The smart phone is a presence in my life that continues to eat brainpower and sap my focus. I have owned several phones before they were "smart" and can remember holding the first android phone the year it released. Pocket computers while rare, were nothing new by then. My father owned a palm pilot pda and my mother owned a blackberry. The problem with modern smart phones is that they have evolved into digital dopamine slot machines. Long before tiktok and snapchat I recognized the mind cancer that was social media after seeing all my conversations on facebook devolve into dribbling vomit and decided to delete those accounts. I have never looked back and will never join social media services. There are other better tools out there to keep in contact with people you actually care about and if you actually care about someone, you would't need facebook to keep in contact with them. I am getting off topic.
The promise of the smart phone is a good one. A pocket computer so powerful it can do everything any other computer would do for you. Think about it, many smart phones are just as, if not more powerful than laptops from 10 years ago. But the smart phone has been coopted by the companies that make them to put you inside of a never ending scroll wheel for their profit. I argue that the smart phone, while it has been absolutely instrumental in the creation of new good technologies, and fulfills many useful roles like 2fA, largely the smartphone is a drain on you and society and despite doing all these things, doesn't actually function as a computer, the way technologists of the previous century thought it would.
The smart phone never fultiled its promise.
But that doesn't mean that it can't. Smart phones have in their own way become a cornerstone of peoples life. And I don't want to understate their usefulness. access to navigation, medical info, cloud storage, cameras, banking, knowledge, etc. these are all great things for people. But they can do more, we should expect more of our smart phones. And for the first time in August of 2024 I think we've finally reached a point where smart phones can begin to supplant the laptop.
You see my problem with the smart phone was that it's use was also in addition to other computers. So as a result I have been running a series of experiments to see what the proper use of this technology is for me. I tried to go back to "dumb" phones. And only use a laptop, after all I don't use social media. But I found that the times I didn't have access to my email even though rare, ended up costing me hours of my time to go home and print a document or whatever. Not having the ability to pay people on site made going to garage sales or buying and selling things online almost impossible. Many people don't accept cash anymore. Also most dumb phones are built like absolute trash with software even worse. true t9 is almost no where to be found on these devices making them basically unusable.
I then tried to use a unihertz jelly. A super tiny smart phone so I could still use authenticators, I could still pay people if needed and still use email etc but it caused almost no temptation to use for videos or wasting time because the screen was too small. I also finally learned how to use the adb bridge and setup termux properly. There was one other thing I found. I would carry my laptop with me almost everywhere because I needed to use it for reading documentation. or I wanted to read an ebook, or download a video for archiving off of youtube. So I ended up being on a computer most of the time anyway. now I had to manage two of them. I don't use google's proprietary software for a lot of things so I had to sync notes and documents between them. and this was worse when I started trying to manage scripts between termux and a linux install. switching headphone was a pain among lot's of other issues. So that experiment failed.
So I am trying a new one. I'm back on a normal smart phone but I want to try and use it for everything. Until now most phones didn't have a way to run in desktop mode but now in 2024 desktop mode on pixel phone starting with the pixel 8 is supported. I'm aware of samsung DEX, which is impressive to be sure, but in the USA it is not possible to unlock the bootloader and root a samsung device. Which is a non-negotiable requirment for reasons i'll get to in a moment.
For most people, the walled garden of ios or android is good enough. I am not most people, I've been using computers since I was in my single digits. My chosen operating system is linux and spend more time in vim than almost any other program on my computer. My point is that I need a real open computer with admin access otherwise it simply won't work. With root access it is possible to install a full, unrestricted debian amd64 operating system using chroot, next to a running android instance (not proot, proot is a joke). with desktop mode on pixel, it is possible to run a full screen desktop view through vnc into my linux install and control it with a mouse and keyboard, and poof, the smart phone can finally realize it's full potential. Almost all packages in linux are compiled in amd and x86 versions so I will not be missing out on package support.
Will this work in the long run? I don't know but I think it might. If it does, that means I would simplify my life and gain more functionality, plus all my old phones could live on forever as little server machines performing jobs for me. A wonderful afterlife for a device that would otherwise just poison the earth when it has outlasted it's usefulness.
This was kind of a ramble as I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to say. I just want to point out that it's ok to try something like switching off of smart phones and go back later, it doesn't mean you failed or relapsed. I'd argue that through the process you learned something. My goal is to learn the proper way to incorporate technology into my life and if that meants using a smart phone, that's fine. Not having one doesn't work for me, but that doesn't mean I need to accept the bad with the good.
Once i've got a working system I will post an update with pictures.
