I Don't Have a Smartphone I Don’t Have a Smartphone… by Ploum on 2026-09-02 …or, at least, I wish I didn’t. "I don’t have a smartphone," is what I tell people and professionals nowadays. This allows
By Coderz Club · 2026-09-02 · Tags: html
I Don't Have a Smartphone
I Don’t Have a Smartphone… by Ploum on 2026-09-02 …or, at least, I wish I didn’t. "I don’t have a smartphone," is what I tell people and professionals nowadays. This allows me to cut the crap about companies insisting that I install their app or restaurants wishing that I scan a QR code to access their menu on a small screen. "I don’t have a smartphone" is, according to my experience, the easiest explanation, the shortest way to force people to get their shit together and take the required actions to allow me to live without being glued to a small screen dependent on a huge American megacorporation. When I buy something, from a small kitchen appliance to a car, I’m now forced to get formal confirmation by the seller that I will be able to use it without installing one, two or three different apps. I kept the count: in the last year alone, I had to argue against the installation of 18 smartphone apps. Just in my toilet, I’m supposed to have an app for the seat, an app for the flush and one for the ventilation. It is quite fascinating because if you assume using each app for only 3 minutes per day (which basically means opening, closing and does not include doing the upgrade every other day or debugging some problems), that’s nearly 1 hour of your day! 22 full days of your year (assuming 16 waking hours per day). What installing your app means When you ask someone to install your app or to scan your QR code, you make the following assumptions: 1. That person owns a smartphone (which is at least a couple hundred dollars). 2. That person has the smartphone on them right now. 3. The smartphone is in working condition. 4. It has enough battery to install your app, use it then finish the day. 5. It has enough storage left for your app. 6. It has enough network coverage. 7. That person has enough data left on their data plan. 8. They have a valid and connected Google account (or, an Apple one). 9. They are comfortable with taking out the phone and dedicating some time and attention to the screen right now while not paying attention to all those notifications that the phone surely gathered since its last use. 10. They are willing to accept all the conditions of your apps, including sending you personal data, registering an account, etc. When you think about it, this is an awful lot of assumptions. Just regarding point 8: your Google account could be terminated right now, without reason. It happens every day. It could happen to you. Or an American president could decide your country should not have that service anymore. Et si vos comptes disparaissaient demain ? (ploum.net) If only one of those 10 assumptions is false, for whatever reason, the person will not be able to use your app. You will have to deal with it. People always tell me I’m weird for not installing the app but, looking at this list, I find it weird that you even find people to install it in the first place! But here we are… Those 10 assumptions have become the new commandments everyone should obey. Why I will tell you I don’t have a smartphone Ten assumptions that are a bit too long to explain to a vendor or a worker. So, instead of arguing about the time lost and my quest to be Google free, I took the stance of answering, "I don’t have a smartphone." Reactions vary. Pure salesmen try to convince me that you can’t live without the app, that I need to do the mandatory "update" Why? If it’s connected, it can do its update alone. If it is offline and it works, it doesn’t need any update and updates have a higher probablility to worsen my situation than to be helpful. If it is offline and it doesn’t work well, why should I buy it in the first place? On the other hand, real workers, those with dirty hands, often smile at me and tell me I’m right or that they wish they could not have a smartphone. On one occasion, a worker installing an appliance told me: "Oh, we will get along well!" Which tells you something important: nobody wants the app. People install the app because they believe it is mandatory in some sort of way. Because they are afraid of missing out on something. Because they are told so by the salesman. But they just don’t want it. In fact, when pressed, most salesmen even have a hard time justifying why I should install the app. So "I don’t have a smartphone." But it is not true. Mudita Kompakt, my not-so-dumb-phone My main driver is a Mudita Kompakt, a small minimalist smartphone with an e-ink device. I’ve spoken at length about it in the following piece: Une vie sans notifications (ploum.net) The main point is that, despite being an e-ink device and being totally Google-free, the Mudita is an Android smartphone. I can install apps and, yes, I love the smartphone concept for the tools I choose. I have Signal (well, I use Molly to connect to Signal). I also have the app of my bike GPS. I don’t use it often but when I’m lost far from everything and it starts raining, I launch the Komoot app, ask for the shortest way ho
I Don’t Have a Smartphone… by Ploum on 2026-09-02 …or, at least, I wish I didn’t. "I don’t have a smartphone," is what I tell people and professionals nowadays. This allows me to cut the crap about companies insisting that I install their app or restaurants wishing that I scan a QR code to access their menu on a small screen. "I don’t have a smartphone" is, according to my experience, the easiest explanation, the shortest way to force people to get their shit together and take the required actions to allow me to live without being glued to a small screen dependent on a huge American megacorporation. When I buy something, from a small kitchen appliance to a car, I’m now forced to get formal confirmation by the seller that I will be able to use it without installing one, two or three different apps. I kept the count: in the last year alone, I had to argue against the installation of 18 smartphone apps. Just in my toilet, I’m supposed to have an app for the seat, an app for the flush and one for the ventilation. It is quite fascinating because if you assume using each app for only 3 minutes per day (which basically means opening, closing and does not include doing the upgrade every other day or debugging some problems), that’s nearly 1 hour of your day! 22 full days of your year (assuming 16 waking hours per day). What installing your app means When you ask someone to install your app or to scan your QR code, you make the following assumptions: 1. That person owns a smartphone (which is at least a couple hundred dollars). 2. That person has the smartphone on them right now. 3. The smartphone is in working condition. 4. It has enough battery to install your app, use it then finish the day. 5. It has enough storage left for your app. 6. It has enough network coverage. 7. That person has enough data left on their data plan. 8. They have a valid and connected Google account (or, an Apple one). 9. They are comfortable with taking out the phone and dedicating some time and attention to the screen right now while not paying attention to all those notifications that the phone surely gathered since its last use. 10. They are willing to accept all the conditions of your apps, including sending you personal data, registering an account, etc. When you think about it, this is an awful lot of assumptions. Just regarding point 8: your Google account could be terminated right now, without reason. It happens every day. It could happen to you. Or an American president could decide your country should not have that service anymore. Et si vos comptes disparaissaient demain ? (ploum.net) If only one of those 10 assumptions is false, for whatever reason, the person will not be able to use your app. You will have to deal with it. People always tell me I’m weird for not installing the app but, looking at this list, I find it weird that you even find people to install it in the first place! But here we are… Those 10 assumptions have become the new commandments everyone should obey. Why I will tell you I don’t have a smartphone Ten assumptions that are a bit too long to explain to a vendor or a worker. So, instead of arguing about the time lost and my quest to be Google free, I took the stance of answering, "I don’t have a smartphone." Reactions vary. Pure salesmen try to convince me that you can’t live without the app, that I need to do the mandatory "update" Why? If it’s connected, it can do its update alone. If it is offline and it works, it doesn’t need any update and updates have a higher probablility to worsen my situation than to be helpful. If it is offline and it doesn’t work well, why should I buy it in the first place? On the other hand, real workers, those with dirty hands, often smile at me and tell me I’m right or that they wish they could not have a smartphone. On one occasion, a worker installing an appliance told me: "Oh, we will get along well!" Which tells you something important: nobody wants the app. People install the app because they believe it is mandatory in some sort of way. Because they are afraid of missing out on something. Because they are told so by the salesman. But they just don’t want it. In fact, when pressed, most salesmen even have a hard time justifying why I should install the app. So "I don’t have a smartphone." But it is not true. Mudita Kompakt, my not-so-dumb-phone My main driver is a Mudita Kompakt, a small minimalist smartphone with an e-ink device. I’ve spoken at length about it in the following piece: Une vie sans notifications (ploum.net) The main point is that, despite being an e-ink device and being totally Google-free, the Mudita is an Android smartphone. I can install apps and, yes, I love the smartphone concept for the tools I choose. I have Signal (well, I use Molly to connect to Signal). I also have the app of my bike GPS. I don’t use it often but when I’m lost far from everything and it starts raining, I launch the Komoot app, ask for the shortest way ho