You don’t need a dumb phone – just make your smartphone less distracting
Want to quit your smartphone without quitting modern life? You don’t need a dumb phone downgrade – just a smart rethink of your smartphone setup
Mere moments before I started hammering out this week’s column, I received an alert on my phone. From Photoshop. You might think that’s an odd app to send an alert, and you’d be right. It’s not like I have chats with Photoshop and had a reply waiting. Nor was it warning me about an open window or informing me that the UK had committed another crime against music at Eurovision. Instead, it suggested I “Get rid of distractions”. By distracting me. It helpfully added that I should “Select what you want gone” while advertising its features. So I decided what I wanted gone was Photoshop for bugging me – and duly deleted it.
It’s not uncommon that I remove apps, mind. I review loads of them and they come and go all the time. What is rare these days is me receiving a stupid message from one – or even seeing most apps at all. And that’s because over the past year, I’ve pared my default iPhone experience down to a happy bare minimum. Or at least a minimalist bare minimum. I’m not sure minimalists are especially happy. Surely, they’re neutral by definition.
Anyway, the point is if your response to ‘annoying alert by Photoshop’ is that I need a dumb phone, you are wrong. I think dumb phones are a dumb idea. Also that ‘dumb phone’ is a terrible term too – but it’s what everyone uses instead of cheap phone. Probably because ‘feature phone’ is an odd way to describe a device that goes out of its way to strip features from the modern notion of a phone. “But hey,” you might sputter. “If you did have one of those dumb… feature… whatever phones, you wouldn’t get annoying alerts, you massive idiot!” Sure, but I wouldn’t get anything else either.
One screen to rule them all
Look, I get the impulse. That nagging feeling pocketable rectangles are eating away at our precious time. And I’ve been there. A lot. If Screen Time had a klaxon for app overuse, my iPhone would once have blared 24/7, thanks to me rapidly cycling between doomscrolling social media and mainlining games that seemed to have connected a dopamine pump directly to my brain. But I don’t think a dumb phone is the answer.
All that does is set you up for regret. Hyperbolic? Maybe. But consider this: the average dumb phone has a digital camera that makes those I had many years ago seem cutting-edge. Some don’t even have a camera at all. Not every fleeting moment demands documentation, but it stings when a truly important one arrives and the tech you have to hand is cosplaying like it’s 1999. And the same’s true for other things smartphones nail, from getting you un-lost in the wilderness to keeping you company on a long walk with the latest episode of your favourite podcast.
So rather than ditch your smartphone, rethink it. My iPhone now has a single, barren Home Screen, devoid of clutter. The Dumb Phone widget provides fast access to a few essential apps, swapping out their icons for plain text. The rest are ‘hidden’. The dullness obliterates temptation. And the only alerts I now receive – bar the occasional rogue ‘Photoshop’ blip during testing – are those that genuinely matter.
And here’s the thing: habits change. Fast. Within a few weeks, I was a changed iPhone user with a changed iPhone experience – yet still using the same iPhone. So don’t waste cash buying yet another device you don’t need. Use the one you have more deliberately and mindfully. And if that fails, embrace your fate as a screen-obsessed organism and pray Apple and Google add that klaxon feature in the next OS update.
Craig Grannell
Contributor 
