Why I traded my iPhone for a flip phone

In December 2024 I did something most people think is a little unhinged: I “upgraded” from an iPhone 13 Mini to a 1990s-style flip phone.

The trigger was simple. My one-year-old son was already reaching for my phone — not for a toy, not for a snack, for the phone. He didn’t know what it did. He just knew it was the thing Dad was always looking at. That was the whole lesson, delivered by a toddler in about two seconds.

Lugnut, Fixed It.

The flip phone solved everything the way a brick solves a window: bluntly and permanently. You can’t doomscroll on a phone that physically cannot scroll. You can’t “just check” on a 2.8-inch screen with a T9 keypad. The friction is the feature.

What I gained

• Attention. I look at my kids instead of my screen.
• Battery. Weeks, not hours.
• A pocketable phone again. It flips shut. It’s tiny.
• The end of the infinite feed. There is simply nowhere to fall in.

What I gave up (and didn’t miss)

Maps, mostly. Camera quality, sure. The constant background hum of being reachable by every app at once. Turns out that last one wasn’t a loss at all.

Two kids later, still no smartphone. It’s going great.

There was exactly one thing I genuinely missed, and it became this whole project. More on that next.