It was Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote, back in 1386, that “familiarity breeds contempt”. Never have those three words been more true than with smart devices in 2019.
Throw a stone in a tech shop these days (please don’t actually do this) and you’ll hit about fifteen ‘smart’ devices, from light bulbs to fridges, toasters to televisions, speakers to security systems. Of course, the most ubiquitous of the lot is the smartphone: the item upon which this smart revolution was founded.
But people are sick of the deluge of information – the constant communications, notifications, and updates – they’re crying out for silence.
Enter, the basic phone (street name: 'dumbphone'): an obtuse, analogue throwback to the days when phones were phones, and not cameras, personal assistants, GPS systems, games consoles, fitness trackers, debit cards, shopping websites, and the rest of it.
How much you’ll get out of the basic phone experience will depend on how much you care for all those elements of your fancy phones. As a digital native tech writer who loves sharing a good brunch pic on Instagram or Facetiming my friends on the other side of the planet, the idea of giving it all up to invest in a dumbphone fills me with horror. On the other hand, my Luddite father (and many other people his age) who still doesn’t know why he pays for a data connection on his phone has been crying out for this for years.