Wednesday, October 1, 2014

From Dumbphone to No Phone to Smartphone

For the past few months I have been trying to rid myself of my cell phone. One would think this would be a fairly easy task, you just chuck your phone over a bridge somewhere, consequences be damned. But when you have a friends, family, and a fiance, apparently you must be reachable at all times or people will think they think you are dead. I say "think they think," because even when I did have a cell phone, I never got random calls or texts asking if I was dead. In fact, I got very few calls and texts at all. I could have easily been dead, but really, I'm just not that popular.

So here I am, alive and well, and when I tell people I don't really want a cell phone, it's the same look I get when I tell people I don't drink- confusion and pity. They can barely fathom a life without their two social crutches. The first giving them the ability to talk, the second, removing it.

It all started when my good friend O told me about freedompop. Suddenly, paying $15/month for a dumbphone seemed stupid when I could have a smartphone for free. I signed up for a hotspot which gave me 500MB of 4G data for free and used fiance's abandoned HTC Incredible with Google Voice and Talkatone to mimic a smartphone. And it would've worked except that I didn't get 4G service anywhere. Also, I went from an absurdly small dumbphone to two different devices. Not smart.

Then FreedomPop came out with a free smartphone plan. 200 minutes, 500 texts, 500 MB of 4G/3G service for $0. I ordered it immediately. It took two months to arrive. During those two months, I essentially stopped using a cell phone. This is what I discovered:

Stopped Being Addicted to Facebook
When I first co-opted the Incredible, I went crazy. Every minute, no every second, I wanted to touch the phone. Even if the sound was on for notifications, I thought perhaps somebody was emailing me this very second. And when it turned out nobody was, I got distracted by Facebook which was right on my home screen. Once I went down the Facebook rabbit hole, it was endless. Even if I knew there was no possibility of new status updates (because I had just checked 2 minutes before), I still opened Facebook. Then I'd open my email. Then back to Facebook. I felt this intense dissatisfaction, my entire world was at my fingertips, but nobody was talking to me!

Email FTW
During those two months, I told everybody to email me. Google voice did allow me to get texts and calls, but only when I was on wifi or in a 4G area with my hotspot. What this really meant was that I could control when to communicate with others. There was nothing pinging at me, demanding my attention. There wasn't anything pinging at me, annoying others. Most things are not urgent. The phone does not know how to prioritize that.

Planning
Remember back in the day where you would make plans with somebody and you'd have to actually settle on where and when? And then you both would meet at the agreed upon place at the agreed upon time? Today you could spend 50 texts/emails decided on where to go and when and STILL end up with a text 5 minutes after you are supposed to have met that they are "on the way." Or you get a text the night before confirming. Or 10 minutes before.

If it's a group hang out, then all bets are off.  Half of the people don't respond, another quarter say they might be free, and the last quarter can't agree on a time or place. But in a world where "I'm so busy" is a status symbol, if we agree on a time, we still have to agree on a place! So we all Yelp for 30 minutes but end up going with the original suggestion. If it's still open that is. If nobody can cancel on you last minute because you don't have a phone, you don't get cancelled on.

At the end of the day though, since everybody is in a smartphone bubble, their atrocious planning skills affect you anyway.

5 Things a Smartphone is Good For:
1. Maps
I have to admit, it was kind of nice being able to look up where I was going after I left the house. I imagined all sorts of impromptu places I would discover, but instead I ended up planning less and relied on my smartphone to save me. On balance, this is probably a negative disguised as a positive.

2. Calendar
Work, social life, holidays, birthdays, all this can be at the touch of your fingertips. Unfortunately, even with this and reminders, people seem to put you on their calendar and forget about you anyway. Mysteries of the universe.

3. More eco-friendly?
I suppose if you only bought a phone as often as you would buy a computer and you ignore that everything has to be run or stored on giant networks or servers that are on 100% of the time, that smartphones consume less energy to make and run. In my case, mine was used and it is can be charged on our solar panel too! The desktop requires me to turn on our internet router, monitor, and this beast of a machine (although this beast can play Starcraft so I forgive it). 

4. Everything in your Pocket
Speaking of charging, assuming you don't run out of batteries, then you always have a camera, audio player, millions of movies, and all of the world's knowledge (and trolls) at the tip of your fingertips. If your like me and your case is also your wallet, well, just having one thing to grab when you go is pretty awesome. I also have to admit, having my camera sync up to all my devices is very handy.

5. I couldn't think of a 5th thing.

Consumption not Creation
This is perhaps the most dangerous part of smartphones, it is just too easy to passively consume and never create. I like writing. But since getting a smartphone all I can manage are half sentences in a gratitude onenote I keep on my home screen. If you want to write something substantial, if you want to reference other things, sitting at a desk with a real keyboard always wins. And, if you turn off your internet, you can even focus long enough to crank out one of these blog posts instead of feeling your brain is split into 100 different directions.

In the end though, I still have a smartphone on the free freedompop plan. I don't have to give a penny to those evil phone companies that dominate 90% of the ad slots on my hulu and make you sign unconscionable contracts. I still don't like how much internet I consume, so I still leave the data off unless I'm expecting a call and I still power it down when I don't expect to use it for over 4 hours. My friends, family, and wife don't like it, but it gives me the freedom of checking the internet when I want to, not when my smartphone demands it of me. And it makes me very conscious that I spend way too much time snuggling my smartphone.