The recent forced “upgrade” put me over the edge of tolerance. Now I am actively searching for ways to not carry a mini-computer in my pocket, but I am at a loss.
Things I use my phone for:
Tracking my mileage on my horse – I use AllTrails currently.
Calling and texting.
Occasional photos.
Very occasional GPS google maps; normally if I have to use GPS I use my car Garmin as it is quite a bit better for back country roads, and doesn’t go dead in remoter areas like google maps does.
That’s really it. Oh, and sometimes Facebook messaging – this is entirely because I sometimes sell things on FB Marketplace and I cannot get anyone to text me if they start from FB, they simply will not.
What I don’t need: any of the thousand thousand other apps my phone is loaded with that I can’t get rid of. Also the upgrade forced me to install security measures that are a fucking pain in fucking ass and I have not been able as yet to disable them. The security I really want is the knowledge that Apple isn’t tracking my every move and recording it to sell me something. That’s not available. Of course.
What I dream of is an object – or several – that just does the things I need and dispenses with all the shit I don’t. I can get a watch that tracks my riding mileage, I guess. I do need some kind of camera, otherwise I’d get one of those Dumb Phones.
Any suggestions? I know the Dope is the land of nerdy tech celebration but I don’t know where else to ask this question.
If you answer, please don’t try to convince me that I love Big Brother. I know I can’t get out from under but I just want to not have to fight down my impulse to throw my phone against the wall.
Well, you can simply ignore all the icons of the apps you never want to use. An easy way to do that is to rearrange them so that the icons you do want to use are on the opening page when you sign in. This way, you don’t have to scroll and search for the ones you want to use. Secondly, you can turn off location so that even the apps you do use won’t be tracking you. Just remember that, with location off, it’s harder to search restaurants or other places because Google won’t know where you are in relation to the place you are searching for. You can, however, choose “allow once”.
Your requirements aren’t that difficult. My cheapie Samsung phone can do all of that. I just looked it up and AllTrails does have an app available for Android.
Apple keeps making their software more and more powerful, which requires more and more CPU power. But then they keep forcing you to take these upgrades until your device can no longer keep up, at which point you are pretty much forced to buy a new Apple device. That’s fine if you always want the latest and greatest and are willing to pay for it, but for the rest of us, Android doesn’t do that.
I have been forced into upgrading my Android phone once though. The phone was old enough that the cell phone providers were all dropping support for the older protocols. But otherwise, the old phone ran just as well as it did when I got it.
With an Android phone, Apple won’t be tracking everything you do. Instead, Google will. You can turn off all of the tracking stuff, but then apps like AllTrails won’t work because they need to know your GPS location. And, as @Jasmine said, you won’t be able to search for restaurants and businesses that are close to you. It’s a bit of a pain but you can turn off tracking and then turn it back on whenever you need to use that app.
My Samsung comes with a lot of apps I will never use. I just ignore them and put all of the icons for things I do want to use all in one place. I could probably remove all of the apps I don’t need, but to me it’s not worth the bother.
There is an easy way to turn off automatic updates in Settings so that you are never pushed into a “forced” upgrade. I always wait a few months to upgrade my iPhone so that someone else (i.e not me) can work through the beta testing. For instance, I am still on iOS 16. And Apple used to stop offering security updates the instant a new iOS version came out, but now they do for quite some period of time.
(I wait even longer to upgrade my Mac. I don’t upgrade to a new macOS until the subsequent version comes out, so I am always a year behind. And again, Apple does continue to offer security updates for the old macOS, which is nice.)
Also, I’m not sure why you can’t simply delete all or most of the “thousand thousand other apps my phone is loaded with.”
P.S. If you want suggestions from people, shouldn’t this be in IMHO?
Android has a front page (called a home screen) where you can put the apps you use and ignore all the apps in the “apps tray”. That’s how I set up my work phone and my mom’s phone – the useful apps are on the home screen, the rest are a swipe away.
I recently got a Galaxy Z Flip 5 (not the Fold) and I find that the extra step of unfolding the phone encourages me to use it less. And, it’s very satisfying to lock it and put it away by folding it up.
Exactly. And this gets into how one feels about one big multinational company versus another, but I personally trust Apple more than Google with my information. At least I am Apple’s customer. I am not Google’s customer—I’m the product. Google’s customers are the advertisers they work for and answer to.
I’ll chip in another vote for switching to android. I’d recommend motorola over samsung, or pixel over samsung, since it seems the android fone manufacturers have dropped in number in recent years.
I too have an iphone, and I utterly loathe it with a loathing that has no measurement or descriptor great enough. As soon as Vaderling is old enough that I don’t feel the need to monitor/control his fone so thoroughly, I am out of the apple environment. (Apple does do parental controls really well, I’ll give them that)
Like you, I find apple’s maps pretty much useless. Especially since I like going where, I guess, apple users are supposed to be too refined or sophisticated to go? Back country and roads.
What are these? Unless you were running iOS 1.0 or something I suspect that not much has changed except the usual a slow creep towards the new world ‘odor’.
I’m not at all sure you won’t have the same issues on any smart phone. My mother’s non-iPhone came with a bunch of apps ( and I assume there are some that are impossible to delete, just as there always apps/programs pre-installed on my computers that I can’t get rid of) , and something ( I assume Google) is tracking her unless she turns it off.
You aren’t forced to update/upgrade your iPhone. It’s possible not to update the iOs and eventually you won’t be able to get security updates if the iOS is too old but I find it a bit difficult to believe that you can get security updates on a non-iPhone for ten years. You will have to upgrade the phone when the provider shuts down the network it uses, no matter what brand of phone it is.
There comes a point where it’s just not possible to buy something without a feature you don’t want - before smart phones, my husband spent months looking for a phone with no camera. He didn’t like the “bump”. He never did find one.
You might just have to go with separate devices if moving the icons out of your way doesn’t work for you.
Samsung used to have undeletable apps, but I find that I can uninstall just about everything but the core stuff – some Google, some Samsung. You can always disable or hide the stuff you don’t need, or don’t want watching you.
I’m curious… Do you believe that my Google Pixel phone is randomly showing me ads or something? Or that Apple is not keeping a tracking database on you and leveraging that for financial gain?
Jasmine got it in one. Just shut off most tracking and delete the apps you are sure you don’t want on your phone. Then slide all the “Sometimes” apps to the second or third page where you have to seek them out.
There are only a handful of apps that can’t be deleted. And, you can move all of those to the 2nd screen, leaving only the ones you want to see on the “home” screen. Or, just move all the apps you don’t want to see into a folder, named “apps I don’t want to see.”
Disabling an app removes all updates, prevents it from ever running (even in the background), and removes its icon from the homepage and any icon drawers. It neutralizes the app as thoroughly as possible without completely removing it from the device.