The beautiful Nokia 110 (and two plectrums)

Ditching the smartphone

JJ Knowles
4 min readNov 3, 2023

--

I recently made the decision to switch from a Pixel 6 to Nokia 110.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while. The Pixel 6 is a buggy piece of shit — it cost me over £600 when it first came out, and it’s had nothing but problems ever since. I’m not going to get angry about it again though (though I really want to).

So I was in need of a new phone. At this point I could’ve started looking for the next smartphone — one that works properly perhaps — but they’re all pretty expensive. And there’s another problem with them… addiction.

The addict in me (and everyone)

I don’t think I’m the worst in the world with smartphones. I have some basic rules, like I’ll try not to use them at the dinner table for example, or when someone is talking to me. But I’ll be honest, that does happen. There are times when my children are in the bath and I’m looking at this fucking screen at some shit I can’t even remember and my wife has to tell me to get off my phone.

So I know I have bad habits, and I know I have a low-level addiction.

I also know that I’m fed up of the 24-hour news cycle. It’s quite a miserable place to be, but more than that, you don’t need that much news. It can wait. And my phone is too good at allowing me instant access to it.

--

--

JJ Knowles

Lead Service Designer in the NHS, 15+ years into my career