So dumb it just might work: can these dumbphone evangelists convince you to dump smartphones?

Month Offline asks participants in New York to give up smartphones for March and use a retrofitted dumbphone instead. Each participant pays $75 for the month-long challenge and $25 for the dumbphone provided by dumb.co. Earlier versions of the program used flip phones with limited capabilities, which made navigation and messaging difficult. The current cohort tests a souped-up discontinued TCL Flip 2 that includes WhatsApp, iMessage, Google Maps, Uber, and Microsoft 2FA. Participants join to regain social, psychological, and spiritual freedom and to explore analog habits, while questioning whether the added features make the program less authentic.

"He explained that the relic was loaded with WhatsApp, iMessage, Google Maps, Uber, Microsoft 2FA nothing like my seventh-grade flip phone. We each had paid $75 to participate in Month Offline, or MO, a program that challenged us to swear off our smartphones entirely. Another $25 went to dumb.co, the company behind MO, for the so-called dumbphones we would use as we navigated daily life."

"In its early days, MO had given out flip phones so dumb no maps, no ride-sharing, iffy texting that participants struggled to use them during and after the month-long experiment. So my MO cohort was the first to test dumb.co's souped-up version, a discontinued TCL Flip 2 bolstered with the messaging and mapping functions many of us are dependent upon."

"I was skeptical. Most of us came to MO sick of being glued to the supercomputers in our palms, angling hours of our attention downwards each day. Disaffected with tech companies and their devices, we were eager to dabble in the growing analog movement and compelled by MO's mission to restore our social, psychological, and spiritual freedom, as per the offline pledge we signed on day one."

"But if less is MO, why was the dumbphone being enabled to do more? Was dumb.co authentic in its offline aspirations, or was it really a tech startup trying to ride the anti-tech zeitgeist? We all have iPhones, Danny Hogenkamp, CEO and co-founder of dumb.co, told me of his nine-person team. Their office in Washington DC was soon to be flush with summer interns. They just don't leave the office."

Read at www.theguardian.com