14 ms·

Smartphones Are Toys First, Tools Second

196 points by imartin2k 7y ago

mathgladiator 7y ago
> We don’t play with tape measures Oh, yeah, we do... :)
- saagarjha 7y ago
  They're fun! Like yo-yos that you don't have to wind.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
  See how far you can push it out until it collapses.
- phyzome 7y ago
  Yeah, I had to quibble with that too. And I definitely play with my keys when waiting at the bus stop, or equivalents of that. But it's not something I do to the exclusion of other things; it doesn't capture my attention for 10 minutes at a stretch; it doesn't interrupt my conversations or take their place.
rayssgyms 7y ago
A few personal usage tactics I’ve been experimenting with, since I’ve been dealing with smartphone overuse since 2005: 1) No social media apps. 2) Four icons on the home screen (for iPhone, go to this site: https://david-smith.org/blank.html https://david-smith.org/blank.html click share button and add to home screen. Change wallpaper to black. Each black icon you add to the home screen will take up a space where an app would have been, helping you focus on apps that you find most important) 3) Airplane mode when I’m on vacation (so I can still use the camera but won’t be tempted to reply to a text). 4) Few notifications other than calendar, phone, and text. Absolutely no email notifications. Selective and timed Slack notifications since I’m often mobile and don’t want to be the bottleneck at work. 5) No games. 6) Limited video use. Overuse hasn’t been a problem, so I don’t set hard guidelines on this. 7) Leave phone in car [clearly I don’t live in SF] or at home during scheduled time with loved ones. 8) Wear cellular Apple Watch and carry AirPods in pocket when leaving phone at home - if there may be an important call coming in while I’m intentionally preventing myself from working while mobile. 9) Keep phone charging at night in bathroom on do not disturb. No checking during middle of the night bathroom usage. 10) Limit non-essential apps to informational apps - like HN. Smartphones are tools first or they can be toys first. That depends on the goals and discipline level of the user.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  Great list. I go a little further on notifications: Do Not Disturb (DnD) mode 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which inhibits all calls, texts, messages, E-mails, and most importantly notifications. This allows you to use the phone on your own terms and schedule, not on someone else's, including app developers desperate to prod you into their apps. A big part of the smartphone problem, in my view, is how we have all become slaves to them--using them when they demand to be used, rather than when we choose to use them. If it's important, they'll leave a message or E-mail, which you can check on your own schedule.
  - butteroverflow 7y ago
    I guess it might be a great tactic depending on your culture. I tried going with 24/7 silent mode, and then with no phone at all, but had to give in after being repeatedly badgered first by my coworkers, and then by my boss. They expect everyone to be available all the time, in every single company I know of (from friends/acquaintances). I still ignore most emails and phone calls outside of working hours though.
  - dingaling 7y ago
    > If it's important, they'll leave a message or E-mail, which you can check on your own schedule. Depends on your use-case. I use my phone to support my hobby, the Mode-s receiver in my attic sends an e-mail when an interesting aircraft arrives at the local airport. So for me it's a notification tool that requires timely attention. On the other hand it's not a toy, I don't have any games installed.
  - j1elo 7y ago
    Hopefully your father / brother / SO / whoever doesn't need urgent help from you, ever. I used to always power off my phone at night, until one day at 2am I was in the middle of nowhere needing help from a friend, and he did actually answer the phone. He told me: "if it was the other way around, you wouldn't have helped me". For me it was a life saver, and I could totally see how harder would everything have been if he did like me every night (no one else to call at that moment, before that's asked). Since then, my phone is kept on and unsilenced at night. If anyone important to me needs my help, I want to be there for them. Not that it's happened ever once in the last 10 years, though :)
brainless 7y ago
I have switched from using my phone for anything-distracting to only-work. I have been trying it for a long time. Had removed most addictive Social apps some time back. WhatsApp usage went down gradually, and not it is limited to early mornings or evenings. Messenger is rarely used (once in a couple months). Instagram and Twitter for more social media marketing for our products than personal. No games on phone at all. I have finally been very content with my phone as a tool for about 1.5 years or so. Most used apps I think are Gmail (multiple accounts including products), then car pooling app, Slack and WhatsApp. [Edit: added most used apps]
otabdeveloper2 7y ago
Thanks, Captain Obvious!
acd 7y ago
I will try and switch to a simpler phone Cat B35 to see if I can cut out smart phone addiction. The Cat B35 uses KaiOS which is a Firefox OS clone. I will also carry a pocket camera like a Sony Rx100 for taking good quality photos. I realize my mind is addicted to smart phones touch interfaces and applications and that phones are distracting me from reality. IE the haptic dopamine reward from touching the screen in combination with applications. The experiment is what you will gain from having a simpler device which is focused on call first. KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS
- rarecoil 7y ago
  > I will try and switch to a simpler phone Cat B35 to see if I can cut out smart phone addiction. The Cat B35 uses KaiOS which is a Firefox OS clone. I will also carry a pocket camera like a Sony Rx100 for taking good quality photos. I've been working on a similar project for a while, in order to see what the viability of reused Android hardware is if you make a minimal AOSP-based system. I'm trying to wean myself off of current-generation hardware as much as possible because honestly it's just not needed, and I don't want to feed the consumerist machine. I'm using a Nexus 5 I bought used for $40, with the Nexus heavily underclocked for power usage and only the simplest required apps on it. The biggest problem I have had with this phone is that battery life on earlier smartphones is abysmal. I did replace the battery for $7 and it's made a big difference, but there's a level at which the old phone hardware just can't keep up with app bloat if you're using some newer applications. For photos, even the old Nexus is fine for most use cases. For real photos,I just take along a used DX-sensor Nikon Coolpix A I bought on Craigslist.
- chronogram 7y ago
  Hey that compact camera idea is pretty good! With no clue about them, and looking at Wikipedia and the Sony website, I have still little clue. Could you link me some information about cameras? I see several different RX100 cameras and several, much cheaper, W8x0 ones. I’m bad at taking pictures but I still like to take some when there are these lambs by the side of cycling roads here for example, so those compact cameras could be nice to carry in the bag while my older iPhone SE is not the best at taking pictures.
kstenerud 7y ago
We are social creatures. Everything he's talking about (aside from the simpler games) engages our social centers, much like dinner parties and water cooler talks and other social gatherings did in the past. People want to engage, even vicariously, and feel social worth, because social interaction is a huge part of our psyche. Smartphones are empowering, but they also present a change in our environment that we're not properly adapted to. The social lure that binds groups together is being hijacked by social apps because they tap into the same psychology. And they would have done so without the Facebooks of the world (in fact they did, with Usenet and BBSes and party phone lines and television and radio and so on). We won't adapt quickly enough as a species to avoid being enraptured by social apps (except for a tiny minority), so we'll need an artificial solution to deal with it.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  I deeply believe smartphones are the social equivalent of pornography for sexuality. You get your needs when you want how you want but in fact it's only a pale copy of the real thing.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    And here I thought smarthphones are the social equivalent of neighbourhood kid playgrounds of my generation. Kids there were each on a similar, but slightly different and completely independent schedule. We wouldn't arrange social events in advance, we'd just go outside when we wanted and play with whoever happened to be there, for as long as either of us was there. Just like social media today.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      Sorry for my bold point but, most of the time I feel that saying hi to someone in the street has more impact on me than having long convos on reddit. There's something to physical proximity that is missing from the web (obviously) and people trying to make it a full replacement are somehow lying.
jaabe 7y ago
Aren’t they supposed to be toys? I mean, I need a smartphone for e-mail and maps, but I don’t need something that’s more powerful than an iPhone 5 for that, and yet I’m typing this on an iPhone XS while I’m on my commute to work (election preparations). The reason I have the XS was mainly because I wanted more screen space for things that fall in the “toys” category, things like hackernews, and I’m certainly looking forward to playing the Harry Potter Pokemon go. I also wanted the better camera to take better pictures of my newborn, that I share with our family in Tinybeans. I don’t see a problem with that at all though. I did turn notifications off from everything except the e-mail where I get alerts. I use todoist, a todo app, to schedule a lot of things, but even that doesn’t allow to alert me, not even with a little red number on the app icon. I suggests this to everyone. I did it at a suggestion of my personal-efficiency-coach, but once the apps stopped reminding me to open them, it instantly freed up hours of daily time. Now I check them when I want to, like right now, where the alternative to my smartphone is quite literally staring at the open train bathroom across me. This had the added advantage/side effect of making me realise what apps I didn’t actually want.
- meuk 7y ago
  I do see a problem with this. I don't use my phone for much more than messaging, browsing, and navigation. Yet, I have to buy a new smartphone every two years because it gets slow and the USB port breaks. This isn't just an inconvenience, it's changing our perception of what tech is and how it should be. People think its normal that technology sucks, and anticipate it works that way. The reason that Steve Jobs, while being a disgusti g human being, made good products, was that he actually called out the bullshit.
  - toper-centage 7y ago
    And with each generation of phones, developers give themselves more liberties, use more third party libraries which themselves gave themselves more liberties so that simple apps today would barely work on a more modest phone.
  - cheerlessbog 7y ago
    > I have to buy a new smartphone every two years because it gets slow and the USB port breaks I moved from Android to the iOS ecosystem specifically to get the Lightning port. Wikipedia tells me that micro USB ports are rated to 10,000 cycles but in practice I've had to toss tablets because they won't hold a connector, and wiggle phones to get them to charge. With the iPhone connector never an issue and it just feels solid. Why is the design so much poorer?
kkarakk 7y ago
For a real account of how people are going to use smartphones - look at teenagers. they're always glued to their phones, they edit photos on their phones, they make plans on their phones, they write poetry on their phones, kids even do homework on their tablets/phones now. The dirty truth is app tool makers have been slow to adopt smartphones/portable screen as input devices as a dev tool. Apple refuses to put xcode on ipad and refuses to put a touchscreen on a mac(but have included that godawful POS touchbar), google hasn't made ANY real take the charge forays into a drag and drop android app creator and microsoft doesn't have a clue.Indie app creators aren't incentivised to make dev tools for smartphones because adoption is low since hardware/software makers are trying to artifically push a "phones are for play, laptops are for work" artifice(apple/google/microsoft).Ironically Samsung dex is an actual vision of a realistic phone as primary computing tool future but Apple is too focused on profits to adopt this paradigm. The moment we see actual real "native mock to deployment" tools on mobile devices is the moment the distraction moniker will go kaput. it's not that phones are distracting us from our work, it's that our whole world is on the phone, the social bits the communication bits and the entertainment bits - except for the bit of the world that deals with making things.
- xenihn 7y ago
  The xcode experience is bad enough on a top-of-the-line MBP with the best peripherals (monitor, keyboard, etc) available. I say this as someone who has spent, on average, 8+ hours a day in xcode for the past four years. Maybe Apple refuses to put xcode on iPad because trial runs had devs looking for the nearest window to jump out of.
  - rimliu 7y ago
    As another one spending his working day in front of Xcode with a four years old macbook—no problem there.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    I've been running Xcode on a mediocre MacBook Pro with no peripherals for the last five years (though I only spend a couple of hours on average per day). It's not awful.
kashyapc 7y ago
This has been my modus operandi: • No push notifications (except for one human, and that too via SMS). • No "social media" accounts (never had it on the phone to begin with; and removed my FB account 5+ years ago). • Use gray scale (this turned my phone into a very peaceful device). On Android, this can only be enabled via the "Developer options" (and then select "Simulate color space" --> "Monochromacy") • The "apps" on my phone are most practical ones: Maps, English & Dutch dictionaries, Orgzly (Org-Mode-based note taker), Spotify, Signal, WhatsApp, a couple of train look-up services, Firefox and an OTP generator. This has been instrumental in making sure that my attention is not splintered all over the place. And lets me retain the ability to concentrate and read books in 2-hour, undistracted blocks. Go me!
- marapuru 7y ago
  Thanks for that grayscale advice.
  - avel 7y ago
    I loved the grayscale mode, but in the end I had to set so many exceptions via tasker for apps where I do need color for the UI (Such as Google Maps, Uber, and Calendar), that it proved to be more of a hassle.
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      I use an iPhone with a home button. I bound greyscale to a triple-click of that so I can switch on and off at will pretty handy if that’s possible on your end.
      - graeme 7y ago
        Note that this dramatically slows multitasking as the system waits for a third press. Not an issue on the X style phones.
        52-6F-62 7y ago
TheOperator 7y ago
I broke a laptop and didn't replace it because I'm trying to learn to use my android phone as a tool more. It does have a usb-c port. It works okay. Needs more drivers. The issue with using phones as a tool isn't the phones theirselves its the surrounding infrastructure. If somebody wants a business idea how about selling phone compatible tools?
billyhastings 7y ago
Really? How are people still _so naive_? Smartphones are spy devices first, whatever else second. And by the way, the spying comes in multiple layers and powers. You can't avoid it.
zemanel 7y ago
my phone is my most powerful daily life, work, research device
nkkollaw 7y ago
Like anything else, though. Computers in the 70s might have been business machines, but families got them because kids wanted to play videogames
tluyben2 7y ago
More people said it here but I do 60-70% of my work on my smartphone, including dev. No games, no social networking, just work. It is not only not a toy, it is vital to my workflow.
amelius 7y ago
No, smartphones are tools used by companies to extract personal data and/or money from people.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
  And, when needed, LEO tracking devices.
edoo 7y ago
Smartphones are totally toys. I am so efficient on a desktop I can't stand to use them for anything work related. I pretty much use it to glance at emails and take pictures. Oh and don't forget the government mandated backdoors and location tracking a la the 911 laws.
rkagerer 7y ago
This excerpt summarizes the author's chief complaint: For most of us, they easily soak up far more time than they save, capturing our attention dozens of times daily, and directing it to gratifying but mostly forgettable activities, usually infused with advertising. I empathize. I just set up a new phone and was frustrated by all the unwanted notifications spammed at me from my OS and the latest versions of so many of my apps. It seems a lot worse than the last time I did this few years ago, and I'm constantly tweaking settings to stomp them out. This began as a surgical exercise - usually I don't want to kill all the functionality, just turn off the specific alerts I don't care about. But it's gotten to the point I feel like I'm waging war against an ecosystem of developers intent to squander my attention without recognizing it's an incredibly scare and valuable resource. Messenger in particular was so difficult to get to shut up that I just wound up removing all Facebook's apps. They're not the only offender. If you have an Android, go into App Info for Google Maps (edit: then tap Notifications) and look at the sheer volume of stuff it wants to nag you about.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  I'm waging war against an ecosystem of developers intent to squander my attention Not sure if you are being deliberately glib, but yes, that is exactly what is going on. They know damn well that your attention is valuable -- to them -- and they know that it is limited, so they are in an arms race with each other to capture as much of it as possible.
  - EForEndeavour 7y ago
    In that case, the more devs realize that excessive notifications have the opposite effect as intended, the better.
    - antepodius 7y ago
      I wonder if they do.
      - krisgee 7y ago
ezconnect 7y ago
I only use my phone for taking photos so I can remember what I saw or as reference to what I am doing. I wish there's an app that could tag the photo automatically so I can search it and reference it again. The only time it would ring or get a message is if there's something important from my wife.
- core1024 7y ago
  > I wish there's an app that could tag the photo automatically so I can search it and reference it again. Google photos does exactly this.
  - ezconnect 7y ago
    I tried it, its only good at categorizing images. I wish it could index the text and numbers at different angles also. I also wish it can further filter what you have already searched.
unixhero 7y ago
Well I didn't read tfa, but I disagree with the title. I use the camera, document producing capabilities quite frequently in my work, in addition the regular features of loudspeaker conference calls (when Skype for Business fails) and so on. I only take time to play with it, when I'm bored on plane rides.
everyone 7y ago
Based on the title, I thought this was gonna be about how the entire UX design of smartphones is utter garbage, and hence they cant be used to do most kinds of work, and the stuff that is possible is much slower / error prone. Imo they have been designed from the ground up to be merely shiny toys / gadgets. The most fundamental flaw in the design is the touchscreen. Eg. Press a button which is just part of the screen and has 0 haptic feedback, so the only way to locate it is by looking at it, but your finger is obscuring it (as you are moving to press it with your finger) so you cant see it. It is a paradoxical situation.
T3OU-736 7y ago
The reason we'd have difficulty explaining the smartphone to someone from 60s is because it uses a while lot of infrastructure for all those spicy functions to be available. This is not to take away from the pocket computer's awesomeness, but there decides in our pockets aren't self-contained. (Edit: keyboard mis-swipes)
chess93 7y ago
Smartphones are what I think of as "attention capturers" which are able to completely capture almost anyone's attention span for a significant amount of time. Other attention capturers include computers[0], video games, TV, books, chess. Each of these has varying capability as attention capturers but it is safe to say that smartphones are the strongest attention capturer for most people. I believe that using any attention capturer for long periods is not healthy and should be avoided. The hard part for me is actually finding anything else to do in a new city without family/friends. Especially on a Tuesday night after work where it is less possible to go to a bar and talk to strangers. [0] Smartphones can be included here.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  >I believe that using any attention capturer for long periods is not healthy Why? I assume you mean psychologically, not physically (which is more obvious why).
  - chess93 7y ago
    I've noticed several side effects such as decreased attention span, decreased sociability, decreased desire to do anything other than your preferred method of attention capturing. Frankly I just think that many of these things are simply addictive and, with an appeal to naturalism, I don't think it is what humans were meant to do. Increased smartphone use or TV watching or video games probably almost never results in increased happiness over the long term. Not to mention the ability to use attention capturing as a way to hide from one's own emotions.
Smithalicious 7y ago
>For most of us, they easily soak up far more time than they save, capturing our attention dozens of times daily, and directing it to gratifying but mostly forgettable activities, usually infused with advertising. I suspect this to be one of those things we all think everyone else is doing but that very few people are actually doing in reality. Frankly, all time I spend on my phone is actually valuable, or at least not better spent doing anything else, and I think it's the same for most people.
_bxg1 7y ago
Disable all notifications except direct messages, and reminders that you create yourself. Delete all apps that are designed to be checked over and over. Put all other apps that could be checked over and over (finance, video streaming, shopping - believe me) inside folders, on screens behind the main screen. You should have to consciously look for them when you actually need them. Don't sign in to any social sites in your browser, and don't let favorites or recents give you colorful icons for your frequented sites. Force yourself to type in the website you want to go to. My home screen consists of music, direct communication, maps, notes/calendar/contacts, and the web browser. None of these can be idly checked except the web browser. They all encourage intentional interaction or none at all. Sometimes I open my phone subconsciously, look at the icons, and put it away again because there's nothing to be done.
- tgb 7y ago
  I do this but then I just type to an unsigned-in Reddit and get the crappy front page instead of at least a controllable selection of topics. The web browser is the killer of this strategy.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    The web browser is problematic - HN remains a bit of a Skinner box for me - but it still denies you two important addictive mechanisms: candy-colored icons and attractive design. If there's no icon begging you to tap it, and the interface when you get there is "crappy", there's much less artificial addictiveness in the equation.
    - jefurii 7y ago
      Try HN's noprocrast feature on the user settings page.
  - PrototypeNM1 7y ago
    If you use Firefox on mobile I made an extension to make mindlessly browsing blacklisted sites inconvenient - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/impede/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/impede/ It's undocumented but it wouldn't be hard to add. Essentially you blacklist a domain in the 3 dot menu (toolbar icon on desktop). Blacklisted sites will show a word and key-value pairs of letters and numbers, you have to add up the values for each letter in the word to unlock the page. You can change the word length in the options page, also in options you can set the extension to sleep for 5, 15, and 30 minutes when you want to disable it without having to later re-enable it.
geophile 7y ago
Very poorly argued. The premise ignores that many of those superpowers are available on your computer. So giving up the phone is not as big a sacrifice as is being claimed.
tdaltonc 7y ago
After I got mu PhD in the neuroscience of habit formation, I made an app to help people reconfigure their phone to prevent or dismantle exactly this kind of compulsive relationship with their phone. Check it out here: https://youjustneedspace.com/ https://youjustneedspace.com/
Kirth 7y ago
I was strongly reminded of this yesterday when I wanted to send someone the PSK for a home WiFi network. It baffles me that I'd need root access and a separate tool to extract the PSK. Are there any phone manufacturers that still let you root without potentially bricking the phone etc?
dontbenebby 7y ago
Having a metered plan helped tremendously (and saves me money). I tend to eschew Twitter/Reddit and focus on podcasts, or binge a little Wikipedia waiting for the train.
alxmdev 7y ago
I wish Google Maps wouldn't invent new notifications every other month and enable them by default. No, I don't want to check-in, review, or take photos of whatever place I'm in. I'd prefer a faster-loading app instead, to just look up simple directions and orient myself. And sometimes I want to jot down a quick note or create a new calendar reminder, not to be bombarded by "Check out the new features, Got It?" speech bubbles. It's annoyances like this that make using my phone frustrating. It doesn't feel like a personal device that's under my control at all, it's something I reluctantly use and indeed look forward to working out of my life. I'm more attached to my 2nd hand laptop running Linux Mint, and for good reason.
- nathanasmith 7y ago
  I made the wry comment to my girlfriend recently that I open Google Maps just infrequently enough that every single time I do there's some new dialog for me to have to click out of standing between me and whatever it is I actually want to do with the app. No, I don't want to "beat the traffic" or "just start driving" or anything else. I simply want to get to the closest coffee shop. It's maddening and Google Maps didn't used to be like that.
- derefr 7y ago
  What notification from Google Maps do you need that you're not just disabling its notifications at the app level?
  - alxmdev 7y ago
    Turns out none, thanks for the reminder :-)
habosa 7y ago
A lot of good usage tips in this thread. One that not enough people use (IMO) is to get a notification inbox app. Like this one (although I use one I made myself): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wandoujia.notification&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wandoujia.... Basically it sucks up notifications from all (or selected) apps into an inbox-like interface similar to email. You can check it when you want, but it's not in your face. There are a lot of apps where I don't want to disable notifications, but I also don't want them interrupting me. NYTimes is a good example of that, since I do want to read the news but only on my own schedule. A notification inbox has helped me a lot.

196 points by imartin2k 7y ago

mathgladiator 7y ago

> We don’t play with tape measures Oh, yeah, we do... :)

saagarjha 7y ago
They're fun! Like yo-yos that you don't have to wind.
qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
See how far you can push it out until it collapses.
phyzome 7y ago
Yeah, I had to quibble with that too. And I definitely play with my keys when waiting at the bus stop, or equivalents of that. But it's not something I do to the exclusion of other things; it doesn't capture my attention for 10 minutes at a stretch; it doesn't interrupt my conversations or take their place.

rayssgyms 7y ago

A few personal usage tactics I’ve been experimenting with, since I’ve been dealing with smartphone overuse since 2005: 1) No social media apps. 2) Four icons on the home screen (for iPhone, go to this site: https://david-smith.org/blank.html https://david-smith.org/blank.html click share button and add to home screen. Change wallpaper to black. Each black icon you add to the home screen will take up a space where an app would have been, helping you focus on apps that you find most important) 3) Airplane mode when I’m on vacation (so I can still use the camera but won’t be tempted to reply to a text). 4) Few notifications other than calendar, phone, and text. Absolutely no email notifications. Selective and timed Slack notifications since I’m often mobile and don’t want to be the bottleneck at work. 5) No games. 6) Limited video use. Overuse hasn’t been a problem, so I don’t set hard guidelines on this. 7) Leave phone in car [clearly I don’t live in SF] or at home during scheduled time with loved ones. 8) Wear cellular Apple Watch and carry AirPods in pocket when leaving phone at home - if there may be an important call coming in while I’m intentionally preventing myself from working while mobile. 9) Keep phone charging at night in bathroom on do not disturb. No checking during middle of the night bathroom usage. 10) Limit non-essential apps to informational apps - like HN. Smartphones are tools first or they can be toys first. That depends on the goals and discipline level of the user.

ryandrake 7y ago
Great list. I go a little further on notifications: Do Not Disturb (DnD) mode 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which inhibits all calls, texts, messages, E-mails, and most importantly notifications. This allows you to use the phone on your own terms and schedule, not on someone else's, including app developers desperate to prod you into their apps. A big part of the smartphone problem, in my view, is how we have all become slaves to them--using them when they demand to be used, rather than when we choose to use them. If it's important, they'll leave a message or E-mail, which you can check on your own schedule.
- butteroverflow 7y ago
  I guess it might be a great tactic depending on your culture. I tried going with 24/7 silent mode, and then with no phone at all, but had to give in after being repeatedly badgered first by my coworkers, and then by my boss. They expect everyone to be available all the time, in every single company I know of (from friends/acquaintances). I still ignore most emails and phone calls outside of working hours though.
- dingaling 7y ago
  > If it's important, they'll leave a message or E-mail, which you can check on your own schedule. Depends on your use-case. I use my phone to support my hobby, the Mode-s receiver in my attic sends an e-mail when an interesting aircraft arrives at the local airport. So for me it's a notification tool that requires timely attention. On the other hand it's not a toy, I don't have any games installed.
- j1elo 7y ago
  Hopefully your father / brother / SO / whoever doesn't need urgent help from you, ever. I used to always power off my phone at night, until one day at 2am I was in the middle of nowhere needing help from a friend, and he did actually answer the phone. He told me: "if it was the other way around, you wouldn't have helped me". For me it was a life saver, and I could totally see how harder would everything have been if he did like me every night (no one else to call at that moment, before that's asked). Since then, my phone is kept on and unsilenced at night. If anyone important to me needs my help, I want to be there for them. Not that it's happened ever once in the last 10 years, though :)

brainless 7y ago

I have switched from using my phone for anything-distracting to only-work. I have been trying it for a long time. Had removed most addictive Social apps some time back. WhatsApp usage went down gradually, and not it is limited to early mornings or evenings. Messenger is rarely used (once in a couple months). Instagram and Twitter for more social media marketing for our products than personal. No games on phone at all. I have finally been very content with my phone as a tool for about 1.5 years or so. Most used apps I think are Gmail (multiple accounts including products), then car pooling app, Slack and WhatsApp. [Edit: added most used apps]

otabdeveloper2 7y ago

Thanks, Captain Obvious!

acd 7y ago

I will try and switch to a simpler phone Cat B35 to see if I can cut out smart phone addiction. The Cat B35 uses KaiOS which is a Firefox OS clone. I will also carry a pocket camera like a Sony Rx100 for taking good quality photos. I realize my mind is addicted to smart phones touch interfaces and applications and that phones are distracting me from reality. IE the haptic dopamine reward from touching the screen in combination with applications. The experiment is what you will gain from having a simpler device which is focused on call first. KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS

rarecoil 7y ago
> I will try and switch to a simpler phone Cat B35 to see if I can cut out smart phone addiction. The Cat B35 uses KaiOS which is a Firefox OS clone. I will also carry a pocket camera like a Sony Rx100 for taking good quality photos. I've been working on a similar project for a while, in order to see what the viability of reused Android hardware is if you make a minimal AOSP-based system. I'm trying to wean myself off of current-generation hardware as much as possible because honestly it's just not needed, and I don't want to feed the consumerist machine. I'm using a Nexus 5 I bought used for $40, with the Nexus heavily underclocked for power usage and only the simplest required apps on it. The biggest problem I have had with this phone is that battery life on earlier smartphones is abysmal. I did replace the battery for $7 and it's made a big difference, but there's a level at which the old phone hardware just can't keep up with app bloat if you're using some newer applications. For photos, even the old Nexus is fine for most use cases. For real photos,I just take along a used DX-sensor Nikon Coolpix A I bought on Craigslist.
chronogram 7y ago
Hey that compact camera idea is pretty good! With no clue about them, and looking at Wikipedia and the Sony website, I have still little clue. Could you link me some information about cameras? I see several different RX100 cameras and several, much cheaper, W8x0 ones. I’m bad at taking pictures but I still like to take some when there are these lambs by the side of cycling roads here for example, so those compact cameras could be nice to carry in the bag while my older iPhone SE is not the best at taking pictures.

kstenerud 7y ago

We are social creatures. Everything he's talking about (aside from the simpler games) engages our social centers, much like dinner parties and water cooler talks and other social gatherings did in the past. People want to engage, even vicariously, and feel social worth, because social interaction is a huge part of our psyche. Smartphones are empowering, but they also present a change in our environment that we're not properly adapted to. The social lure that binds groups together is being hijacked by social apps because they tap into the same psychology. And they would have done so without the Facebooks of the world (in fact they did, with Usenet and BBSes and party phone lines and television and radio and so on). We won't adapt quickly enough as a species to avoid being enraptured by social apps (except for a tiny minority), so we'll need an artificial solution to deal with it.

agumonkey 7y ago
I deeply believe smartphones are the social equivalent of pornography for sexuality. You get your needs when you want how you want but in fact it's only a pale copy of the real thing.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  And here I thought smarthphones are the social equivalent of neighbourhood kid playgrounds of my generation. Kids there were each on a similar, but slightly different and completely independent schedule. We wouldn't arrange social events in advance, we'd just go outside when we wanted and play with whoever happened to be there, for as long as either of us was there. Just like social media today.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    Sorry for my bold point but, most of the time I feel that saying hi to someone in the street has more impact on me than having long convos on reddit. There's something to physical proximity that is missing from the web (obviously) and people trying to make it a full replacement are somehow lying.

jaabe 7y ago

Aren’t they supposed to be toys? I mean, I need a smartphone for e-mail and maps, but I don’t need something that’s more powerful than an iPhone 5 for that, and yet I’m typing this on an iPhone XS while I’m on my commute to work (election preparations). The reason I have the XS was mainly because I wanted more screen space for things that fall in the “toys” category, things like hackernews, and I’m certainly looking forward to playing the Harry Potter Pokemon go. I also wanted the better camera to take better pictures of my newborn, that I share with our family in Tinybeans. I don’t see a problem with that at all though. I did turn notifications off from everything except the e-mail where I get alerts. I use todoist, a todo app, to schedule a lot of things, but even that doesn’t allow to alert me, not even with a little red number on the app icon. I suggests this to everyone. I did it at a suggestion of my personal-efficiency-coach, but once the apps stopped reminding me to open them, it instantly freed up hours of daily time. Now I check them when I want to, like right now, where the alternative to my smartphone is quite literally staring at the open train bathroom across me. This had the added advantage/side effect of making me realise what apps I didn’t actually want.

meuk 7y ago
I do see a problem with this. I don't use my phone for much more than messaging, browsing, and navigation. Yet, I have to buy a new smartphone every two years because it gets slow and the USB port breaks. This isn't just an inconvenience, it's changing our perception of what tech is and how it should be. People think its normal that technology sucks, and anticipate it works that way. The reason that Steve Jobs, while being a disgusti g human being, made good products, was that he actually called out the bullshit.
- toper-centage 7y ago
  And with each generation of phones, developers give themselves more liberties, use more third party libraries which themselves gave themselves more liberties so that simple apps today would barely work on a more modest phone.
- cheerlessbog 7y ago
  > I have to buy a new smartphone every two years because it gets slow and the USB port breaks I moved from Android to the iOS ecosystem specifically to get the Lightning port. Wikipedia tells me that micro USB ports are rated to 10,000 cycles but in practice I've had to toss tablets because they won't hold a connector, and wiggle phones to get them to charge. With the iPhone connector never an issue and it just feels solid. Why is the design so much poorer?

kkarakk 7y ago

For a real account of how people are going to use smartphones - look at teenagers. they're always glued to their phones, they edit photos on their phones, they make plans on their phones, they write poetry on their phones, kids even do homework on their tablets/phones now. The dirty truth is app tool makers have been slow to adopt smartphones/portable screen as input devices as a dev tool. Apple refuses to put xcode on ipad and refuses to put a touchscreen on a mac(but have included that godawful POS touchbar), google hasn't made ANY real take the charge forays into a drag and drop android app creator and microsoft doesn't have a clue.Indie app creators aren't incentivised to make dev tools for smartphones because adoption is low since hardware/software makers are trying to artifically push a "phones are for play, laptops are for work" artifice(apple/google/microsoft).Ironically Samsung dex is an actual vision of a realistic phone as primary computing tool future but Apple is too focused on profits to adopt this paradigm. The moment we see actual real "native mock to deployment" tools on mobile devices is the moment the distraction moniker will go kaput. it's not that phones are distracting us from our work, it's that our whole world is on the phone, the social bits the communication bits and the entertainment bits - except for the bit of the world that deals with making things.

xenihn 7y ago
The xcode experience is bad enough on a top-of-the-line MBP with the best peripherals (monitor, keyboard, etc) available. I say this as someone who has spent, on average, 8+ hours a day in xcode for the past four years. Maybe Apple refuses to put xcode on iPad because trial runs had devs looking for the nearest window to jump out of.
- rimliu 7y ago
  As another one spending his working day in front of Xcode with a four years old macbook—no problem there.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I've been running Xcode on a mediocre MacBook Pro with no peripherals for the last five years (though I only spend a couple of hours on average per day). It's not awful.

kashyapc 7y ago

This has been my modus operandi: • No push notifications (except for one human, and that too via SMS). • No "social media" accounts (never had it on the phone to begin with; and removed my FB account 5+ years ago). • Use gray scale (this turned my phone into a very peaceful device). On Android, this can only be enabled via the "Developer options" (and then select "Simulate color space" --> "Monochromacy") • The "apps" on my phone are most practical ones: Maps, English & Dutch dictionaries, Orgzly (Org-Mode-based note taker), Spotify, Signal, WhatsApp, a couple of train look-up services, Firefox and an OTP generator. This has been instrumental in making sure that my attention is not splintered all over the place. And lets me retain the ability to concentrate and read books in 2-hour, undistracted blocks. Go me!

marapuru 7y ago
Thanks for that grayscale advice.
- avel 7y ago
  I loved the grayscale mode, but in the end I had to set so many exceptions via tasker for apps where I do need color for the UI (Such as Google Maps, Uber, and Calendar), that it proved to be more of a hassle.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    I use an iPhone with a home button. I bound greyscale to a triple-click of that so I can switch on and off at will pretty handy if that’s possible on your end.
    - graeme 7y ago
      Note that this dramatically slows multitasking as the system waits for a third press. Not an issue on the X style phones.
      - 52-6F-62 7y ago

TheOperator 7y ago

I broke a laptop and didn't replace it because I'm trying to learn to use my android phone as a tool more. It does have a usb-c port. It works okay. Needs more drivers. The issue with using phones as a tool isn't the phones theirselves its the surrounding infrastructure. If somebody wants a business idea how about selling phone compatible tools?

billyhastings 7y ago

Really? How are people still _so naive_? Smartphones are spy devices first, whatever else second. And by the way, the spying comes in multiple layers and powers. You can't avoid it.

zemanel 7y ago

my phone is my most powerful daily life, work, research device

nkkollaw 7y ago

Like anything else, though. Computers in the 70s might have been business machines, but families got them because kids wanted to play videogames

tluyben2 7y ago

More people said it here but I do 60-70% of my work on my smartphone, including dev. No games, no social networking, just work. It is not only not a toy, it is vital to my workflow.

amelius 7y ago

No, smartphones are tools used by companies to extract personal data and/or money from people.

qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
And, when needed, LEO tracking devices.

edoo 7y ago

Smartphones are totally toys. I am so efficient on a desktop I can't stand to use them for anything work related. I pretty much use it to glance at emails and take pictures. Oh and don't forget the government mandated backdoors and location tracking a la the 911 laws.

rkagerer 7y ago

This excerpt summarizes the author's chief complaint: For most of us, they easily soak up far more time than they save, capturing our attention dozens of times daily, and directing it to gratifying but mostly forgettable activities, usually infused with advertising. I empathize. I just set up a new phone and was frustrated by all the unwanted notifications spammed at me from my OS and the latest versions of so many of my apps. It seems a lot worse than the last time I did this few years ago, and I'm constantly tweaking settings to stomp them out. This began as a surgical exercise - usually I don't want to kill all the functionality, just turn off the specific alerts I don't care about. But it's gotten to the point I feel like I'm waging war against an ecosystem of developers intent to squander my attention without recognizing it's an incredibly scare and valuable resource. Messenger in particular was so difficult to get to shut up that I just wound up removing all Facebook's apps. They're not the only offender. If you have an Android, go into App Info for Google Maps (edit: then tap Notifications) and look at the sheer volume of stuff it wants to nag you about.

nerdponx 7y ago
I'm waging war against an ecosystem of developers intent to squander my attention Not sure if you are being deliberately glib, but yes, that is exactly what is going on. They know damn well that your attention is valuable -- to them -- and they know that it is limited, so they are in an arms race with each other to capture as much of it as possible.
- EForEndeavour 7y ago
  In that case, the more devs realize that excessive notifications have the opposite effect as intended, the better.
  - antepodius 7y ago
    I wonder if they do.
    - krisgee 7y ago

ezconnect 7y ago

I only use my phone for taking photos so I can remember what I saw or as reference to what I am doing. I wish there's an app that could tag the photo automatically so I can search it and reference it again. The only time it would ring or get a message is if there's something important from my wife.

core1024 7y ago
> I wish there's an app that could tag the photo automatically so I can search it and reference it again. Google photos does exactly this.
- ezconnect 7y ago
  I tried it, its only good at categorizing images. I wish it could index the text and numbers at different angles also. I also wish it can further filter what you have already searched.

unixhero 7y ago

Well I didn't read tfa, but I disagree with the title. I use the camera, document producing capabilities quite frequently in my work, in addition the regular features of loudspeaker conference calls (when Skype for Business fails) and so on. I only take time to play with it, when I'm bored on plane rides.

everyone 7y ago

Based on the title, I thought this was gonna be about how the entire UX design of smartphones is utter garbage, and hence they cant be used to do most kinds of work, and the stuff that is possible is much slower / error prone. Imo they have been designed from the ground up to be merely shiny toys / gadgets. The most fundamental flaw in the design is the touchscreen. Eg. Press a button which is just part of the screen and has 0 haptic feedback, so the only way to locate it is by looking at it, but your finger is obscuring it (as you are moving to press it with your finger) so you cant see it. It is a paradoxical situation.

T3OU-736 7y ago

The reason we'd have difficulty explaining the smartphone to someone from 60s is because it uses a while lot of infrastructure for all those spicy functions to be available. This is not to take away from the pocket computer's awesomeness, but there decides in our pockets aren't self-contained. (Edit: keyboard mis-swipes)

chess93 7y ago

Smartphones are what I think of as "attention capturers" which are able to completely capture almost anyone's attention span for a significant amount of time. Other attention capturers include computers[0], video games, TV, books, chess. Each of these has varying capability as attention capturers but it is safe to say that smartphones are the strongest attention capturer for most people. I believe that using any attention capturer for long periods is not healthy and should be avoided. The hard part for me is actually finding anything else to do in a new city without family/friends. Especially on a Tuesday night after work where it is less possible to go to a bar and talk to strangers. [0] Smartphones can be included here.

shrimp_emoji 7y ago
>I believe that using any attention capturer for long periods is not healthy Why? I assume you mean psychologically, not physically (which is more obvious why).
- chess93 7y ago
  I've noticed several side effects such as decreased attention span, decreased sociability, decreased desire to do anything other than your preferred method of attention capturing. Frankly I just think that many of these things are simply addictive and, with an appeal to naturalism, I don't think it is what humans were meant to do. Increased smartphone use or TV watching or video games probably almost never results in increased happiness over the long term. Not to mention the ability to use attention capturing as a way to hide from one's own emotions.

Smithalicious 7y ago

>For most of us, they easily soak up far more time than they save, capturing our attention dozens of times daily, and directing it to gratifying but mostly forgettable activities, usually infused with advertising. I suspect this to be one of those things we all think everyone else is doing but that very few people are actually doing in reality. Frankly, all time I spend on my phone is actually valuable, or at least not better spent doing anything else, and I think it's the same for most people.

_bxg1 7y ago

Disable all notifications except direct messages, and reminders that you create yourself. Delete all apps that are designed to be checked over and over. Put all other apps that could be checked over and over (finance, video streaming, shopping - believe me) inside folders, on screens behind the main screen. You should have to consciously look for them when you actually need them. Don't sign in to any social sites in your browser, and don't let favorites or recents give you colorful icons for your frequented sites. Force yourself to type in the website you want to go to. My home screen consists of music, direct communication, maps, notes/calendar/contacts, and the web browser. None of these can be idly checked except the web browser. They all encourage intentional interaction or none at all. Sometimes I open my phone subconsciously, look at the icons, and put it away again because there's nothing to be done.

tgb 7y ago
I do this but then I just type to an unsigned-in Reddit and get the crappy front page instead of at least a controllable selection of topics. The web browser is the killer of this strategy.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  The web browser is problematic - HN remains a bit of a Skinner box for me - but it still denies you two important addictive mechanisms: candy-colored icons and attractive design. If there's no icon begging you to tap it, and the interface when you get there is "crappy", there's much less artificial addictiveness in the equation.
  - jefurii 7y ago
    Try HN's noprocrast feature on the user settings page.
- PrototypeNM1 7y ago
  If you use Firefox on mobile I made an extension to make mindlessly browsing blacklisted sites inconvenient - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/impede/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/impede/ It's undocumented but it wouldn't be hard to add. Essentially you blacklist a domain in the 3 dot menu (toolbar icon on desktop). Blacklisted sites will show a word and key-value pairs of letters and numbers, you have to add up the values for each letter in the word to unlock the page. You can change the word length in the options page, also in options you can set the extension to sleep for 5, 15, and 30 minutes when you want to disable it without having to later re-enable it.

geophile 7y ago

Very poorly argued. The premise ignores that many of those superpowers are available on your computer. So giving up the phone is not as big a sacrifice as is being claimed.

tdaltonc 7y ago

After I got mu PhD in the neuroscience of habit formation, I made an app to help people reconfigure their phone to prevent or dismantle exactly this kind of compulsive relationship with their phone. Check it out here: https://youjustneedspace.com/ https://youjustneedspace.com/

Kirth 7y ago

I was strongly reminded of this yesterday when I wanted to send someone the PSK for a home WiFi network. It baffles me that I'd need root access and a separate tool to extract the PSK. Are there any phone manufacturers that still let you root without potentially bricking the phone etc?

dontbenebby 7y ago

Having a metered plan helped tremendously (and saves me money). I tend to eschew Twitter/Reddit and focus on podcasts, or binge a little Wikipedia waiting for the train.

alxmdev 7y ago

I wish Google Maps wouldn't invent new notifications every other month and enable them by default. No, I don't want to check-in, review, or take photos of whatever place I'm in. I'd prefer a faster-loading app instead, to just look up simple directions and orient myself. And sometimes I want to jot down a quick note or create a new calendar reminder, not to be bombarded by "Check out the new features, Got It?" speech bubbles. It's annoyances like this that make using my phone frustrating. It doesn't feel like a personal device that's under my control at all, it's something I reluctantly use and indeed look forward to working out of my life. I'm more attached to my 2nd hand laptop running Linux Mint, and for good reason.

nathanasmith 7y ago
I made the wry comment to my girlfriend recently that I open Google Maps just infrequently enough that every single time I do there's some new dialog for me to have to click out of standing between me and whatever it is I actually want to do with the app. No, I don't want to "beat the traffic" or "just start driving" or anything else. I simply want to get to the closest coffee shop. It's maddening and Google Maps didn't used to be like that.
derefr 7y ago
What notification from Google Maps do you need that you're not just disabling its notifications at the app level?
- alxmdev 7y ago
  Turns out none, thanks for the reminder :-)

habosa 7y ago

A lot of good usage tips in this thread. One that not enough people use (IMO) is to get a notification inbox app. Like this one (although I use one I made myself): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wandoujia.notification&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wandoujia.... Basically it sucks up notifications from all (or selected) apps into an inbox-like interface similar to email. You can check it when you want, but it's not in your face. There are a lot of apps where I don't want to disable notifications, but I also don't want them interrupting me. NYTimes is a good example of that, since I do want to read the news but only on my own schedule. A notification inbox has helped me a lot.