Life without a smartphone

1.8.2025

Background: I switched to a “dumbphone” in October 2023. I used a Nokia 7230 until this summer, when I got a Kyocera 902KC. Both of these phones are technically feature phones (meaning that they can access the internet and you can download apps on them, they’re just not touchscreen) - though since the Nokia is from 2010, support for everything had ended a long time ago.

So why did I decide to give up my smartphone? Mostly for the obvious reasons: it took up too much of my time and made it hard to concentrate on anything since I constantly felt the need to check my notifications. It worsened my sleep, depression and anxiety. Multiple times I tried and failed to set limits and delete the “problematic apps”.

I hear a lot of people around my age talk about wanting to quit using their smartphone, but at least IRL I don’t know anyone who has. But I liked the idea, and what’s there to lose? Obviously the trendy keitai models cost actual money but less popular old flip phones you can get basically for free.

So I decided to try it for a week, as an experiment - but after the week I didn’t want to go back, I felt so free. Free from fighting against myself with screen time limits I’ll never stick to, and free from compulsively watching brainrot content that makes me feel awful, free from being so reliant on my phone I couldn’t even go for a walk without it.

Obviously, not having a smartphone in a world that almost feels designed for them can be limiting and hard, but some inconveniences are a price I’m very much willing to pay for all the benefits.

I had days when I felt like I wanted to give up. But the thought that this time might be my last chance to live without a smartphone, before I have to be a proper adult and work and be reachable at all times, gave me a lot of motivation to stick with it.

I really enjoyed my time with the Nokia, and I think it was a very unique experience for me, since I’ve had a smartphone since I was 9, and used it almost every day after that.

Since I gave up my smartphone and quit social media simultaneously, the experiences are hard to distinguish from each other. But I think I couldn’t have done one without the other. It also served as a great excuse, in a way, to delete my Whatsapp account. It’s not really a social media so a lot of people don’t get me not wanting to use it, but ever since Meta bought it it’s kind of grossed me out…

I chose the Kyocera phone because:
-I thought it looked cool
-It has 4G
-There are a lot of good tutorials for it in English

It's nice to have GPS again, and the phone indeed is very pretty. I have noticed more pressure and stress about being reachable again, but I think it’s still a good compromise.

This ended up pretty long, but I’ll probably write in more detail about the Kyocera phone as I continue to configure it how I want (still very much a work in progress).