in fact I would bet there probably is but it would be an interesting excercise to see if I could get close enough to the metal with a high level programing language to reliably perform such a task, likely lots of security hurdles to overcome and of course one should probably still allow emergency calls so it's not as simple as turning off the various radios in the device.

The Xiaomi phones are really good!