Thoughts and Stuff
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Could You Live Without Your Phone?
I was eventually going to run on near empty if I wrote everyday. Hehe. Anyway, it’s 11.21 pm and I’ll beat the deadline.
If you’ve been here a while, you must remember my many posts about my Samsung phones. Well, I can tell you now, without mincing my words, that I’ll never buy a Samsung phone again, for myself. I added that part because I just bought one for my dad. He insisted he only trusts Samsung, now that he doesn’t have his beloved Nokia choice. Oh well. At least I got to be offered a drink at that Samsung shop near Lifestyle. Lol.
Now, what made me change my mind, you ask? Hadn’t I loved Shindroid 2.1 so much I couldn’t wait to blog about it? I did. I loved it, I did. For many months, until I upgraded to lollipop and everything started tumbling down. First, I’d charge my phone, sleep and in the morning, it was making low battery sounds. I was like, wait a second, what am I missing? It took me a few weeks to realize what was happening. It would die at all the wrong times. During a trip, especially. I decided to ignore the fact. Pretty soon, the torch could not turn on when I needed it. Shortly after, whenever I took a picture with flash, it would make a weird cracking noise and shut down. Nothing I did would turn it on, nothing but removing the battery. Argh.
I was fed up. I Googled downgrading to KitKat. It was too much work and even though I downloaded those softwares required for the process, I never followed through. I endured the annoying shutdowns until I decided to try another battery. My bro got me one. It kinda improved the situation but not really. It was time to get phone guy into the process. He installed CyanogenMod on Shindroid and it was like having a whole new phone all over again. I almost rejoiced. Not that I don’t like the features, but phone still shuts down when it wants. I don’t even care about it anymore now. I toyed with the idea of a Nexus or even an iPhone. I did. No! Shiku! You say. But seriously, if the people with these phones don’t suffer like me, then why not, right?
I have even toyed with the idea of being phoneless. Sometimes it dies and I don’t bother turning it on. I don’t feel a thing. There’s a time I would probably have bitten my nails off if that happened. Lakini think about it. What’s the point of all these gadgets if they keep depressing you? If you have to keep walking around the house because someone on the other end can’t hear you. If you can’t send a Slack message successfully on data because it sucks. If you cannot do anything when you need to because the battery lasts for two seconds alive. If you can’t play wma files on the new OS. If you can’t take a picture with flash. If you have to buy a hundred covers to keep the screen and camera intact. If it just makes you depressed, what’s the point? Is it not better to just stick with a Nokia as my dad has very happily demonstrated?
Would you live one day without your phone and still feel complete? You know, like back in the day when owning a landline was a luxury? Would you live apart from it for a week? Could you?
I normally just put it in flight mood sometimes for a day or two but not shut down now that will mean to go a day without music, not going to happen.
Ha! Beautiful excuse!
Haha call it an excuse but it’s true
A day it’s possible.. A week don’t think it can work it’s basically being cut off from the world… But can do a week without Internet with no much stress
From the world. Lol. I like that part.
Short story: Two weeks ago, I gathered I was using the phone too much. So, I installed one of those productivity Apps that turn your WiFi/data off if you use the phone for x minutes. And they pop a screen when You look at your phone for x minutes. It was my first rehabilitation step….but it irritated me so much, I uninstalled the damn thing.
Then I turned my phone off and switched to Kabambe for a day…. And I still got myself playing Snake and Sudoku most part of the day.
I am a slave. I need help, and to answer your question, I can’t.
The first step is acceptance. ?
LOL!
Acceptance is the first step though, like Shiku has said 🙂
Phones,especially smartphone are running our lives…I mean just think about how easy it makes everything…from payments,getting news,communicating with friends oceans apart,watching cat videos(yes,I do that),ordering takeout,Getting an uber,getting traffic updates, flight info….e.t.c…the list is endless.The thought of being offline for more than a week is just madness I guess ….(typed using phone) 😀
Life was so much harder without them, right? I hope I at least managed to leave a hint of sarcasm in there. 😛
I noticed whilst many will say you can increase productivity from a phone, reality is we don’t. Rather for most of the people most of the time unless you decide to.
Most of the content creators, manufacturers and all are directing all traffic towards mobile. This his gives wider reach at an instant. However, more and more people keep using less than say 5%of the total apps they have on their device daily. So while you may get a pdf of a book on your phone, you’d hardly read as often as you would your timeline.
Glad you used slack in the example, but you’d have been more realistic and say telegram;read people’s tweets, tweet yourself etc etc.
I realized this, that often I’m worried about people in a virtual world who aren’t worried if my phone is on or off.
Since the realization, nope for me. Earlier I would have been worried if my phone went off for even a single second.
I agree. Phones do not increase productivity in this day and age. But that’s debatable. Also, how exactly would it be realistic if I don’t struggle with Twitter but I struggle with Slack? Slack happens to be a heavier app, relies on a more crisp connection.
Samsung is the worst. I tell that to whoever can listen. But sorry for your troubles. May I suggest Sony? Xperia has been working great for me so far. Few complaints but those are design problems not functionality ones.
I can live without my phone.
Hmmm… Yes you may. Nitakuona kando for specifics.