Making the Choice: Downgrading to a Dumbphone in 2024

Two months ago, I wrote an essay about my hypnopompic dreams of cell phone notifications. I’d been missing a friend and had near-daily dreams each morning that I’d received a text from them overnight. 

I was torn; on the one hand, my subconscious mind was trying to understand the disconnect between myself and my friend. On the other, I felt the medium through which I was craving human connection (my phone) was designed to disconnect me from other people and from myself.

That essay began as a critical exploration of my relationship with my phone. When I typed out the first sentence, I had no intention of making any major change to my lifestyle, beyond the constant (fruitless) rule-setting, app-limiting-app downloading cycle of cell phone addiction I’d been trapped in for over a decade. 

But immediately after I finished the essay, I had the feeling it wasn’t actually finished. Even though I had nothing more to say.

Then, after closing the document, I opened a browser window and typed “modern dumb phones” into the search bar. Turns out, many people are struggling with excessive cell phone use and looking for a real solution. After reading Reddit threads for nearly 45 minutes, I found myself clicking a link to purchase a new phone. A flip phone. 

It arrived in the mail four days later and I’ve been a faithful convert ever since.

Let me get one thing out of the way: this essay is not going to be a holier-than-thou musing on my new lifestyle. I’m not going to use devices and techniques to distract from what I’m trying to say, because I think what I’m trying to say is important enough to stand on its own.

This phone has changed the course of my life. 

And I’m going to use these 1000-some-odd words to tell you exactly how. 

Finding the Phone

Throughout my life under late capitalism, I’ve often believed there are no other options when it comes to how I live. This is contrasted by the overwhelming illusion of choice I have when purchasing products—I don’t need 28 different shampoo options—and the complete lack of solutions to problems that are actually troubling me.

This is to say I’ve struggled to find solutions to problems when those problems benefitted corporate interests.

Smartphones, being an essential tool in the belt of techno-capitalism, fall under that category. The countless internet forums filled with desperate people seeking a solution prove there is a need. People want phones that provide the basic functions we need to participate in society—Google Maps, a banking app, an alarm clock, a camera—without the unnecessary apps that are designed to pull our attention away from our lives as much as possible.

I did a lot of research and finally found an option that seemed promising. 

The S22 Flip by CAT

The CAT S22 Flip is a flip phone that has data and basic app functionality. It has a (poor) quality camera. With some effort, the phone runs the apps I use frequently like Spotify, Uber, and Google Maps.

I probably could download some danger-zone apps if I wanted to, but the touch screen is so small and frustrating that, in the two months I’ve been carrying this allegedly indestructible brick around with me, I’ve never bothered to try.

The battery life is horrible. Maybe this is due to the fact that I got mine refurbished, since CAT doesn’t make them anymore. 

Apps fail and close for no apparent reason. It takes four minutes to have a text conversation that used to take 14 seconds. The speakerphone is garbage. And the touch screen is so small that it’s incompatible with most apps.

Still, I love it. It’s not perfect. But it’s mine.

I’m not being melodramatic when I tell you the first time I left the house with this phone, I cried. 

Before that happened, it had been sitting, taped up in its box for nearly a week. I kept walking past it, pretending not to notice its presence. 

I was scared to make the transition. I wanted to be the type of person who could survive with a flip phone. And I knew that as soon as I swapped my SIM card from my old iPhone 13 Pro, spent a painful few hours familiarizing myself with my new digital companion, manually transferred my contacts, and remembered how to text with T9, I would find out definitively if I was, in fact, that type of person.

When I finally sat down to do all that, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude for myself. Like there was another person inside me whose emotions and voice had been quieted for a very long time. I didn’t feel scared. This was going to work.

I put on my headphones, flipped through my saved library on Spotify, pressed play on Adrienne Lenker’s new album, and left my house without a smartphone. 

It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t seem like a big deal when you write about it. Or read about it on a screen. But at the time it was a massive deal to me, making that choice.

Now, I read more. Leave sappy voicemails in my friends’ inboxes. Cook more elaborate meals. Remember details better. 

Here are some highlights.

• My screen time went from nearly eight hours per day to less than one.
• With my newfound spare time, I applied to and got a job working as a literacy teacher.
• According to Good Reads, I’ve read more books in the past two months (8) than I did in the entire first half of the year (6).
• I started learning how to draw.
• I’ve planned three community events.
• I started a garden.

Two months in, it’s hard for me to remember what was so difficult/scary about making that choice. It just seemed impossible to live my life any other way. But now, when I look up from my ugly little flip phone, I see options. Not everywhere, but they are there. 

If you’ve read this far, maybe you want to choose something else for yourself, too. 

So maybe a phone built for Boomer construction workers doesn’t seem appealing to you. Suit yourself. There are a few other options you can look into:

• QIN F22 Pro: similar to the S22 Flip but without the flip part.
• Sonim XP3: a 4G-compatible phone without app functionality. You can use the browser in an emergency but no map or audio streaming app. 

• The Minimal Phone: this new phone is designed to have everything you need without the excess. I’m skeptical about this one, since it appears to be compatible with the app store so, aside from the ink-display screen, I’m not sure whether it would be much different from any other smartphone.
• TIQ Mini Q5: a less rugged semi-dumbphone with app compatibility.

You can also check out online resources like my personal favourite: dumbphones.org.

One last thing: only a few days after switching to my flip phone, I finally received a text from that friend I’d been missing. Their number came up, unsaved, on my phone on a random Monday afternoon while I was walking home from my new job.

It took me three times as long as it should have but I replied using my T9 keyboard.

And because it took me so long to text, we decided to call each other.

And because my speakerphone audio is such horrible quality, we decided to meet up in person.

Maybe it was always an option to do that. But sometimes you just need a little push.