I FINALLY DID IT!! I committed to my full technophobe roots and got a dumb phone.
she is epic and perfect. holy SHIT i missed buttons SO much. and the tactile ability to slam a phone shut? it's wonderful. magical even.
but it's been a bit of a learning curve learning to navigate it! i never had a dumbphone growing up--i was an antisocial piece of shit as a kid and didnt want to talk to my classmates out of school (except the real ones, who i dm'd on pesterchat or chickensmoothie :3 if ur reading this, HI BOBBI!!)
so i just wanted to take notes on what i've learned so far, in case anyone else wants to make the jump! but isn't quite sure what to expect!
specifically, the phone I have is a nokia 2780! these are my experiences:
BETTER THAN EXPECTED
MUSIC: HAS A HEADPHONE JACK!!! no spotify compatibility, which takes me back to carefully loading up my ipod back in the day :3 very nostalgic, has forced me to go through my 40 GB music library and confront what i ACTUALLY listen to.
MICRO SD FOR EXTERNAL STORAGE: wonderful. having a microsd has been non-negotiable for me, forever. this one only has capacity for a 32 gb sd card but with the quality of the phone's photos (and difficulty transferring them-see below), i can't imagine why you'd need more than that.
TEXTING: tapping the key buttons is SO extremely satisfying!! i love it so much. i've gotten used to the numeric keypad typing pretty quick, but it's also been nice that i can't fire off a text in a few seconds any more. it forces me to carve out time specifically to text instead of doing it while hanging with friends or loved ones.
CAMERA: looOOOOVE the lower quality. holy shit. it looks so retro and amazing!
BEING IN THE MOMENT: i was out of town recently and i just had my dumbphone for the whole trip. at first it was stressful because i couldn't check anything that wasn't texts, but by the 3rd day i realized how nice it was to not be constantly caught between conversations on discord or email, and ones going on irl! and when i got back, nothing had blown up. nobody had been urgently looking for me. it was all good!
UNFORTUNATE
FILE TRANSFERS: phone doesn't connect to computer via usb or usbc :\ i've been just transferring stuff from my sd card with a usb sd card reader, but it's really not ideal. if i didn't have the sd card idk how i'd get my photos off the phone!
JAILBREAKING: extreeeeemely difficult. they do not want you to do this. i tried, and bricked the phone xD so had to do a factory reset and decided it was a bit above my skill level.
WEBSITES: i tried to navigate to a lowes website from a text for a package pickup and it was very dicey. a lot of peoples' websites are not optimized for phones of this resolution xD i highly recommend printing off any important pickup documents in advance instead of checking in the moment.