Tips and Tricks

You don’t need a data plan

by Mike Pumphrey · Jul 4, 2019

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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How will you figure out where to eat?

by Mike Pumphrey · Jun 13, 2019

There are a number of objections to living without a smartphone. Some of these objections ring legitimate and worthy of consideration. Some of them feel frivolous.

The question of where to eat is, at heart, both.

Because while the question of where do you go to eat is so first world a problem it’s effectively a zeroth world problem, it’s also something you deal with every day.

On average, Americans eat a meal out about 5 times per week. So this is relevant.

And you probably figure it out with a smartphone. So let’s talk about how you would do it without one.

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What is the first step in reducing your smartphone usage?

by Mike Pumphrey · May 30, 2019

Okay, so you’ve realized that this technology that is apparently so “magical” and “irresistible” is really just a tool to sell you things, and to sell you. Along the way, it just makes you more anxious, more disconnected, and worse with directions.

What do you do now?

I recognize that many of you are not interested in giving up your smartphone. But maybe you’re interested in reducing your smartphone usage. Maybe, you want to be more present in your life, or find a way out of the hole that is your social media feed. Maybe you want to feel good in real life, not just on Instagram. Maybe you know that you want to make a change.

Well, I’m here for you. Here’s the first step to figuring out what change can be made that feels authentic to you.

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How do you catch a cab in an unfamiliar city?

by Mike Pumphrey · May 2, 2019

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?

Your motto is: Be prepared

by Mike Pumphrey · Apr 25, 2019

Is anyone familiar with Tom Lehrer? He’s the humorous pianist from the 50’s and 60’s who wrote such racy (for the time) classics such as “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” and “The Masochism Tango”.

(Let us let out a small sigh for a time when songs such as the above were considered risqué.)

One of his other, less well known songs was a salute (of sorts) to the Boy Scouts, in the song “Be Prepared”. Witness:

Be prepared! That's the Boy Scouts' solemn creed
 Be prepared! And be clean in word and deed
 Don't solicit for your sister, that's not nice
 Unless you get a good percentage of her price
 Be prepared! And be careful not to do
 Your good deeds when there's no one watching you

I confess that I can’t think of the phrase “be prepared” without thinking of the (now re-titled) Scouts, and I can’t think of the Scouts without thinking of Tom Lehrer.

And it turns out that a tenet of right-sizing your relationship to technology, whether on not you’ve gone full smartphone-free, involves preparation.

So let’s talk about what it means to be prepared, and how it reduce your reliance on technology and help you be more present.

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What you need to know about the phase-out of 2G/3G networks

by Mike Pumphrey · Apr 18, 2019

I once read an article about an old iPad Mini, one that was slowly dying, and the author’s grudging acceptance of it.

It wasn’t that the iPad was dying, it was that the whole system upon which it depends had broken down. Unlike an old camera, or even an old computer, it required servers from the outside world to function:

A pristine iPad from the same era, forgotten in a storeroom and never touched, would be equally useless. The moment it came online, it would demand to be updated; as soon as it was, it would find itself in the same grim predicament as my device, which has been at work for half a decade.

Digital death is a problem that we haven’t faced up to. If you doubt this, try opening a file you created 10, 20, or even 30 years ago.

While corded phone technology has basically not changed in anyone’s lifetime, mobile phones are not so fortunate. And phones made less than a decade ago, some of them just will not work anymore.

Why? Because the networks on which they depend have been shut down.

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What to do when your feature phone dies

by Mike Pumphrey · Apr 4, 2019

A few days ago, my trusty Samsung t159, a feature phone built in 2012, died.

It still turned on, but all the buttons save for the power button stopped working. I could see that I was receiving text and phone calls, but I could do nothing about it.

For some situations, when a thing breaks, you go out and just buy a new thing. Broken fridge broken? Go to your local appliance store. Broken TV? Go to Best Buy. Broken limb? You need Lea Press-on Limbs.

But if you’re someone who doesn’t have a smartphone, it’s a little harder. Non-smartphones are hard to find. My local T-Mobile store has a grand total of zero of them on display.

So what is to be done?

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