Digital detox: Are companion phones the new way to switch off?

Companion handsets only give essential alerts, for a partial switch-off. Samuel Fishwick puts one to the test
Side by side: the card-sized Palm and the Google Pixel smartphone

The tiny Palm phone nestled in my hand is the key to summer switch off — but I’m having difficulties. It is about the size of a library card and, in the digital age, just as unfamiliar, so trying to coax my iPhone-accustomed fingers to dance on a 3.3in touchscreen feels like trying to squeeze back into last year’s shorts after a particularly big lunch.

The 800mAh battery, enough in theory for about 7.5 hours of use, is so meagre that I can actually see the power bar draining as I slowly attempt to scroll through Twitter (no new notifications). A 12mp camera, meanwhile, is like bringing an Etch A Sketch to a photoshoot-out. The Palm is, undoubtedly, a throwback (phone nerds will remember the slick Palm phone series as being a pre-Blackberry darling in the Noughties). But is it also the future?

“Companion” phones are Big Tech’s solution to the compulsive lure of the scroll. The Palm is intended to be used as a secondary device, rather than a replacement, offering a pared-down version of your regular phone — forwarding texts and notifications in situations when you might want to take a break from your everyday supercomputer. It offers a chance to go almost off-grid, but stay semi-connected.

“About the size of a credit card, Palm is out of the eyes of pickpockets on the Tube, and the weight makes it easy to be mobile again,” Howard Nuk, the co-founder of Palm. “Durable as well, it’s made with Gorilla Glass, and it’s water-resistant”. “As a secondary phone,” Nuk adds, it allows you to “break away from your work phone for the gym, weekend errands, long runs.”

One glance along any train carriage, bus or pavement is enough to confirm what we already know: modern society displays a quite staggering need to be left to our own devices. This is, of course, because they’re desperately useful. My own iPhone informs me, via the iOS 12’s Screen Time function, that my dwell time is up to three hours and 46 minutes today, a statistic that places me two hours and three minutes above my average.

In my palm: this is the actual size of the companion phone

Here, the Palm can help. It’s like a vaccine: a little bit of the virus in order to inoculate you from a full-blown infection. The “always-on” culture of emails, social media updates and push notifications is irresistible and designed to be so. It’s high time there was an alternative.

Palm isn’t alone in pitching a companion device. The Light Phone, designed “to be used as little as possible”, also features a pared-back, beautifully designed model, with 4G, maps, music and the ability to hail rides like Uber.

I haven’t allowed enough time to rebuild my lifestyle in the mode of the digital ascetic. But, as with any recovery programme, structure is important. Tanya Goodin, author of Off and founder of the It’s Complicated technology podcast, says it’s important to first work out why you’re doing this. “Is it to create some headspace?” she asks me. “Is it to spend more real time with family and friends? Is it just because everyone else says you should be doing it? If it’s the latter you’re almost certainly doomed from the start.”

It’s important to occupy yourself. “Idle thumbs itch for a smartphone,” Goodin says. “Just sitting and staring at your new feature-less phone will make you long for its bells and whistles counterpart even more.”

So, think back to what you used to enjoy doing before you spent so much time on screens; was it reading a really good book, going out for drinks regularly with friends, maybe just getting outdoors a tiny bit more? Whatever it is, plan to spend much more time doing it.

“Everyone always tells me they can’t believe how many hours there really are in the day when they put down their phones,” says Goodwin. “And considering we now spend over eight hours a day staring at them, you really are going to find yourself with a lot of time on your hands.”

Eight hours! Maybe there’s hope for me yet. So, to misquote Homer Simpson, here’s to the smartphone: the cause of — and solution to — all of life’s problems.

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