The Dumbphone Experiment: Enabling the Apple Watch

It’s been three days, and I’ve managed to survive without my iPhone. I did forget my camera on the first day, which was a bummer, but it’s been with me (and gotten use) since then. This was one of the goals, so I’m happy about that.

Getting a SIM card and forwarding calls to my Punkt MP02, as mentioned in the previous post in this series, sorted my iMessage woes. They now arrive consistently on my iPad (and all other devices), which is what I wanted. The downside is that regular texts won’t reach the dumbphone. I almost missed a delivery because of this, but luckily the driver decided to call as well. Carrying a dumbphone has led me to answer more calls, or maybe it’s just the fact that I can’t screen since I haven’t bothered with importing all contacts.

Speaking of deliveries, I’m glad most companies in Sweden have decent enough apps because I can’t really click on any links to sort out details on the MP02. That’s a minor issue though, thanks to the apps, but also the fact that the messages now sit on my iPad.

I decided to activate cellular on my Apple Watch Series 5. This after having missed a couple of conversations in a row over iMessage because I was doing errands, thus not looking at my iPad. While this could be construed as a feature — no interruptions, stay in the now, and so on — it was annoying at the time. Having an Apple Watch with cellular means that I can get notifications even if I’m not on Wi-Fi, or connected to the iPhone over bluetooth. This means I can glance at my wrist, and decide if I should pull out my iPad to interact or not.

I suspect that Signal doesn’t like me having two phone numbers. I got logged out on my iPad for some reason, and that’s probably due to me being logged in on the MP02, using Pigeon. The phone number there isn’t the same as the one I’ve used before, since it’s a pre-paid SIM (again, see the previous post). I’ll have to investigate further, this could be an issue though, and would mean I’d have to skip Pigeon altogether. Not a massive loss obviously, typing on the MP02 isn’t exactly a fluid experience, if you know what I mean…

I’ve annoyed my better half by not being able to check up locations when we were doing errands, nor have I been much use shopping since our shared shopping lists are in Todoist. Pulling up the 12.9” iPad Pro in the grocery store won’t happen, so I guess I’ll have to resort to pen and paper.

I did use the Notes feature in the MP02 to write some instructions pertaining to the new Divide & Conquer office. The typing experiment isn’t particularly fun, but at least I can check these details without pulling out my iPad. I missed my iPhone there, for a bit. The same goes for the necessary passwords and alarm codes, things I’ve had to commit to memory (let’s hope I’ve succeeded should I arrive first) since I can’t rely on 1Password in my pocket.

The experiment continues…