Living without a smartphone
These guides are for adults leaving the smartphone, fully or part time. They cover the tasks that still need solving and the workarounds that exist for each.
- Switching to a flip phone: a step-by-step plan that sticks
Switching to a flip phone works when you fix the hard parts before the swap: text routing, login codes, banking and your contacts. On an iPhone, turn off iMessage first (Apple), or friends' texts can vanish. Spend two weeks auditing your apps, keep the smartphone in a drawer for a month, then decide.
- Can a flip phone be tracked? What parents and adults should know
Yes, a flip phone can be tracked. It connects to a carrier's cell towers, so the carrier knows roughly where it is, and FCC outdoor accuracy rules require 911 location within 50 meters for 67 percent of calls on handset-based systems. A parent-tracking plan adds GPS. If you want no tracking at all, switch the phone off.