I am a similar age to Geohot and I have tried to escape smartphones to a dumb phone. It didn’t work. So many things that used to work without a smartphone don’t anymore and people don’t realize it.

• Surface parking in my city is all by QR code. Where there are machines, they are broken because no one cares.

• Social groups are on iMessage or RCS. RCS is not nearly as backwards compatible with MMS as it seems and you WILL get dropped silently, eventually.

• Some restaurants literally don’t have print menus (they’re expensive! QR codes are cheap!).

• Rideshare, bike rentals, etc. are all dependent on apps. Taxis are not reliable or available.

The list of tiny cuts goes on and on. When you have a smartphone you don’t realize the affordances that made it possible to be without them are disappearing.

I’m sure you can do it in a smaller place but you have to be dedicated and willing to suffer in a city.

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swiftcoder 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Similar age as well, and damn, if I could actually convince my bank to let me approve transactions with a dumbphone... The reality is just that a significant part of the modern world is contingent on carrying around a brand-name smartphone

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fsflover 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>So many things that used to work without a smartphone don’t anymore and people don’t realize it.

Have you considered using a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone)? There is no dependence on a megacorp and QR codes work fine. Some services might redirect you to a web app if you show them such phone.

	▲	handedness 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		A committed Windows user who just noted they depend on iMessages probably isn't a great prospect for your proselytizing, anyway: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38855086 I've previously tried living out of a PinePhone Pro, and if those web apps require much JS at all they're going to be in for a bad time. By benchmarks and your previous accounts, it sounds like the Librem 5 is only going to be worse from there. But you nod towards a useful point there at the end. I've found I don't need to present ancient hardware to get some entities to provide web apps or other means, I just say something handwavy about my phone being locked down by my employer's IT policy, neglecting to mention that I'm my employer. Bigger orgs aren't worth bothering with, though. You could show an airline an employee a flip phone and they aren't going to have any flexibility on the matter.