I was wrong about my phone

About a month ago I wrote about the smartphone. In there, I layed out a plan that would allow me to gain back some of the time I spend looking at the screen of my phone. But I was wrong…

The original plan

The plan was focused on specific devices that would allow me to maintain a somewhat connected life without the need to keep a smart computer in my front pocket.

• A computer to do work;
• A tablet to edit photos, write content and consume media;
• A phone to communicate;
• A watch for fitness tracking and some smart features;

The phone I was referring to in that post, was the AGM M6. I was excited about this phone because it checked all the needs I had, minus one that I was happy to ignore or could easily solve with a screwdriver and some dark tape: a rear camera.

But as I investigated more and more, I realized this phone had a very peculiar way of dealing with battery life. Although some people reported that battery life was excellent, which is always something you’re excited about when you’re talking about a dumb phone, it was made possible through some… let’s call it hacks.

The issue with AGM

The M6 may have been perfect for me. And I could have never been faced with these issues in the first place, because apparently it also comes down to different phones for different regions, which makes it that much more harder to debug and research.

But as vritti_nirodha in r/dumbphones reports:

I suspect now that the amazing battery life may have been due to the phone going into this deep sleep where it just missed all calls.

Yes. You read that right! The amazing battery life of a dumb phone may come from the fact that it goes into deep sleep in the first place, preventing you from getting phone calls—one of the few things a dumb phone should be able to do.

If you ask me, excellent phone call quality was the thing I expected from a dumb phone. It’s literally the only reason why the device is called a phone. Why would you sacrifice that feature?

Looking elsewhere

After discovering these reports I looked for other devices that would fulfill my needs. I spent hours looking, searching, reading and watching YouTube videos, specifically ones from Jose Briones—a dumb phone focused channel.

I jumped from AGM to Cat, then Punkt and finally Nokia.

Besides price, the one thing I really wanted was a 4G capable device. Providers like Vodafone have been noticing that the 2G networks will be phased out until 2028—just 2 years away.

This means that if you want a dumb phone in 2026, you can’t just reach for that old-tech-drawer of yours and grab your first ever phone anymore. That’s likely going to be too old for the new networks.

So 4G is the minimum you could aim for for a recent smartphone. Now try finding a dumb phone that’s not running Android, is 4G capable and is sold in Europe. Good luck with that.

I’m not saying you won’t find any. But options are very few. And sometimes things like color or keyboard layout exclude some of the options available. Leaving you with far fewer than you started with.

I can’t recall exactly which Nokia model I was looking at—because frankly they all have similar names and similar form factors—but I believe it was the Nokia 2760. This one checked all the boxes for me. And if I could find it at the time, I would be holding it right now.

Unless I’m missing something, this was my checklist:

• Reasonable keyboard layout
• USB-C port
• KaiOS +3.1
• No camera
• 4G

I mean, although I wouldn’t be looking at it nearly as much as I do look at my smartphone, the truth is that a tiny keyboard isn’t going to do much for me.

Then, USB-C is what I currently have for all my other devices. I don’t want to carry another cable, especially a proprietary one.

KaiOS 3.1 comes with a feature called tethering which enables your dumb phone to provide internet for your tablet, for instance. Since I already have a SIM card with internet access that I wouldn’t need on a dumb phone, might as well get a phone with an OS that could share that internet with other devices.

Cameras in dumb phones are as bad as you can imagine them. And the truth is that I was ok giving this one up because a piece of dark tape could easily solve it for me.

And 4G we already covered above. It’s a must nowadays, unfortunately.

Guess what the problem with this one was? It’s not sold in Europe!
It does have a brother phone though, the 2660. That’s sold in Europe, but it comes with microUSB instead of USB-C. That’s a no from me.

I got tired of searching

Eventually I realized I was spending so much time looking at screens just to avoid looking at screens in the first place that I felt like I needed to solve the issue the easiest way possible.

At some point I stumbled upon this post in Reddit. I had read similar reports before—where people point at the user instead of the device as the real issue. But for some reason, this one got stuck in my head for some time. I kept going back at this thought.

I had already tried features like making the screen black and white on the iPhone before and also setting up downtime for certain apps. But downtime is easy to go around—you really just need to click “allow more time” or whatever it reads in the button that pops up when time is up. The same goes for black and white. Sometimes I needed a full color screen, like when taking a photo, so I disabled black and white and never enabled it back.

This time though, I opted for a smarter solution.

A dumber smartphone

I’m keeping the iPhone. But this time I’m leveraging the Shortcuts app to toggle black and white when either Photos or Camera is open. This way I can still look at photos in full color, but the phone will turn black and white right after.

This is my home screen. I set it up in a way that I have all the apps I use nowadays with as few distractions as possible. I disabled all the liquid glass features I could. Enabled a few accessibility features to make the text bolder, hide icon labels, lower the screen refresh rate, disable some gestures, etc.

I want the phone to be a hassle to work with, by design.

I haven’t yet done the ultimate step, which I may at some point, which is disabling the face unlock, forcing me to manually input my pin code every single time I want to unlock the phone.

No one likes to look at a black and white screen. The icons aren’t vibrant anymore. It’s not calling for me.

Besides these changes, I’ve also uninstalled Mail, Reddit and any other app I could use to “spend some time”.
I still have Brave though, but I’m resisting to use my black and white phone to browse nowadays.

As a result, I’m using my tablet much more! Which is great because I’m slowly changing the habit of reaching for a phone. And as I’m not going to carry a tablet around, it’s fine that a tablet replaces my phone for certain tasks.

Still a smartphone

The best thing about having this setup is that at the end of the day, it’s still a smartphone. And I get to decide whether I use it for a certain thing or not.

For instance, I’m terrible with directions. So having a nice traffic-aware GPS in my pocket is a very welcome feature of this setup.

Now let’s say I’m going to travel. I could use my phone to store boarding passes as a normal person would. But I could also not use it and rely on paper, as it was done a few years ago. One less job for my phone. One less reason to pick it up. One less opportunity to get distracted doing god knows what.

You know what’s funny? Right now, I have absolutely zero distractions on my phone. I mean, there’s not a single reason for me to pick up my phone to distract myself. There are no games, there are no social media, plus it’s black and white.

Even then, sometimes I notice myself picking it up and scrolling through the settings of apps.

You know your brain is short circuiting when you realize you’re literally scrolling through settings.

Results

As a result of these changes, I’ve been using less and less my smartphone. I went from a daily average screen time of 3h30 to 1h.

And the apps I use the most now are Home Assistant, Telegram and Roborock. Which are legitimate uses for a smartphone, if you ask me.

Takeaways

Sometimes a phone’s battery tricks, like on the AGM M6, can come at a cost—blocking incoming calls and making a dumb phone less reliable than expected.

With 2G networks being phased out across Europe, having a 4G-capable device isn’t just convenient—it’s essential for staying connected.

Searching for the perfect dumb phone can be surprisingly tricky. Limited options, region restrictions, and feature trade-offs make the hunt more frustrating than it’s worth.

Instead of buying new hardware, simplifying the phone you already have can reduce distractions and give you more control over how you use your time.

Even small changes like black and white mode, removing apps, or adjusting notifications, can dramatically lower screen time and help you reclaim focus.