Dumbing down – the finale

“What happened was…”  by James Ormiston (@MacJim)

If you’ve been following my journey from smartphones to dumb phones, you will have read that all wasn’t smooth in that process: here’s the final instalment to the story.
For those that haven’t read the previous two parts to this report, I will just say I had been wanting to move away from smartphones to something much simpler, quieter, and less demanding, but finding a mobile phone that would suit my needs was difficult; but not totally impossible. I ended up buying a Punkt MP02 mobile phone, a simple and small basic phone that had the ability to be used as a mobile router for my iPad and MacBook via tethering but I ended up returning it.

Why? It was due to the fact that I couldn’t get onto the web etc via the tethering feature of this mobile phone. Although I linked my iPad to the MP02, I just couldn’t get online…

As I write this final part, I’m awaiting a refund from the supplier as it was returned to Germany from whence it came.

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How my Punkt MP02 experiment panned out

Another commentary by James Ormiston (@MacJim)

The order was placed for the Punkt MP02 mobile phone, and the UPS app installed on my iPad Pro to follow the progress of the package as it travelled from Umkirch, Germany. It moved onwards to Frankfurt where it sat over the New Year holidays before continuing the journey to Tamworth, Preston and Glasgow before it finally was shipped to a local collection point from where I collected it from. The unopened box then sat wantonly willing me to open her up but I held my resolve to do the phone justice – and to have a photo opportunity too – when the weekend arrived.

MP02 Experiment e1546944284698 How my Punkt MP02 experiment panned out

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Deciding to downgrade from a smartphone life.

A commentary by James Ormiston (@MacJim)

For some time now, I have noticed that I spend far too much time looking at my iPhone and not enough time looking outside of that small patch of glass that is the iPhone display… The real world was passing me by as I browsed a website, read an email or answer a text message on the ‘smartphone’ whether on a bus or train, or walking down the high street… the exception being when using it as a camera… you too are the same. Other things have brought me to this decision too, as far too many people have been hurt while reading that display in front of them, resulting in injury or death… yes, death, because they were too busy reading a social media app rather than looking out for that bus bearing down upon them. Fortunately the worst that happened to me was stupidly walking into a lamppost; I kid you not.

So that got me thinking about whether I could do without a smartphone and go down the route to simplify my lifestyle by getting a ‘dumb’ mobile phone like I had when these devices became affordable too all. So, after much searching, either through article found on the web, and video searches on YouTube, I decided upon the idea of getting a mobile from the manufacturer, Punkt, a Swiss company.

Continue reading → Deciding to downgrade from a smartphone life.