Choose bad hardware

A bit of context to start. This is 12 months ago. I work as a product designer for a tech company. I spend the day in front of a computer. Anywhere from 6 to 10 hours of screen time a day. Plus 1 or 2 hours of zombielike scrolling social apps. I see the world more through whatever is served on my screen than by actually looking at the real thing. A bit unrelated, but around then I decide to move to another country. My iPhone 12 can only hold one sim card. The move is not supposed to be permanent, so now I have a dual sim card problem. I decide to buy a bad phone to hold my new Portuguese sim card. This is now 12 months later, aka today. I sold my iPhone 12. I own a bad phone. Life has never been better. The end.

Ok. Not everything in my new life is great due to my unorthodox decision to have a shitty phone. But the phone does contribute a good amount to it, and this is what I wanted to share. The phone I chose is a Qin F21 pro. It is a sub brand of Xiaomi (I believe), and it was marketed, at least initialy, as a phone for teens without support for social apps. A type of detox and/or first phone depending on how you look at it.

The main feature of the phone is the small screen + keypad combo, similar to what we got back in the day. The screen is tiny. But I do have touch screen. Using the keypad for typing never worked for me. So 95% of the interaction with my phone happens in a screen that is half the size of a credit card. Most of the apps on Google Play store can be installed with my version of the phone, but of course, this does not mean that they are optimized for it, and this is precisely why I like it.

Good phones are supposed to get out of your way. Interacting with a good phone is effortless. It is supposed to feel like an extension of your body. No delay between wanting to execute an action and the response from it. Performance and quality of image are the main selling points for good phones. The problem with this, is that once you go for a good phone, you immediately become the main target of the billions of dollars tech companies spend in tracking, researching, and improving their apps so they can be as good as possible. Good, in this case, is usually measured by time spent on app. So a good app is usually one where users spend more time. A combination of good phone and good apps is supposed to be good, but in reallity, it is not good at all. At least not for you. It is like you are a seal, and you have this brilliant idea to swim in a sea that feels cozy, but the sea is full of sharks.

We need time to think. We need delay. To process. To understand. Hardware and software are so good now that everything can be instantaneous. We are not always ready for this. Tech companies are probably not going to undo this any time soon. And you cannot make software worse since you don’t own the companies making them. You can, however, choose bad hardware. Hardware can and should be the limitating factor when interacting with experiences you don’t fully control. You shouldn’t give a Ferrari to a person that doesn’t know how to drive. They will kill themselves. It’s too much hardware.

Placing a limited phone in between addicitve apps and I was the best way to reduce my use of them. I still scroll instagram. I still spend time on reddit. But the interactions with these are broken due to my choice of hardware. Because of this, I’m constantly aware of what I’m doing. It is never transparent. These moments, when the combination of hardware and software breaks, are the moments I use to get away from my phone. This does mean that sometimes I struggle when I need to do something important. The other day I spent 30 minutes to reset my Airbnb password, so that I could message my host to say I was at the door. But I believe this is a small annoyance compared to how much life we lose by going for the good software and hardware all the time.

I am not saying that a bad phone is the hardware you need. But you should be looking at the hardware you own to make sure that it’s in accord to the use you can and want to make of it. This is more important than going with the best in class option. It can be a phone. It can be a car. It can be kitchen appliances. Get the correct amount of hardware for the life you want to have. People will notice those choices. It’s even fun to place a bad phone on the table. It will sure start a few conversations. You might even meet someone you like. So, if you still have time, and as much as you can, choose bad hardware.