I hate my phone, the only reason I have it is because I need it for things like authenticating to the government and banks that I am indeed myself. In this experiment Thomas and I have put away our phones. This means that my phone is turned off for the whole day. I personally wanted to do this for a while, but after seeing this interesting youtube video and finding out that I can disable microsoft authenticator and using a normal one instead that I can commit to it. cause I needed the Microsoft authenticator for my school, and I need 2fa.
Specifics
will only use them under these conditions:
- I need to make a call and there is no one to ask.
- To check my voicemail once a day for like max 10m
- If I need my phone for any 2fa.
- In case of an emergency
The reason that I need to listen to my voicemail instead of just, buying a landline is because I do not live on my own.
For a while I will also take my phone with me to school since I have to travel 1 hour, but it will be off at the bottom of my bag. In case of emergencies.
(Thomas is not this strict)
My goal here is to not need my phone anymore. This doesnāt mean I go without internet though, I still have my computer and I still have a job and school. I donāt want to be internet less, I want to not have a pocket sized computer with me that I unconsciously start using whenever I carry it. I believe that using the internet is a good thing, just not every moment of the day. I believe that Gaming is acceptable when you do it on a dedicated device.
Preparations
I knew for a while that I had wanted to do this so I already had a lot of notepads ready to be used. I never used my phone to wake me up so I didnāt need to replace that. The only real preparation I did was telling my girlfriend about it and that is about it.
Journal
I am writing about my experiences in this section. Things I notice about life that changes.
3. 2025-09-012
The unexpected expected happened. I am writing this at the moment that I am currently switching my phones. I got annoyed at the same thing as I did before, I have gotten extremely lazy, I automatically open Youtube, and automatically want to look at a screen once I go to the toilet, wait for something, or go for a short walk. So this had to stop.
This time I am better prepared, I have my own camera, of which you can see the pictures here. And I am running linux, which means I am more used to primitive ways to do things. yes you heard me say that correctly LOL. The only real reason I wanted to go back is because of the boardgame stats app of which I started developing my own web based version, but now that I am running Linux, I just realized I can probably just run an emulator.
And I also know that an a7 notepad is the size that fits in my pocket, so Iāll probably be ordering more of that.
So where does this bring me? Will I stay on this flipphone from now on? probably not, but for a while. And the only real option I see for going back to a smartphone for longer periods of time would be something like Graphene OS, which requires me to buy a new phone. So for now, Iāll just stay on a flipphone.
Oh and to the 1 person that wants to know which flipphone I am using, here you go: Nokia 2660 Flip - 4G Whilst googling the name, i found this cringe youtube video that uses way to many weird animations, and feels like an AI generated script / voice
Current TODO List
- Buy A7 Notepad (as backup)
- Install an Android emulator on Linux
- Put my contacts on my SIM :3
3. 2025-07-08
I officially am using my smartphone again, after about 3 months. This is because I am almost going on vacation, and Iād like to keep in touch with my friends and family.
2. 2025-04-18
It is quite a different experience to eat breakfast without watching a YouTube video. I started noticing that I kept wanting to grab my phone, so now I am keeping count of this in my notepad. I turned on my phone to see whether I had voicemails, I did not.
1. 2025-04-17
It is the start of the experiment. At 2:37PM We started it. I havenāt noticed many problems, I have turned it off and put it away so that I donāt see it laying around. After dinner I was able to do the dishes before even eating dessert, we were done with the food and I instantly started doing the dishes. Normally Iād first wait 10m on my phone if not more just like the others. So that was interesting.
At this point only 5 people know about this, Thomas, my girlfriend, Emiel and my parents.