My Search for a Phone

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My father likes to say, regarding life in general, that "you can have what you want, but you cannot have everything you want". Over the past few years, I've discovered how radically true this statement is when it comes to phones. I've been experimenting periodically with new devices to try to find one that checks all of my boxes, so to speak, and have come up short every time. After my most recent failure, I am feeling inspired to write a little bit about it.

Without relating my entire history with phones, suffice it to say that I was a late adopter of the whole "smart" phone thing. I used the same feature phone through my teens and early twenties. I got my first smartphone in late 2016. During that whole period, I can only recall two times when I found myself wishing that I had a smartphone. Both times were due exclusively to poor planning on my part, and I was able to resolve both situations with a little social engineering, but technically a smartphone would've avoided them both.

For the first two years or so after getting a smartphone, nothing really changed. But, over time, I noticed I was gradually spending more and more time on my phone. It wasn't terrible in the way that I know some people's phone addictions are; I've never really been on social media [1] which helped a lot. But over the years I have spent more and more time watching YouTube (and, more recently, scrolling on Reddit and Hacker News). During the COVID lock-downs, this spiked in a big way, and when I went back to graduate school for my PhD two years ago, I started noticing that it was negatively affecting my performance. So, something had to give.

A little over a year ago, I decided to ditch my smartphone and return to the world of feature phones. I suppose they're usually called "dumbphones" now, but all the devices I am about to discuss technically run Android, so we'll stick to the feature phone designation.

First, after some tinkering, I decided that I really liked flip phones. From the moment I held my first flip phone in my hand last year, I knew that it was the form-factor for me. Unfortunately, this fixation on flip phones greatly limits my options. There aren't many decent options on the market right now, and most of the more boutique feature phones, like the Punkt or Lightphone, aren't flip phones.

The phone that I ultimately settled on was a Sunbeam F1 Orchid. I've been using this phone for over a year now, and have very few complaints. It does almost everything that I need: calls, texting, music, checking the weather. However, the switch-over hasn't substantively fixed any of the problems that I initially set out to address. I never had a problem with being glued to my phone out in the world; my big issue is wasting time when I'm at home. And I need to keep my (now SIMless) smartphone around because of the one thing that my F1 does not support: Signal.

I don't text very often, so it hasn't been a significant practical problem. I can check Signal when I'm at home, and people know to either text, call, or email me during the day if they really need to reach me. But it means that I need to keep an Android device around my apartment. So, practically speaking, the dumbphone experiment hasn't addressed any of my YouTube problems [2].

Because of this, I decided recently to try again. There are flip phones that can run Signal, after all. First, I tried the cheapest option: a TCL Flip 2. It will technically run Signal, but doing so requires rooting it first. After staring for a moment at the sketchy software I had to run to unlock it, and then the unmaintained, modified OS I had to flash, I decided that jumping through all of these hoops to run Signal would probably be worse for my security than not running it at all. So that was an unfortunate bust.

A few weeks later, I ordered a Kyocera DuraXV Extreme, which has been my most recent attempt and the one that has inspired me to write this post. Unlike the TCL Flip 2, getting Signal installed and set up on this phone was a breeze, and didn't require rooting the device. And there are a few things about the Kyocera that I like better than my F1 even without considering Signal. But, having tinkered with it for a day, I started to think that I'd go running back to my F1 anyway; Signal be damned.

The benefits (at least to me) of the Kyocera over the F1 are,

But, unfortunately, it isn't a clear victory. The Sunbeam F1 has a few benefits too, And, most significantly, the Kyocera feels really bad in the hand. It's clunky, and using it feels clunky. I was amazed to find myself inclined to drop it and go back to the F1 largely on the basis of "feel", but that is more-or-less where I found myself.

A size comparison of the Kyocera and Orchid. The Kyocera is a lot thicker.

To be clear: the Kyocera is intentionally clunky. It's a rugged phone, and far more robust than the F1. The F1 isn't rated for water or dust resistance, has a far weaker hinge, etc. But, let's be realistic, I'm a programmer and an academic; my phone doesn't have to survive a job site, just a desk. After over a year of general use, my F1 has held up just fine.

Then, after a few days of using the Kyocera, I realized that I wasn't getting my text messages delivered for some reason. I'm not going to hold this against the phone, it was probably a software or setup problem of some kind that was perfectly resolvable. But, just to be safe, I swapped my SIM card back the my Orchid. And that sealed the Kyocera's fate. I'd gotten used to it and stopped thinking about my complaints regarding its clunkiness. But as soon as I held my Orchid in my hand I felt an overwhelming sense of comfort and relief; I was so happy to be using it again. The Kyocera is getting sent back.

Which leaves me about where I started. Overall, I'm very happy with the Sunbeam--the only real negative is the lack of Signal. For now, I suppose I'm willing to live with it. As an attempt to work around the smartphone problem, I've transitioned mostly to Signal Desktop on my Debian machine, stashed my smartphone in a drawer, and have completely disabled wifi in my apartment. We'll see how that works out.

[1]: I have periodically had a Facebook account, but I've never really used it from my phone; I always signed in from a computer.

[2]: One might well ask, "does ditching a smartphone actually solve the problem if you can simply watch on a computer?" Given the fact that my issue is largely time spent at home anyway, that's a fair question. All I can really say is that using a computer feels different. For the most part, a smartphone is a consumptive device, whereas a computer has significantly more capability for creation. If I'm glued to a smartphone, all I can really do is continue to consume. Whereas on a computer, there's so much more I can do. I find that I don't get locked into massive binges on computers, because my code or writing is always a few keystrokes away. As soon as my attention drifts, I can quickly and seamlessly transition to doing something more productive. A smartphone doesn't let you do that; it more-or-less traps you into watching/scrolling/etc., because that's really all it is capable of.