I've been using a Sonim XP3 flip phone since February 2025 and I love it. It's so freeing to not have social media always accessible at all times. I've downloaded all 850 songs on my Spotify playlist as .mp3 format and play them using the built-in music app. When I need to navigate somewhere, I drive there from memory or consult the atlas of my city that I keep in the passenger door of my car. I've gotten pretty good at T9 predictive text typing and can text people at about half the speed that I would on a smartphone.

I don't like modern smartphones precisely because of their so-called conveniences. Because they're so easy to access, we're pushed into delegating to them as if they're a part of ourselves. If you have a smartphone, you'll never learn the streets of your city, because it's easier to use GPS all the time. You'll never get good at mental math, because you can just use your calculator. You'll remember less things because if you ever need to know something you can just take out your phone and Google it (this is an actual psychological phenomenon). And because social media is just a couple taps away, you'll spend hours every day trapped in an addictive algorithmic hell that leaves you bored and dissatisfied. Smartphones turn us into shells of ourselves, no longer living our own lives because it's easier not to.

Getting a flip phone doesn't make doing the things you used to do impossible. If you really want to do something that requires a smartphone, you can get a friend to do it for you, or take out your laptop. Everything is still possible, it's just a little bit more inconvenient, and that feeling of inconvenience, that tiny barrier to entry that smartphones do everything to eliminate, is what pushes your brain to be human, to learn how to do things so you don't have to rely on a device, to spend less time on social media.

> This sounds smart and could 100% be something I would say too, but it is not true at all. People benefit greatly from phones (and in some sense, social media). The way to test it is to give up phones for some time.

I know quite a lot of people who gave up their mobile phone for some time, and their experience was very positive. For all of the applications, you can find better alternatives.

I have spent 2025 only taking my phone out of my sock drawer if I am going somewhere I don't know how to navigate to without GPS. It's fine. The biggest things I missed were not having a camera, which I remedied by buying a point and shoot which is much nicer anyways, and not having a clock, which I remedied with a watch.