Waited weeks for this and was so excited it finally arrived today. Unboxed it, put it on charge, and…nothing. Won’t boot up, no signs of life. He’s dead, Jim.
Now I have to send it back and wait who knows how long if I want a replacement. Probably just going to ask for a refund; I can’t wait another 4-6 weeks or wait for one to ship from the September batch. Ugh!
Mildly infuriating, highly disappointing.
Yeah, I have a Boox color tablet that I use for reading books and comics, but I also take A LOT of notes on it since I can use handwriting. This phone doesn’t bring anything to the table for me, but if there is a use for OP I’m not going to say it’s a bad purchase. I just don’t like the marketing behind it.
That Boox color looks amazing!
The marketing behind the minimalist phone is shady at best.
Yeah the marketing for it was lost on me. I already digitally detoxed last year when I switched to the flip phone I’m currently using, so I ignored the sales pitch and just looked at it from the cool hardware perspective and mostly reasonable price.
Credit where it’s due, though: I tried unsuccessfully to just uninstall the time sink apps from my regular smartphone and always ended up just reinstalling them. It took using a device that couldn’t feasibly run those (plus a weaning-off period) for me to fully let go. Seems like that is what the marketing is trying to target.
I wish I could go to a standard dumb phone, but I rely on communication apps that just don’t work on them :/ Kudos to you for being able to do that!
Yeah, the discipline part is super difficult for most people (myself included). I had to give myself a larger hurdle than just the uninstall… I deleted my accounts lol I understand that’s not feasible for most people, but I was desperate to get off of them, so I took desperate measures. Devices similar to the one you got are perfect for allowing people to detox from the mobile aspect of those apps, while still allowing us to use the services on the desktop. Then, when the detox period is up and you’re fully off the addiction, you can get the standard phone back.
I tried a true dumb phone but was breaking out my laptop too much for everyday tasks (dumb phones these days can do hotspot).
The flip phone I have runs Android 11, so I have the bare minimum necessary chat apps, email, GPS maps, and such. The main draw is that those work well enough, but anything more than that is possible but very frustrating. That’s kind of what the Minimal is about: e.g. yeah, you can watch YouTube videos on it, but you won’t want to.
That’s kinda what I did. I used my flip like a true dumb phone for 30 days as a challenge and then un-dumbed it a little bit back to where only my basic needs were met and nothing more. I assumed I’d have rushed back to my old smartphone, but after breaking a bunch of habits, I found I didn’t really want to. Plus, I really missed T9 texting as weird as that sounds lol.
That’s why I couldn’t do dumb phone. Go to the bank? You must verify yourself on the mobile app. Just bought something? Verify. Amazon delivery issues? App. Secure sms? You guessed it – app. All these apps are like the toolbars of yore, and they’re preventing me from going full dimbphone, but some of them are adding benefits, so I guess there’s at least that.
The inconvenience to the addiction of the eink is a really cool way to look at it lol
I, too, miss T9 to a degree. I tried a soft T9 keyboards, but it just wasn’t the same.
Yeah, I got the note air 4c and I can confirm it is amazing. However, it’s expensive. I don’t really have money to throw around like that, but I did some extra work and grabbed it. It’s phenomenal and I have no regrets. Great for reading, great for note taking, horrible for watching videos :) If its something that you’ll use, its worth every penny.
It is not cheap, but it looks amazing! That’s my dilemma, I’m not sure if I’d use it enough to justify the price for me. But I really want to haha