The Smartphone Free Life

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Experiences

You don’t need a data plan

You don’t need a data plan

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Note: This post originally appeared on Empathic Finance (previously known as Unlikely Radical), a partner site to The Smartphone Free Life. It was first published on October 22, 2015.

I willingly raised my cell phone bill by 17% recently.

That sounds punishing and predatory, until I tell you that it went from $30/month to $35/month.

While my new plan had a limit of minutes and texts per month, my new plan gives me unlimited talk and text, so I no longer need to keep track of how many minutes I’ve used.

Sure, laugh at my quaintness, but how much is your cell phone bill? According to a recent JD Power report, the average is $73/month. If I’m paying $35, that means that, statistically, some poor soul out there is paying $111/month. My condolences.

But I’m not bragging. I’m not even going to suggest that you ditch your smartphone. (I’ve already done that.)

Instead, let’s look at what separates my situation from yours. I’m going to assume that you have a smartphone and plan on keeping it. That’s fine.

But one thing you don’t need, even with a smartphone plan? You don’t need a data plan.

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The pleasures of not having access to the internet everywhere I go

The pleasures of not having access to the internet everywhere I go

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I think the first time I thought about owning a smartphone was when someone was describing how it came with a web browser. You could, in effect be online wherever you were.

Now of course, this is standard, but in 2007 or whenever this was, it seemed intriguing.

XKCD, as it always seems to do, summed it up best. What would you get if you combined the power of something like a Kindle with the availability of always-on internet?

Why, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, of course.

Source: XKCD

But while it would be nice to be able to see the wonders of the universe on less than 30 Altarian dollars a day, back here on Earth, I could argue that having access to the internet wherever I go isn’t exactly “mostly harmless”.

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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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How do you catch a cab in an unfamiliar city?

How do you catch a cab in an unfamiliar city?

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I was recently in New York City, visiting friends and seeing my old stomping grounds. I used to live there, and still have a very ambivalent relationship with the city, but I can unequivocally say that the city is extraordinarily exciting and fun…at least when you have a return ticket home.

I was at dinner with some friends of mine, a divey vegan restaurant near where I used to live.

I would killed for a place like this back when I lived near there.

The subways were running on their weekend “alphabet soup” schedule, and it took me about 90 minutes to commute from the place I was staying, where it would normally have been a third of that.

One of my dinner-mates had a car, and they were willing to give me a ride back, but they had errands to run, and as it was getting late, I wanted to get back sooner.

The standard process these days is to just catch a Lyft or Uber. Just pull out your smartphone, press the button, the car will be there in a few minutes, your card will be charged, the owners of the company would get paid, your driver would still be indentured, and you will get home quickly.

But I don’t use a smartphone. I don’t have a Lyft or Uber account. And I didn’t want to ask my friend to call the car on my behalf.

So I was in a quandary: what was I to do?

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In defense of buttons

In defense of buttons

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I never learned to type correctly.

If you were to watch me type, it would look like someone who learned to type with five fingers while frantically trying to type in the answer to an online trivia gaming board before anyone else was able to.

Oh, did I give myself away?

Perhaps because of this, I also hit my keyboard keys hard. Like really hard. I always feel a little like Beethoven when I type.

But I love the tactile sense of a keyboard. I love the feel of the buttons, the resistance of them as they press down, and the satisfying click (or, let’s face it, mush) of a key pressed.

Granted, I don’t like laptop keyboards these days, all of whom are trying to mimic the form-over-function of low-travel distance keys that Apple has unleashed on everything. (Seriously, who thought that putting spaces in between keys was ever a good idea for anything aside from look?)

Seriously, this sucks.

But while I’ve been eyeing CODE keyboards with their mechanical switches recently (anyone have any thoughts on the different types of Cherry MX switches?) I really should stop bitching about this sort of thing at all.

Because I should be grateful that I have physical buttons to press in the first place.

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Strangers come up and talk to me because of my flip phone. That’s telling.

Strangers come up and talk to me because of my flip phone. That’s telling.

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One of the reasons why I started this site is because people keep noting how I don’t have a smartphone. I didn’t originally find it all that notable. I just didn’t want one, and didn’t think my life would be made better by having one.

It was only over time, when people kept bringing it up, that I realized that I might be onto something important.

What I find most interesting though is that I get actual strangers who feel moved enough about my lack of a smartphone that they approach and talk to me about it.

Here are just two stories about that.

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