E book Reader! An e-ink reader for my books keeps me off the doomscroll.
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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Single Purpose Devices
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What do you recommend?
I have a Kobo, but I usually use a Hisense A7CC, which, I admit, is a phone, but it doesn't have to be! Mine has no sim card in it.
What do you think would be a substantial use case you could separate from your phone?
I've been using smartphone since the first iPhone, btw. It's just I quickly realized how toxic they were, the huge risks they were for our privacy too, and decided to I needed to maintain as much distance as possible and therefore quickly learned to barely rely on my phone at all, and only for what I have no choice, aka IDs, security and banking, taxis/Uber (those two not being strictly required but a real pain to not have with me for when I need to get one).
The idea for me being to only use for what's required (in my case: ID, security, passwords, taxis/Uber) and leave all the rest to other tools.
- Social? I do Lemmy (an nothing else) only on the computer. No notification on the go (it's never that urgent or important), no fomo (I can't be bothered), no distraction.
- Messaging? Barely any, and only through SMS. People wanting to reach me know that there are better means to reach me than an app and they either accept it or they won't reach me... which is perfectly fine with me too as they're the ones wanting to get in touch, not I (and never that urgently either: I will use an email and whenever I can snail mail have my preference ;)
- Reading? I read printed books (out of privacy and ownership concerns and after almost 20 years mostly reading ebooks, if you want to know) and carry a pocket book with me.
- Writing? I take my notes with a pen on paper (I just created a post about that ;)
- Games? I play chess... irl (I even carry a small pocket chess set, just in case). I only play lichess or chess.com only at the computer.
- Music and podcasts? I still own my iPod classic (the one with the wheel and no Internet at all) but I seldom use it since I barely listen to music or podcasts when I'm out for my long daily walks.
The pen and notebook has been good for me too. I had to get in the habit of carrying a satchel but since I have it’s just another reason to keep my phone switched off.
One thing I do feel dependent for is reading articles with text-to-speech. The phone is just faster and easier to operate for that (1. Turn on reader view and 2. Swipe down with two fingers to start the voice reader).
First off, that looks super cute. 8Gg storage with microSD support up to 256 GB would work for music, though for audiobooks I would struggle. Do you have any experience using it for audiobooks? Can it change the playback speed at all?
That said, I have two phones now, one for work related stuff which had a sim card and actually uses the internet, then the other which has no mobile service, relying instead on WiFi tethering from the other phone. All my entertainment stuff comes through the offline phone so when I am out and about it is offline unless I actively turn on the tethering. Just this small change has made my usage drop, leaving my phone unable to pipe social media into me 24x7. That said, I am considering getting a Linux phone to make it even less of a direct feed from internet to veins.
As for podcasts, I would recommend batching them. Do a weekly update and just be a week behind. It means you don't have the daily stress of "what happened now?" intruding in your life. You get your podcast dump, download them all, move them over, and then listen as you wish. If you want to keep something you haven't heard yet you can make that choice but eventually you will have to delete or not get something new due to space constraints. Very handy for forcing a reevaluation of your listening habits.
Past that, I would recommend considering a little gaming handheld. For people who like retro games something that does emulation up to PS1 can set you back around $70usd, not a horrible amount. Because it is purpose built for that it is generally set up for good suspending of games, resuming when you open it up, and it being separate makes your phone cleaner. You can also consider moving media consumption like film and TV onto that device to further clear off your phone.
Another thing is to consider using the grey scale mode on your phone. All the attention getting stuff is made less impactful by grey scale and while you can still use apps, read text, and even view pictures it is far less gripping.
Oh, and also, fidget toys. A Rubik's cube is great but is a little brain centric. You need to look at it at least a little. Best to have something you can just okay with without any visual input, something you can just touch and play with.
Grayscale is definitely a big help.
I wouldn’t recommend the Echo Mini for audiobooks. It can play them, but they might need to be converted to a supported format. It doesn’t support chapters or bookmarks as far as I’ve read on forums. So if you play a song and come back to your book, it might start from the beginning. It cannot change playback speed either.
For podcasts, batching is a good idea. I’d probably go for an separate, even simpler player, if I don’t care too much about the order the episodes are played in. Sobering screen less even.
The Rubik’s is a 2x2x2. There’s a 6 minute video online showing how to solve it. It is a burden at the moment - more than I expected - but I'm hoping to master it so it can become a fidget toy.