i hate my phone

thoughts about the invasion and integration of technology, specifically of the phone variety, into our daily lives from a guy that works in tech. the following post will largely be incoherent, and largely informed by my personal relationship with technology, which transparently comes from a position of some privilege.

It is undoubtedly true that improvements in smartphone technology has enabled and increased level of safety and interconnectedness. Satellite calling, a relatively up-to-date atlas, and notification systems that can notify when something adverse might have happened to your loved ones, all in your palm of your hand, are incredible feats of engineering. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to take any of that for granted.

However, as I’ve grown up, I’ve witnessed digital technology evolve from something that augmented and supplemented the human experience into something to commercialise and commoditise it. Technology used to feel like a tool that expanded what humans could do, but nowadays, consumer technology increasingly feels like it was designed to shape what humans do.

Every “Ask app not to track” notification is a subtle reminder that, in a land of free applications and social medias, our behaviours, preferences, and impulses are the product. Big Tech takes this data and turns it right back on us, subliminally influencing us on every level. It promotes this ideal of limitless consumerism, hyper-personalisation, and algorithmically reinforced herd mentality designed to remove critical thinking and self-control from the equation. It removes intentionality.

The Almighty Algorithm

In retrospect, for much of my time in university, I had an extremely poor relationship with technology, falling victim to the ever prevalent pass time of doomscrolling. Why engage in my hobbies when my phone can deliver me curated content straight to my face in the comfort of my bed? Why try new things and get out of my shell when I could instead lie in the soft, welcoming embrace of the algorithm and get shown exactly what I want? Why face intellectual conflict when I could simply exist in an echo chamber the size of my palm?

In the years when I had, for one of the last times in my life, a genuine safety net: a cushion that gave me the privilege of trying something new and falling hard without completely borking myself, I instead fell for the siren song of the algorithm. I regret it deeply.

The problem wasn’t simply that I spent too much time on my phone, it was that I increasingly stopped making deliberate decisions about how I spent my time- the algorithm was always eager to make that decision for me. Whenever I was bored, it knew exactly what to show me. Whenever I was uncomfortable, it had the exact reel to distract me with.

More broadly, I think this fosters a culture where mindless sedentarism is accepted as an appropriate substitution for intentional rest, where a constant stream of manufactured dopamine is treated equivalently to true satisfaction and happiness, and where a yearning for adversity and challenge is replaced with complacency.

I’m not saying social media should be completely removed from our lives. I don’t even think that would be necessarily desirable. Rest and entertainment are not inherently bad; neither is scrolling through Instagram or TikTok. I simply think we should have better control over it. We shouldn’t have to constantly fight our own devices for control; we should naturally feel that we are in control of it. (yadda yadda, everything in moderation, yadda yadda).

Hey, listen!

Outside of the issue of the algorithm, I am also mildly troubled by how interconnected today’s phones allow us to be with others.

I don’t deny that it can be helpful. Being able to contact someone in an emergency is obviously valuable. Being able to call a friend while I’m out and about because I’m bored is convenient (for me, maybe less so for my friends). My issue arises that the ability to be easily reachable has over the years has turned into the expectation that you must be reachable at all time. There’s a difference between being reachable and being continuously interruptible.

I like my alone time. Sometimes, unless something terrible is going down, I don’t want to talk to anyone. Sometimes I don’t want to know what everyone else is doing. Maybe I just wanted to exist without my attention being constantly nagged. Yet, the default behaviour of modern phones seem to be to notify me about everything. Oh, here’s a post we think you’d be interested in. Oh, this vaguely related item to something you were looking up earlier is on sale. Oh, here’s a memory from three years ago. It’s a picture of a rock.

The more extreme conclusion to this constant stream of notifications is that the more things we are notified about, the less meaningful any individual notification becomes; a genuinely important notification can become lost in a sea of completely inconsequential ones. From this lens, the normalisation of constant notifications may actually make us worse at responding to the things that genuinely matter. (This whole line of reasoning is somewhat flawed and is much more complex than I’m making it out to be. But this is my blog, so.)

Yes, I know that I can disable notifications, but that’s not the point. I would like my phone’s default behaviour to be non-intrusive, rather than having to manually configure every app into submission. Instead, the common experience when install an app is an all-or-nothing choice. You either allow all notifications, or you don’t. And if you allow all the notifications, you’re often opted into every category of notification under the sun.

This is where the distinction between being able to control my technology and feeling in control of my technology is clear. Sure, I can burrow through each app’s settings and figure out which notifications are useful, but if the default experience is intrusive and I have to spend an afternoon making it behave the way I want, the system is still fundamentally designed around interruption.

Growing Screen Sizes

In line with my disdain for a large presence of tech in my daily, non-work life, it frustrates me to no end that it seems every phone manufacture has decided that the phablet is the new phone. I want something that comfortably fits in my phone, not a massive fucking brick that challenges the integrity of my Uniqlo shorts pocket seams.

I jest, but seriously, I think the iPhone 12/13 mini had close to the perfect form factor for a phone. Large enough to make calls, respond to messages, navigate, and search stuff up, but small enough to seamlessly to disappear into my pocket.

After all, once you strip a phone down to its genuinely useful and safety-critical function, why does it need to be so large? I think a smaller phone is exactly the natural complement to the more healthy, productive relationship with technology I’ve presented in this text. I want my phone to be use enough that I don’t feel handicapped without it, but unobtrusive enough that I am not constantly reminded of its presence.

What I Do Now

Right now, I have two phones: an iPhone 13 and an iPhone 7 Plus that used to be my mother’s. The 13 is my main phone; it has a cellular plan, my main messaging apps, travel apps, banking apps, etc. It also has a sideloaded version of YouTube with shorts completely disabled. The 7 is my social media; it hosts Instagram, Snapchat, unadulterated YouTube, etc.

I implemented this separation while I was in university and chronically addicted to technology and social media. The motivation was simple: separate the tools I need from the once I find difficult to use intentionally. Additionally, it made it so when I left the apartment, I could simply bring my main phone, leaving all of my social media distraction behind.

But, why have two phones? Why not just delete all the social media apps and call it wraps? Well, when I was most addicted to scrolling, just deleting social media would make be feel a good amount of FOMO. I was so used to being immediately up-to-date with what all of my friends were doing that taking this information away cold-turkey would make me uncomfortable. This would inevitably make me download the offending apps onto my main phone again, landing me right back at square one. Keeping a phone with social media eased me in the idea of being intentionally disconnected. Mentally, I still felt just connected enough that instead of giving in and downloading the apps back onto my main phone, I’d be able to convince myself to wait until I get home. In addition, having social media physically separated from my primary device added just enough friction to make me consciously decide whether I actually want to use it.

I’ve taken some other smaller measures to make my main phone less compelling.

My iPhone 13 is in grayscale almost all the time. I use the colour filter at roughly 80% intensity, as I acknowledge that colour is an important part of UI/UX. At 80%, I can still make out the green of a confirmation button or the red of a cancellation button, but the phone is still considerably less visually stimulating.

I also have an automation that disables the filter whenever I enter the Camera or Photos app, and another that enables it when I exit. Photography is one of the few areas where having fully accurate colour is a little useful.

I’m a lazy person. I don’t want to spend my day constantly thinking about whether I’m using my phone too much. I want the phone to be configured in such a way that makes engaging with it in a healthy manner the path of least resistance.

New Phones

Unfortunately, the newer versions of iOS have not been kind to my iPhone 13. Thus, much to my dismay, I’ve been considering upgrading.

The simple choice is to just buy an iPhone 17. This sucks, because ideally, I want all of this colour filters, anti-phone addiction stuff treated as a part of the phone’s design, not included as a niche feature. Also, it’s expensive.

Minimalist Phones

As a result, I’d like minimalist phone options. My ideal phone is as follows:

• Small form factor
• Makes calls, texts, etc.
• Can download apps. Apps like WeChat and Discord are important for communicating with my friends and family.
• Navigation
• NFC Tap to Pay
• Bluetooth
• Preferably e-ink.
• Preferably has a camera
• Preferably satellite calling
• Preferably a full keyboard (either digital or physical is okay)

Pretty much, I want all the new safety features with none of the bloat.

It looks like for the time being, the most promising phone is the Jelly Star, Zinwa Q25, or the Dumber Mini (although the Dumber Mini doesn’t have a full keyboard).

If I have any more updates to my dumbphone adventures, I’ll update this blog accordingly.