Got a Nokia 2660 for my birthday a few months back. Looks like this.
It can do calls and texts. It has two SIM slots and a built-in FM radio. No apps, and the web browser will only be useful if I witness my best friend being executed by terrorists in a mall parking lot and in my panic accidentally travel back in time 30 years to a time before JavaScript.
Wanted to stop having a smartphone on me all the time. This thing was the way to make that happen. The smartphone is still around, but it stays at home on standby like a sort of shit little computer. Seemed a bad idea to try to get rid of it completely on the same day as getting the Nokia, which proved wise. Given that the average person spends about four hours per day on their phone, it’s a significant lifestyle change. It’s a bit of a process.
After reaching the three month mark this week I checked my data usage and realised I’ve used exactly 0GB and I’m now wasting a fortune on a service I don’t need any more. So I’ve switched over to a cheap pay-as-you-go SIM, and this felt like a good milestone to write down some notes about the practicalities of the whole thing.
Car-related stuff is a good example of how smartphone-centric life has become. A lot of car parks don’t have a ticket machine any more. I wasn’t sure how I would even handle this. Parkster has proved to be the secret ingredient with their SMS parking feature. Once your account is set up you don’t need a smartphone to text their system the car park’s ID number and your car registration number. Works great. The lack of push notifications reminding you about your car means you do have to remember you own a car the old fashioned way, by relying on object permanence. After three months of field experience I am ready to say confidently that this skill can be re-learned.
Contact with schools is another very app-driven part of modern life. Fortunately the school apps I’m forced to use – Tempus Hemma, Skola24 and Unikum – all have websites that provide the same functionality the apps do. Obviously you lose out on the push notifications this way, but that’s kind of the point. After some reflection I decided I can cope without the phone buzzing in my pocket after the preschool drop-off to let me know that I’ve just done the preschool drop-off. I already know. I was there! Even easier to cope without is the pointless panic that used to ensue whenever the staff at preschool accidentally pressed the wrong name during checkout for someone else’s kid, sending me a weird false-positive amber alert for my own kid.
All the banks I have accounts with have web apps too. You can’t use them on the 1950s web browser on my Nokia but I struggle on. Sometimes I vaguely miss the at-a-glance convenience of the “look how surprisingly little money is left” anxiety widget on my smartphone homescreen. Fortunately I’ve found that if I really get nostalgic for that feeling I can emulate it by downing a really strong cup of coffee and thinking about death. And thanks to the same object permanence trick that helps me remember my car, I’m also managing to remember I’m not a millionaire, despite only checking my finances once every day or two.
BankID is fine and all. The USB one for the computer works great. Admittedly, not having Mobile BankID does get in the way of running around in a state of constant distraction, staring down at my phone to file my taxes while I cross a busy road, or authorising a payment for cat litter while I barely notice the food I’m eating during lunch. Three months in, the cat litter purchases have managed to continue keeping pace with cat litter usage despite this obstacle. I suppose we will have to wait until the 2026 tax declaration season to find out if it works to file in the safety of my home instead of as a death-defying act of pedestrian multitasking. I’m feeling lucky though.