All reviews on this site are based on extended real-world use rather than quick impressions or manufacturer specifications. I purchase devices with my own money, run this site at my own expense, and make no income from affiliate links or sponsorships. I don’t answer to manufacturers, chase clicks, or soften criticism.

My focus here is practical: what actually works after sustained use, and whether a device’s design and capabilities facilitate or hinder a modern, positively connected, smartphone-free life.

Browse Reviews by Category

  • Dumbphones: phones without browsers, app stores, or social media
  • Companion Devices: tablets, laptops, and devices for intentional internet access
  • Auxiliary Devices: single-purpose tools like e-readers, GPS units, and music players
  • Analog Tools: paper notebooks, pens, planning systems, and calendars
  • Software: apps and services that facilitate focused work without constant connectivity

What Informs My Reviews

I’ve been smartphone-free for nearly two years while working as a small business counselor with the Alaska Small Business Developer Center, a high-school cross country ski coach at Bettye Davis East School, and sailing instructor at the Alaska Sailing Club. I’m a parent, spouse, and active community volunteer. I also compete in local bike, xc ski, and running races, as well as dinghy regattas in Alaska and the Lower 48. I mention all of this only by way of illustrating that I’m a busy person living without a smartphone, and this lifestyle informs my reviews. I need tools and systems that enable an active, engaged life. And for what it’s worth, ditching my smartphone made my busy life both less stressful and a lot more fun.

Prior to that, I was a heavy smartphone user and have lived an online life longer than most people. I’ve been engaged with the internet since its earliest days: I was a Usenet junkie before HTTP existed as a protocol, and as a kid I ran active BBSs. I had mobile phones and pagers as soon as they were available, used the iPhone from its first release, and maintained active social media followings across most platforms. I also owned a technology consulting firm for over two decades. This experience also informs my reviews. I’m not anti-technology — it’s been both my livelihood and passion for decades. I just want technology to serve my needs rather than the business models of technology-giants like Google, Apple, and Meta.

Intentional Friction

Before diving into device categories and reviews, it’s important to understand the concept of intentional friction in the context of smartphone-free living.

Smartphones made everything effortless: one device, always available, handling many tasks instantly. That convenience eliminates the natural pauses where you might reconsider your actions — the moment between impulse and action simply disappears. Intentional friction reverses this by requiring steps: being somewhere with WiFi, retrieving a device, unlocking it, opening an app. These barriers create space for conscious choice rather than compulsive behavior. They shift you from automatic, reactive responses to deliberate thought about whether the action aligns with your actual priorities.

This approach works by redesigning your environment rather than relying on willpower. You don’t have to resist the temptation in your pocket dozens of times daily — you simply remove the trigger entirely, breaking the habitual patterns that make smartphone use automatic.

But intentional friction isn’t just about slowing down. Smartphones excel at making tasks easy to start, not necessarily easy to complete well. You can respond to an email on your phone, but you’ll respond more effectively with a full keyboard and focused environment. You can take notes in an app, but paper produces more flexible, memorable results. The very ease that makes starting tasks frictionless also generates constant interruption: notifications, context switching, the temptation to check something else.

This principle shapes the device categories below. Each separation — dumbphone for calls and texts, companion device for email and banking, auxiliary devices for specific functions — adds friction that protects attention while maintaining necessary capability. The goal is making mindless use harder while keeping intentional use accessible.

Review Categories

The following categories serve as both navigation to reviews and definitions of key terms used throughout the site. Each category represents a distinct type of device or tool in a smartphone-free system.

Dumbphones

Phones that provide calls and texts without browsers, app stores, social media, or email. This includes basic feature phones, minimalist smartphones with intentionally limited software, and modified smartphones with restricted operating systems. The defining characteristic is the absence of features that enable constant internet access and app-based distractions.

Reviews evaluate: Whether devices meet minimum standards for group texting and hotspot capability, how they perform in daily use across different contexts, and who they serve best. Each phone receives three reviews over at least three months of use as my daily driver.

Companion Devices

Devices that handle necessary digital functions without constant availability. This includes tablets, laptops, and SIM-less smartphones that work only on WiFi and require deliberate retrieval, as well as desktop computers that remain stationary. These constraints create intentional friction between impulse and action. Companion devices enable access to essential services that require web browsers or applications including banking, healthcare portals, work systems, government services, and online account management. These are functions that dumbphones cannot provide.

Reviews evaluate: Build quality, software experience, battery life, portability, and whether they create effective boundaries between impulse and action.

Auxiliary Devices

Single-purpose tools designed for specific functions without multipurpose capabilities. Examples include e-readers, music players, GPS units, fitness trackers, cameras, and landlines. These devices provide focused functionality without the feature integration typical of smartphones, creating intentional friction by limiting what’s possible in any given moment.

Reviews evaluate: Whether devices genuinely serve a single purpose, durability for regular use, and integration with smartphone-free systems.

Analog Tools

Physical, non-digital tools for notes, planning, thinking, and organization. This category includes notebooks, writing instruments, planning systems, paper calendars, and timers. These tools operate without electronic components or internet connectivity, providing immediate access without device startup, battery concerns, or internet requirements. Handwriting on paper has been shown to improve information retention and recall compared to digital note-taking. Analog tools complement smartphone-free living by handling tasks that would otherwise require companion devices.

Reviews evaluate: Build quality, practical usability, and whether tools genuinely enhance productivity or introduce unnecessary friction.

Software & Services

Digital applications and services accessed through companion devices rather than smartphones. This includes calendar systems, email clients, authoring tools, music applications, and productivity software designed for use on tablets, laptops, or desktop computers.

Reviews evaluate: How well tools facilitate focused work and intentional use, whether they respect attention or harvest it, and how they integrate with smartphone-free systems.

My Review Process

All reviews are based on extended use in real-world contexts, covering practical performance, build quality where applicable, and how well each tool integrates with the overall system.

Dumbphones receive the most structured review process because they’re foundational to smartphone-free life. Each phone serves as my daily driver for at least three months before I publish a final verdict, following a three-stage timeline detailed below. Reviews for companion devices, auxiliary devices, analog tools, and software follow a less structured process since these devices serve supporting rather than foundational roles. These reviews don’t follow the three-stage timeline, but still rely on sustained real-world use.

Three-Stage Review Structure for Dumbphones

Each dumbphone review unfolds over three months, with published updates at specific milestones. This extended timeline captures how the phone performs beyond initial impressions, revealing patterns that only emerge through sustained daily use.

Week 1: First Impressions

Initial observations after a week of use; format is personal and free-form, covering setup experience, immediate strengths and frustrations, and early integration into daily routines.

Month 1: In-Depth Impressions

Extended observations after a month; still personal and exploratory, addressing how the phone performs across different contexts and what patterns emerge with sustained use.

Month 3: Final Verdict

Comprehensive evaluation after living with the phone for at least three months; uses a structured format covering build quality, feature assessment, use cases, and clear recommendations about who the phone serves best.

Throughout each review period, I respond to reader questions in the comments. If you’re considering a phone I’m currently testing, ask. I’ll do my best to answer based on what I’m learning.

Minimum Standards for Dumbphones

There is a whole sea of dumbphones out there, but I’m not planning to review most of them. To make the cut, a phone must include:

  • Calls (obviously)
  • Group text support (SMS/MMS)
  • Hotspot capability

And they must exclude:

  • Browser
  • App store
  • AI assistants
  • Social media
  • Email

Why I Draw These Lines

These criteria reflect a practical philosophy: I’m not a Luddite, anti-digital, or trying to return to a pre-internet world. Smartphones harm quality of life and arguably damage our social fabric, but modern communication tools (texting, online banking, media players, email, even social media) aren’t inherently bad. They need moderation and intentional context, relegated to specific times and places rather than constant availability.

The minimum standards aren’t arbitrary. Group messaging (whether SMS/MMS, WhatsApp, or other platforms) is essential for family coordination, work teams, and friend groups; many people abandon smartphone-free life because they can’t participate in group conversations. Hotspot capability enables companion device use when needed, accessing banking, reading email, or handling tasks that require internet connectivity without carrying a smartphone.

I want to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater by promoting tools that make smartphone-free life sustainable and realistic rather than performative or ascetic.

Why Browsers, App Stores, and AI Assistants Are Disqualifying

The exclusion of social media and email is straightforward, but browsers, app stores, and AI assistants merit explanation since they might seem like useful tools rather than sources of distraction.

Browsers eliminate the intentional friction that makes smartphone-free life work. A browser is effectively a “super-app” that provides access to everything: social media through web interfaces, news sites, streaming services, online shopping, and infinite content. Every compulsive reach opens the door to algorithmic feeds and the same attention fragmentation you’re trying to escape. The issue isn’t that browsers are inherently harmful; it’s that having one in your pocket removes the barrier between impulse and action.

App stores (Google Play, Apple App Store) open the door to reinstalling the exact applications (social media, news, games) that made smartphones problematic in the first place. However, curated app repositories with pre-selected, low-harm applications (like the Wisephone’s approach) can work within these constraints. The distinction is whether the store enables unlimited installation of attention-harvesting apps or provides access only to specific, intentionally-chosen tools.

AI assistants (Siri, Google Assistant, ChatGPT, Claude) provide another route back to the open internet and infinite engagement. These assistants connect to cloud services that can search the web, answer questions, generate content, and handle increasingly complex queries. This bypasses the intentional friction of using a companion device for specific tasks. The issue is that AI assistants are designed to be always-available gateways to unlimited information and interaction, recreating the “ask anything, anytime” convenience that smartphones provided.