About

Why I switched

My son was born in 2020 and my daughter in 2022, and somewhere in there I noticed that I was checking messages, likes and email constantly, and that a lot of the moments I thought I was capturing I wasn't actually in. I was taking photos of my kids more than I was looking at them. Those blink-and-you'll-miss-them years were going by on the other side of a screen.

So I bought a Light Phone II. It was one of the better decisions I've made. The first weeks were strange: long runs with no music, waiting rooms with nothing to look at, standing at the stove with just my own thoughts. Then it got good. I picked 35mm film photography back up. I read more and wrote more. The runs without headphones turned into something close to meditation. The phone wasn't really the point. The space it gave back was.

Since then

A few years and a lot of phones later, I've used most of what's in the database at one time or another. Right now my daily setup is the dumb.co Dumbphone 2 paired with an iPhone Air that stays home or in a bag for the handful of things that still need an app. I'm not a purist about it. Some weeks the iPhone wins. The goal was never to prove a point; it was to be around for my kids and to get my attention back, and a second, dumber phone does that for me most days.

Why a website

When I first went looking for a dumbphone, the information was scattered across Reddit threads, YouTube reviews and manufacturer pages that never mention what doesn't work. Jose Briones' Dumbphone Finder was, and still is, the best resource out there, and this site owes it a lot. But I wanted a place that treated the phone as one part of a bigger change: what to read, what to do with the evenings, what the research actually says, and what to try if you're not ready to give the smartphone up.

So that's this. A database I keep by hand, a reading list, and some notes from a few years of living this way. In 2023 I wrote an essay about the switch, and a lot of this site grew out of it.

The ideas underneath

Two movements shaped how I think about this. The Slow movement, which grew out of Carlo Petrini's 1986 protest against a McDonald's opening at the Spanish Steps in Rome, argues for doing fewer things at a pace where you can actually taste them. Essentialism, Greg McKeown's name for the disciplined pursuit of less, argues for cutting the trivial many to make room for the vital few. A dumbphone is a small, physical way to practice both. It forces you to decide what you actually need from the thing in your pocket.

Privacy is part of it too. A phone that can't run apps collects a great deal less about you, and that's a quieter kind of freedom that I've come to value more each year.

How I keep the data honest

Every phone in the database has a list of sources and a last-checked date. Where I couldn't confirm a spec from the manufacturer, the field says unknown rather than guessing. Prices drift, and I fix them when I notice. Nothing here is sponsored, and the book links are plain Bookshop.org links with no referral tag. If you spot an error, or you make a phone that should be listed, email me at hello@theluddite.club.

Jason