we've had smartphones for about 10 years
but between all the social media
networks notifications but a sense that
they're starting to take over our lives
now I have an iPhone 6 and it's a pretty
good phone the problem is I spend a lot
of time on it going through Twitter
Instagram and whatever else so to help
me deal with my iPhone addiction I
decided to play around some more
minimalist phones that includes the unit
Hertz jelly the Nokia 3310 the Punkt MPO
one and the light phone I'm gonna head
to brokens Prospect Park to see how
disconnected I can get this is the jelly
a tiny little Android smartphone unit
Hertz the creators call it impossibly
small amazingly cute and totally
functional only two of those things are
true but I'm kind of getting ahead of
myself first thing you'll notice about
the jelly is just how small it is at
three-and-a-half inches in length it
fits into the palm of my hand it cost
$125 runs on android 7 has a 1.1
gigahertz processor and has front and
rear facing cameras that are 8 and 2
megapixels which isn't that great the
phone runs on 4G network and has dual
SIM cards now because of the thickness a
lot of people thought it had a slide-out
keyboard which it doesn't but it does
have a 2 and a half inch touchscreen
that's fully functional and back to
those 2 truths in a lot
now the jelly is impossibly small and
amazingly cute and there's just
something cool about having the full
functionality of a smartphone in such a
small package scrolling through an
Instagram live video on such a tiny
screen is just kind of fun and if you
want to disconnect there's a purpose for
the smallness with the screen so small
it adds a level of friction that we're
not typically used to so I found myself
reading less and actually just pulling
my phone out less entirely but the
jelly's small size actually threatens
its functionality using the jelly's
thimble sized keyboard was almost
impossible and I kept making tons of
mistakes in the end I started texting
less because I wanted to make less typos
the jelly's other big drawback is
battery life downloading just a few apps
made my phone hot and I lost almost 20
percent of my battery at 83% it told me
I only had 4 hours of life left which
meant that I had to carry on this huge
battery pack all day long just to make
it through the day and if you want to
use the phone less maybe that's not such
a bad thing
but if you really want to disconnect you
might want to ditch your smartphone for
a feature phone nokia 3310 is one of the
most iconic and popular phones of all
time and in 2017 the company re-released
it as part of its nostalgia driven
marketing push now the new phone
benefits from a larger color screen and
a more bubbly design than its break like
predecessor as a 2 megapixel camera in
the back and runs on Nokia's proprietary
OS it comes with the classic 2002 Erich
skeleton Krew apps like a calculator a
calendar and obviously snake unlike the
jelly it has pretty good battery life
about six and a half hours of talktime
and 650 hours of standby time and it's
cheap you can get one for 60 bucks
you'll notice the home screen has a
couple of new additions including a
Facebook and Twitter button but open
them up and you get stuck in a Kia's
weird web client that you have to
navigate with the clunky directional pad
it's so hard to use that eventually I
just gave up and maybe if you're trying
to disconnect that's not really a
problem moving order the Nokia also
comes with another big shift and that's
going from a full keyboard to t9 and if
you're like me you haven't used t9 in a
while and take some getting used to it
can definitely be clunky but if you're
trying to text less it works
t9 nning is too slow to text bomb and
eventually might just stop texting all
together
if you really want to get intentional
about minimus phones you might want to
check out Punk'd MP oh one phone Punk
means period or stop in German and it's
a Swiss company that makes minimalist
products a lot of times and people see
that in p1 for the first time they think
it looks like a calculator but I kind of
actually like the design it comes in
three colors brown black and white it's
four and a half inches tall
it has Gorilla Glass and the fiberglass
reinforced body so it feels sturdy in
the hand navigating the phone is
actually pretty easy
because it only does two things and it
has buttons to navigate towards him and
that's texting and calling the only
hitch is that it costs two hundred
thirty dollars which is a lot for a
phone that only does two things and of
those two things it doesn't do one of
them very well and that's texting so
most phones when you text they create a
thread but the MPO one actually breaks
it up like emailing an inbox sent draft
etc which is really confusing and kind
of a pain and ass and the phone did a
pretty bad job of capitalizing my
sentences when I text which is really
pretty basic stuff it kind of feels like
the perfect phone for somebody who can
afford to hire someone else to take care
of the rest of their lives oh and did I
mention that it only runs on the 2g
network and t-mobile is one of the few
carriers that still supports 2g in the
US and they're gonna phase it out by
2020 all of which makes MPO ones claimed
that the Punk'd is a timeless device
feel kind of empty
if there's one phone that really
represents the minimalist phone movement
it's the light phone a business card
sized device that you can either
tethered to your phone or use
independently it costs $150 and it
literally only does one thing and that's
make phone calls new phones try to
dazzle you with big bright displays and
bezels design but not the light phone
the light phone really doesn't want any
of your attention it's a beautiful
device and a lot of people I showed it
to didn't even believe that worked but
it works exactly as advertised and there
was something freeing knowing that I
could leave the house just with this and
reach somebody if I'd really needed to
at least I hope I could because if I'm
being honest people don't really pick up
their phones anymore I mean I make one
phone call a day maybe but I'm texting
all the time either through messenger or
slack or Twitter and that makes the
light phone feel like an experiment more
than a viable product an effort to gauge
other people would really be interested
in such a minimal device and apparently
they are in 2018 the company announced
light phone to a 4G version that would
have a ink display a full keyboard and
possibly even some features like maps
and music but loading smartphone
features onto such a minimal device is
probably going to have problems of its
own
[Music]
I spent a lot of time with these phones
over the last couple weeks and what I've
realized is that I don't really want a
phone that limits my communication or
one that makes me make more phone calls
and 20:18 a lot of our communication
happens over text and I don't really
think that's such a bad thing but I
don't really need as all the social
media networks all the notifications a
short battery life and the bezel is
screened that's what kind of makes
phones overwhelming not a text from my
mom or a friend what I really want is a
smart phone functionality stripped of
all the gizmos unfortunately a lot of
these minimalist phones throughout the
texting baby with the social media
bathwater so until they figure that out
I'm just going to delete my social media
apps and keep my iPhone voxcom has a
video that explains how addictive
smartphones could be click here to watch
it and find out how necessary a
minimalist phone could be for you