The Smartphone Free Life

Find your focus. Reclaim your life.

Companies/Services

Can you use an e-scooter without a smartphone?

Can you use an e-scooter without a smartphone?

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Electronic shareable scooters are all the rage now. Where I live in Portland, you see them everywhere, nicely organized in a row on the sidewalk, ostentatiously placed in improbable places and, sometimes, being thrown in the river. (Stay classy Portland.)

Stock image of an e-scooter I found

The purpose behind e-scooters is easily told: Short trips in urban areas. Need to get across downtown, but the bus isn’t going your way, and don’t want to mess with parking? Jump on an e-scooter. With no docks required, you just find one wherever you are, and drop one off wherever you are.

I’m a huge advocate for public transit, and so these private transportation companies don’t really do much for me. I don’t see these services as complementing transit service, I see them as cannibalizing them. And it’s all but guaranteed that their labor practices are punitive.

That said, I’ve been moderately interested in trying one of these things out.

However, the fundamentals of this service, like so many services made in the last few years consists of one phrase: “just use the app!”

Well, I don’t want to use the app.

I have a debit card, I have means, and I want to rent a scooter. I don’t want to ask permission from an app store.

The question is: can someone who wants to rent an e-scooter in this town do it without a smartphone?

Let’s see.

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What’s app with WhatsApp requiring the mobile app?

What’s app with WhatsApp requiring the mobile app?

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I’m at a conference this week for my day job. I’m working a booth and doing demos, the whole schmoozing thing. It’s a living.

The organizing team I’m working with said that they want to connect on the ground, not by Slack, or text, or anything, but using WhatsApp.

Why? They say it’s just better for this type of thing.

So, like always, I look to see if it’s possible to use WhatsApp on a non-mobile device.

And, it turns out that WhatsApp is actually more annoying than a standard, mobile-only app.

Here’s what I found. And what I didn’t find.

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Introducing the “No Smartphone Required” list

Introducing the “No Smartphone Required” list

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For someone who chooses not to use a smartphone, you can be forgiven for feeling like the world doesn’t cater to you, or even realize that you exist.

How do you know this? Surely you’ve seen your share of sites that look like this:

My fingers feel sticky just thinking about this scene.

What is a site like this saying? This is what people who use us do. And if you don’t do this, this is not for you.

You can use Simple Bank without a smartphone. But some sites you just can’t. Like this flight price tracking site.

This is not for you.

This one is mobile only.

My point in all this is that it can be difficult to know what services and sites you can use without a smartphone, and which you can’t.

That’s why I’ve created the No Smartphone Required List.

The No Smartphone Required (NSR) list is a single resource where you can see whether a service can be used without a smartphone or not.

Find the NSR list here.

For example, did you know that you can use Uber without a smartphone? And Lyft? Yes and yes. (If you’d want to use them at all.)

This list a huge work in progress, and only has a few items on it. But I’ll be working over the coming weeks and months to build out the page to provide a comprehensive range of all services. I’ll also link to sources and any blog post I’ve written on the subject.

You can help. While I don’t have a specific submission form, you can always shoot me a message and let me know about a service you’d like to see added to the list.

Together we can combat the narrative that everyone uses a smartphone, and that if you don’t have one, you are invisible.

Because we are not. We are out there. And our numbers are growing.

Head on over to the NSR list!

The Lightphone, or when is a smartphone not a smartphone?

The Lightphone, or when is a smartphone not a smartphone?

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It’s hard to find a new non-smartphone for sale. They exist, but since they are such a niche product, you usually have to dig a little harder to find one.

Which is why I found it interesting to learn recently that a group has released a new phone that has all of the benefits of a regular feature phone, but is technically a smartphone.

It’s called the Lightphone.

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Native foods has a new loyalty program…uh-oh

Native foods has a new loyalty program…uh-oh

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(This post was originally written in 2018. Native Foods’ loyalty program isn’t all that new anymore!)

Native Foods is a small chain restaurant using all plant-based ingredients. It’s based in California, though they have outposts as far away as Chicago. Their food can be hit and miss in my opinion, but when they have a hit, they hit it out of the park.

I’ve been a fan of Native Foods for years now, making a pilgrimage out to the suburban “lifestyle” mall which is their only current outpost in Oregon. (I always ask if they’ll ever open up in Portland proper, and they always say it’s “right around the corner“.)

I’ve also long been a fan of their loyalty program. It was very simple: Sign up with an email address and then earn points with every dollar you spend. Every $200 you spend you get a $10 coupon. (Plus they give you $10 on your birthday, which I always appreciate.) Easy.

So you can imagine my alarm when I got an email from Native Foods saying that they were rolling out a brand new loyalty program. Enhancements like these are never good.

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