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I have been using this as my daily minimalist phone for over 4 months. I love it, with some caveats. I bought it for a few reasons: * Tired of lugging around
by smattiso 6y ago
I have been using this as my daily minimalist phone for over 4 months. I love it, with some caveats.
I bought it for a few reasons:
* Tired of lugging around a monsterous phone.
* Not allowing my Internet/web addiction to follow me everywhere.
* Wanted something small and waterproof for outdoor water sports emergencies.
I bought mine (an original Verizon edition) on ebay for 60 dollars. After that you will want to run it through some debloat scripts which improves battery and declutters the phone. Root it if you like, although I did not as I am satisfied with the mods you can make without root.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/development/release-palm-debloat-fixes-script-t4052477 https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/development/release...
I have purposefully crippled the phone and removed Google Chrome, Youtube, as well as the Play Store.
Basically adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.____
I personally ripped out the Play Store so that I couldn't be tempted to download Chrome/YouTube again. I downloaded every app I thought I would want and now I sideload new apps with adb if I find other use cases.
I have considered the alternative use case of sideloading the store, downloading the new app, updating my existing apps, and then removing the store. However given the continuous obsolescence that occurs with phones, my plan is to only update things as they break rather than constantly pushing myself to the newest versions until eventually my phone becomes clunky and unusable.
The phone does everything I want (Uber, Maps, phone, text, whatever!) and I have 0 access to the web. I love it. You can't do this on an iPhone, I tried many times and the closest is with parental locking but it doesn't work how you'd like.
The downside is that the battery life kind of sucks, however I get a full day of use out of it. I plug it in every night, I plug it in my car when I'm driving and use Android Auto, and without the Web to distract me I only use it for calls, texts, note taking, and to briefly look up maps, kitesurfing forecasts, or to call an uber.
I can't wait for the exact same form factor with a 2x bigger battery. I'll never go back to a mega phone for daily use.
Happy to answer more questions.
- danial 6y agoMy biggest problem with owning an Android phone is losing security updates after a few months/years. Has happened to me before, even on a Google branded phone (made by HTC). Are you still getting security updates on this device? Do you think you're likely to lose them in the near future? Edit: I'm asking because I'm really tempted to buy. Sold on everything else.
- smattiso 6y agoI don't think I'm getting security updates but frankly I haven't checked. I'm not able to open web pages with my version so I think my risk is pretty minimal aside from some exploitable silent SMS or Gmail bug. The phone works for me, and I did a HUGE amount of research into my options before buying. The Jelly 2 which I was previously unaware of looks to be pretty slick, but for 60 bucks off ebay I don't think you can go wrong. YMMV
- unknown_abyss 6y agoInstead oft sideloading you could use Aurora Store [1], an open-source Play Store client. [1] https://auroraoss.com https://auroraoss.com