I Turned My Smartphone Into a Dumb Phone for 30 Days

My phone addiction is gone, and I’m never going back

I hate smartphones.

They are distracting, addictive, anxiety-inducing, time and energy suckers.

I am a phone addict and have been trying every strategy that I could find to decrease these effects, but nothing was solving the issue for good.

Until one day I learned about dumb phones.

The dumb phone prioritise essential telephone functions, such as making calls and sending texts. They eliminate the temptations of spending hours scrolling through a smartphone.

I was very tempted, but all the limitations they have in terms of internet connection made me wary to getting one.

What if I need access to my bank account urgently? Or I’m lost somewhere in London and need to find the way quickly? Or what if I get an urgent call from work and I have to do something on the go?

I work in tech, so my livelihood is closely linked to the use of technology.

I hope one day I will live a simpler life where I don’t have urgent problems, but I’m not there yet. For now, I still need to at least have the option to use advanced functionalities.

And then it hit me. What I want is the option to do something if required, not access to all functionalities all the time.

And I do have control over the functionalities of my smartphone.

A dumb phone is just a phone, that doesn’t have the latest apps.

What if I turn it into a dumb phone myself by removing everything that makes it smart?

I Introduce to You the Game Plan

Step One:

Activate greyscale and make everything dull-looking, which has been proven to decrease phone screen time. It definitely works for me. And dare I say the phone looks nicer without the screaming colours.

Step Two:

Remove everything from the homepage and make it super boring. I made a fully black image the wallpaper, and left zero apps on the home screen.

Step Three:

Remove all unnecessary apps. Everything that isn’t crucial to communicate with family or work, see prayer times, and access money or search/install something I might need urgently like maps or email.

The only unnecessary thing I left on purpose was Notion, because I have my second brain in there, and that thing helps me more than my first brain sometimes.

So this is how my smartphone looks now:

A Month of Living With My Dumb Phone

I started this experiment on Wednesday, 25 October 2023. And I am writing this story on Sunday, 26 November 2023. It has been a full month of using my version of the dumb phone, and this has been my experience.

Week One:

It was hard. I kept picking up my phone to find nothing in it.

On average, a person checks their phones 344 times per day, discovered a survey of 1000 American adults. I was one of those people.

During the days, I would pick it up and just put it down after realising I couldn’t do much in it, but the nights were harder. I was working mostly from home that week, so would get a little bored.

I did find myself a few evenings installing YouTube.

But I was very determined to keep the greyscale. Which made for a weird viewing experience.

And as soon as I would get my “fix”, I would uninstall it. I didn’t install any other distracting apps, though, which was a win.

Week Two:

This week was a bit more busy outside the home, so those moments I was worried about did arise.

I used my digital wallet, which I had kept, to pay everywhere I needed to buy something. I needed to use maps in a few occasions, so installed the app.

And I also had to order food some evenings as I was too tired to cook, so I installed a food app.

Everything was uninstalled right after the purpose was finished. If someone keeps track of install/uninstall on the backend, they would think I was crazy.

But I felt, the least crazy phone user I have ever felt in my entire life, so I will install and uninstall as much as I want.

Week Three:

One thing that was very peculiar was doing video calls on greyscale. I didn’t remove it even then.

Which surprisingly solved another problem I wrote about a few months ago in my story on how I am sick of seeing my face everyday in virtual calls.

Turns out that every imperfection in our face isn’t so visible in greyscale, so we don’t look at it so much.

The person on the other side though? Looked even more interesting.

According to a Hinge report, black and white photos are 106% more likely to receive a like on dating apps.

I wasn’t on dating apps, but I can confirm that every face I saw on video calls during this month has looked way better than before. Maybe Hinge is into something there.

Week Four:

My phone usage became so low that I started missing texts and reply way later.

My mom even got worried once as I forgot to reply completely. She sent me a video in the evening and I could not watch it the moment I saw the text.

Then I didn’t pick up my phone for the rest of the night, nor in the morning, until my mom texted again to check on me at lunchtime.

I used to be known for being very quick at replying, and that’s something not to be proud of, because it shows I had my phone all day in my hand.

But now, with a dumb phone that had nothing in it, I wouldn’t check it for hours and hours.

Final Verdict

I don’t have my screen time recorder turned on, as I don’t like giving an extra approval to be monitored. But I believe it’s not the screen hours number decrease which matters, is the increase of my quality of life.

I have no plan to ever go back to a normal smartphone.

I turned off the greyscale a couple of times to check a photo or something, and the brightness of the app colours literally made me squint my eyes.

If you want to do something similar but cannot commit into making your phone dumb, do only this, activate the greyscale mode. It had the biggest impact.

All this month, my phone has stayed in one of my bookshelves or at the bottom of my bag. I used it only a few times a day when I wanted to speak to someone or perform a task like pay, or search for something quick.

This month, I felt like I used my phone to do things, and didn’t let it use me.

At the beginning, I asked myself, “What do I do to entertain myself now?”

“I do life. Real life.” — I softly answered.

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