Gadgetory

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 punk'd 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 clients now because of the thickness a lot of people thought it had two slide-out keyboard which it doesn't but it does have a two and a half inch touchscreen that's fully functional and back to those two truths in the line 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% of my battery at 83% it told me I only had four 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 has a 2 megapixel camera in the back and runs on no key is proprietary OS it comes with the classic 2002 erik skeleton Krew apps like a calculator a calendar and obviously snake unlike the jelly it has pretty good battery life about 6 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 free 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 minimalist phones you might want to check out punked MPO one phone Punk means period or stop in German and it's a swiss company that makes minimalist products a lot of times when people see that MPL one for the first time they think it looks like a calculator but I kind of actually liked the design it comes in three colors brown black and white it's four and a half inches tall it has Gorilla Glass and a 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 them 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 email ins an inbox sent draft etc which is really confusing and kind of a pain in the 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 which makes MPO once 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 cost $150 and literally only does one thing and that's make phone calls new phones try to dazzle you with big bright displays and bezel 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 need it 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 whether people would really be interested in such a minimal device and apparently they are and 2018 the company announced light phone - a 4G version that would have 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 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