my smartphone died and I'm not replacing it
Today my smartphone died.
Not the Boox Palma fortunately, but an old Xiaomi Redmi 9 that I only used as a Whatsapp server.
Wait, what do you mean?
Let's step back. Whatsapp has been standalone for a few updates now, sure, but it still depends on an active installation on a smartphone. But isn't the Palma a smartphone? Technically no, it's a tablet, and as a non-smartphone it needs to scan a QR code like on Whatsapp web or Whatsapp desktop to access instead of using the phone number (which left me puzzled during setup).
My only smartphone, besides the one I use for work (a legendary Samsung A6 from 2018), was precisely a Xiaomi Redmi 9 that previously belonged to my grandmother and had been discarded as "too slow". After some years of honorable service the battery swelled up and I had to remove the back cover. You can actually see in the photo how the silicone cover is the only thing holding it together.
Unexpectedly and against all odds today it wouldn't turn on anymore, I tried charging it and entering fastboot but it doesn't want to know anything about turning on. It's like it got offended for being demoted to Whatsapp server.
Now it will go keep company with the other phones in my personal cemetery, which is the box of an old switch where I keep my old smartphones as a memento of an extension of myself that has left me.
If you think about it, the smartphone today is indeed an extension of us, like a physical and cognitive prolongation to do things we normally couldn't, but which we've gotten used to not being able to do without at every instant. I continuously see people walking down the street always with headphones, in itself there's nothing wrong with listening to some music while walking, until it becomes an addiction. Or like I see in the gym most people who as soon as they finish a set of an exercise immediately glue themselves to their phone.
The first time I saw a dystopian situation of a mass of people all with their faces on smartphones was last year in Japan, every time I took the metro everyone, as if it were an unwritten rule, from when they got on until they got off did nothing but stare at their phone.
I also read this article about various places and rules to handle the smartphone zombies.
Trading Instagram Reels for Mountain Trails
This weekend i went to the mountains for a hike and i had with me only few things, my running belt with two 250ml flasks, my phone and the driving license. Never felt free like that. I also took some pictures with my Nokia dumbphone, just to see how bad they can be with a poor quality camera.
The goal of the hike was a small lake in the middle of the mountains, and there, where the only sound was made by the trees moved by the wind and the whistles of the birds there was a guy, sitting on a rock with headphones scrolling reels on Instagram. I don’t blame him for that, but it made me feel sad for him. How can someone be so obsessed that also in that place you have to focus all your attention to the phone, he has to be so addicted and maybe he is not even aware of that.
Now i decided that i will wait to buy another smartphone, once alerted my parents and a bunch of other people that i have not access to Whatsapp anymore it can’t be that bad to rely on a regular phone for a while. I think it will be like when i deleted my Instagram account, at first someone was upset to not be able to send me posts or memes, but people forget quickly and this time will be the same.
The Perfect Dumbphone Doesn't Exist (So I Made One)
Casually, yesterday evening i was looking if exists a phone who does the basic phone functions but who has the hotspot feature, something with ethernal battey and a clean design. Of course without Android or Firefox based OS like my Nokia 6300’s KaiOS.
I discovered two types of phones that could fit my needs: the first are design phones like the Punkt and the second option are phone for people who works in construction, basically rugged phones with occasionally the hotspot feature. Too bad they have too high prices due to the little audience, in fact for a rugged phone i should pay at least 150 euros and i have to accept the compromise of not having a firmware phone but one with a basic android distribution. While for a “minimal” phone i have to pay from 299 to 599 euros, the Light Phone has in fact the preorder for the upcoming model who’s price is 699$.
The poor way to do it was spending all today’s morning hacking the Nokia to get rid of the bloatware applications and replacing the default Calls and Contacts apps with usermade ones. My biggest companion for this the BananaHackers website and his super detailed guides.
The Nokia 6300 4G is part of a big family of devices who has Firefox as operative system, it was mindblowing discovering a such big community of modders and custom applications for elder people phones. In fact the applications are basically webapps wrapped in .zip packages, nothing fancy, and the simpleness of the whole process is fascinating. The only pain was finding a browser that still supports WebIDE, the development environment of these things, i got to know the existance of browsers like Waterfox or Palemoon, the first one fortunately supported my device and I’ve been able to mod my phone resulting in only two pages of apps.
For now my daily carry becomes a bit more standalone not having to rely on the “Whatsapp server”, and i have to admit that i feel anxious about cutting another comunication channel, but it’s part of the process to gain my digital freedom, and it’s understandable that after almost fifteen years of using it, getting rid of Whatsapp can be strange.
Slowly moving forward.
See how the journey begun | <-- third chapter - fifth chapter --->