smartsizing blog

It's dumb to get a dumbphone when you can do this...

TL/DR If you want to smartsize your life easily without the hassle of jailbreaking or rooting and installing GrapheneOS* yourself, buy a Pixel 4a, a Fairphone running eOS, a Murena phone or a Brax phone (or he can to de-Google your phone).

It's hard not to notice a plethora of influenzers promoting the dumbphone- The idea that we are too weak-willed to handle the cocaine of scrolling text on a screen

My own thoughts about dumb phones > smartphones are here (eg battery life, one-touch phonecall recording) but I would add it's a waste of money to get a top-of-the-range smartphone unless someone else (eg an employer) is buying it.

• It must either run eOS from the get-go - ie a Murena device or be abe to easily install it (eg Graphene OS on Google Pixels)
• It should have a removeable battery
• Preferably have expandable storage or at least 128Gb internal
• Actual call quality should be good
• dual SIM (not eSIM) a plus

Having all these attributes is the Holy Grail of mobile phones for a smartsizer such as myself. The Google Pixel 4a is not perfect. It is not true dual SIM phone but single physical SIM slot with an additional eSIM option. It has internal 128Gb storage but with no expandable microSD slot. It does not have a removeable battery. For these options one could opt for a Murena phone above or an expensive Fairphone - but the later Fairphones are 5G and don't have a headphone jack while the
Pixel 4a does. Meanwhile some of the Murena phones have non-easy-removeable batteries. One downside of the Fairphones and Murena phones is that they are not a load of third party accessories for them. Fairphones are already expensive and if you want a cover etc you must buy from Fairphone which isn't cheap (cases are £35 - screen protectors are £30) whereas a tough case (with ring holder) AND screen protector for my Pixel ran to just £11 on Amazon compared to £65 for the equivalent for a Fairphone. You may be saving the planet but you ain't doing much for your pocketbook...

The Fairphone does have other smartsize advantages though - the prime one being easy to repair - a 10/10 iFixit repair score and a resounding endorsement here from teardown repair guru Hugh Jeffreys. (The one criticism being the aforementioned lack of headphone jack on newer models). It is certainly not my intention to berate the Fairphone or indeed Murena phones (which are cheaper and also have hotswap battery options). Fairphone has a stated aim of being more eco-friendly and repairable. As a relative startup, they do not enjoy the economies of scale that a company such as Samsung has. Over the longterm owning a Fairphone may be cheaper if it lasts longer, camera modules can be easily upgraded, batteries swapped easily enough.

Another option is a Braxphone - or he can de-Google your phone - details here.

Getting back to the likes of Punkt phones etc, 'smarttech' as they like to call themselves - it just seems a piece of clever marketing to sell what is essentially an expensive, quirky 'dumb phone' - something one can already turn a cheap 'smart' phone into, including greyscaling the display. It makes even less sense to smartsizers to have a dumbphone equipped with WhatsApp messaging, Facebook etc as with the Nokia Flipphone seen here. What is the point? For the messaging apps? The reason I like the Pixel 4a specifically is that the screen isn't that big and isn't that bright. It's not the type of device one wants to spend hours using for social media. It is handily pocket-sized yet large enough to be usable. It's a sweetspot phone.

There are already a load of things one can do to cut down on smartphone usage. Buying a phone with a smaller screen I've already mentioned. Delete antisocialmedia from your life. If you require social media presence at least access it via a laptop or desktop not a phone. So, uninstall these phone apps, especially Facebook and Twitter. Have Do Not Disturb sessions when needing to get something done. Especially have 'offline' Do Not Disturb time at night from say 8pm-8am. I have a housephone, a landline. In emergencies people know they can reach me there.

Essentially these new 'smart dumbphones' are just the latest objects for
bugmen to fetishize. Remember, even an arch anti-smartphoner such as Luke Smith doesn't run a 'dumbphone' but a deGoogled smartphone. He just leaves it at home mostly, occasionally using it for video streaming or when travelling. Luke (and I) admit that Google maps are useful and sometimes better than the alternatives -"all that spying has its uses sometimes!". Maps - particularly aided by GPS for driving - are one of the few genuinely useful features of smartphones. I still don't have Google maps though - I muddle through with the de-Googled Maps app on eOS. It's good enough for me and I'm happy with that compromise. [Update: 2024 I now mostly use OsmAnd+ on a deGoogled GrapheneOS Pixel 7a ]

UPDATE *It is now relatively easy to install GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel phone using a web-based interface.