Life Without A Smartphone

It’s fine

indi.ca
4 min readJun 24, 2020

I’ve always been an early adopter, and the latest thing is opting out. I haven’t used a smartphone for over a month now.

It was weird at first (and terribly annoying for my wife), but I’ve gotten used to it. I dunno if she has. She married me 🤷🏾‍♂️.

The Bananaphone

My phone is a $50 Nokia 8810 4G, pictured above. This thing has modern technology, just stuffed into a banana. Technically, I can use the web, email, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Google Assistant. In practice, however, it’s like digging a hole with a banana. You could do, but why?

I never realized the power of touchscreens until I didn’t have one. Steve Jobs's most vital act of creative destruction was getting rid of keys. As he said, buttons and controls can’t change. It doesn’t matter that this Bananaphone is stuffed with 2015 tech. The buttons keep it stuck in 1999.

For my purposes, this is fine. I remember 1999 and all I really wanted was to not be lost and remember when my classes were. Google Maps and Calendar both work fine. I can use Google Assistant to look up a phone number.

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indi.ca

Indrajit (Indi) Samarajiva is a Sri Lankan writer. Follow me at www.indi.ca, or just email me at indi@indi.ca.