Looking at the Unihertz Jelly 2E
Another phone I've been looking at to help reduce my smartphone use is the Unihertz Jelly 2e.
It's small. Very small. Extremely small. Its dimensions are 95 × 49.4 × 16.5 mm. It has a 3-inch screen! And it would make messaging, social media, video viewing a pain, which is what I want. But it would still give me access to the apps and basic functionality I need, especially when I'm traveling.
I work from home and most of the time I think I could get by with a “dumphone”. But I traveled for work earlier this year and having a smartphone was practically essential. With some serious planning and preparation I might still be able to get by with a dumbphone while traveling, but with the world increasingly revolving around smartphones, some things can be difficult to do without one. Like using rideshare services, finding specific locations and getting directions to them, etc.
In fact, I have a specific example from this work trip of how my smartphone came in handy and perhaps even prevented me from missing a flight. The A and B terminals are long at the Salt Lake City airport. They sit on either side of the tarmac and there is a long underground tunnel that connects them.
I always arrive early to give myself time to get through security and find the gate and initially my departure gate was at the far end of the A. But the gate changed. I got a notification through the airline app notifying me of the change – the gate was now at the opposite end of the A terminal. There was no audible announcement about the change. Without the app notification, how long would I have been sitting there before I noticed the flight and city had changed on the display at the gate?
I walked all the way to the other end of the terminal to my new gate. But soon, I received another notification that the departure gate had been changed again. This time, it was at the opposite end of the B terminal, which required walking back to the midway point of the A terminal, taking the underground tunnel to the other side of the tarmac, and then walking to the end of the B terminal to the new gate. Again, there was no audible announcement of the change. How long would I have been waiting before I noticed the gate had been changed again?
Like it or not, the default assumption today is that everyone has a smartphone. The world is catering less and less to people who don't use them.
So maybe instead of going for a “dumbphone”, I could go for a smartphone that is different from your average phablet. A phone that makes me want to use it as little as possible, but still has all the functionality I need.
The Jelly 2E just might be that phone. And at the current price of $160 USD, it's not a huge risk to try it out.
#100DaysToOffload (No. 80) #tech #intentionism