Speaker 1: I ditched my iPhone 15 promax and spent a week with a Nokia flip phone to see if I could survive and maybe even thrive without a smartphone. In 2024, the two thousands are calling. This is the Nokia 27 80 flip. It has that classic flip phone design we know and love with echoes of the Nokia 27 60 from the late two thousands, plus newer features like maps. Maybe this challenge will be easier than I thought. [00:00:30] Step one was storing my iPhone in a hard to reach location. It's done and this my friends, is my new phone for the week. The Nokia 27 80. Flip is $90, has 4G and runs on major carriers and MVNOs, like at and t, Verizon, T-Mobile and Boost in the us. Just put some little stickers on my flip phone because it only feels right. You can call, text, [00:01:00] go on YouTube, use maps, surf the web, check your email, take photos and listen to music. There are also several utility apps and what would a Nokia phone be without snake, but okay. How well do all of these features work? I'm shooting with John. My mom says hi.
Speaker 2: Hello mother.
Speaker 1: As cool as I think I look with this thing up to my ear, I mainly used speakerphone. Do I sound clear? Saying hi from the Nochi 27 80 [00:01:30] flip. It doesn't sound like muffled at all. Okay, that's good to know. To hang up. You can hit the end key or very dramatically flip the phone closed, which I reserved for special occasions, but do love. Hi. Remember the T nine keyboard where you press the numbers with the letters you need and it guesses what word you want? To be totally honest, I didn't remember it because I had a T nine phone for six months in fifth grade and then an iPhone from there on out. But I did remember multi-tap [00:02:00] texting where you pressed the numbers multiple times to compose a message letter by letter. So I spent the week doing that, which took four. As a result, my texts were short and didn't have much personality.
Speaker 3: No, you're adding more words type. This is why people sent, I
Speaker 1: Know. Like two letter.
Speaker 3: Two letter messages. Yeah. This is why we have LO, L and jk.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until shooting the B roll for this video that my colleague, John Kim taught me how to properly use T nine.
Speaker 2: [00:02:30] So just type into full word and try to just go through it and see if it gets every single word that you're trying to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: This definitely speeds things up, but it doesn't always get the word I'm looking for and it isn't as fast as typing on my iPhone, of course, so I'd still want to keep my text short, but one unexpected perk of this keyboard is that because typing is a bit of a task, I replied to text faster to get it over with, which is good because I am notoriously slow to text back, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could send [00:03:00] a pretty good selection of emojis and see the ones sent to me even if they weren't available on my phone. Shockingly, this was my first time playing snake, and while I'm not the best at it, I get the hype. I keep missing the apple. My fellow sea netters, Sean bra and faith of course had to play as well.
Speaker 4: You're not supposed to hit the wall.
Speaker 5: Oh really? Oh, you have to hold it down. In the past, you didn't have to hold it down. You just so [00:03:30] I keep you out of your tongue.
Speaker 6: That in mind I would, snake was just like one pixel.
Speaker 4: We had to pretend it was a snake and then who goes? We had to take our word for it.
Speaker 1: My roommate keeps saying they ified the snake. They did. There's also a store with more apps, which I admittedly only looked at once, but Sean was very intrigued.
Speaker 4: Whoa. Name the vegetable free. It takes longer to type it than to get on. I got it. Write the name of the vegetable. Is that a leak?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a leak. Very interesting stuff in the app store. [00:04:00] I had a lot of fun with the camera on this phone. It's five megapixels, so it's very different from the 48 megapixel camera on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. In fact, it's closer to an iPhone four camera from 2010. The shutter speed is slower than I'm used to, so I often moved too fast, not my best work. It can also be hard to see what you're photographing because the display gets dark at certain angles. Zoom shots are fuzzy and low light shots aren't very clear either. Although [00:04:30] flash helps a bit, but even these quote imperfect photos have a nostalgic feel that made me like this camera and here is what made me love it with patience and good lighting. I got some fairly high quality looking photos. Oh, this one came out kind of cute. Yeah, that one is kind of cute. Wait, that one. Why is it giving iPhone 11?
Speaker 1: I even found a low light workaround. I've mentioned this new MOA clip light before, and this is further proof that it really [00:05:00] takes your photos to the next level. You know what I've been doing? You have to be careful because I really think it could break it. Look at that difference between no light flash and the clip light. The last one's kind of giving iPhone 11. That being said, the highest video resolution offered by the phone is four 80 by seven 20, so the quality isn't great. You can't win 'em all. This phone has Google and a browser app aptly called internet where I bookmarked my frequently visited sites. Some like Slack [00:05:30] don't work, but Facebook X Instagram threads and TikTok do well. TikTok sort of does. Videos do play, but they're covered by the caption. The cursor is laggy and I can't log in or post anything. I can log in and scroll on Instagram, but the interface is squished and that cursor is slow here too. Okay, add to story. What if it's terrible? Terrible? What if it never uploads? [00:06:00] My friend did check it on her iPhone and the quality was rough.
Speaker 7: So scared. It's so bad. Do I leave that up? Yes. I kind
Speaker 1: Of think it's vibey.
Speaker 1: Vibey isn't necessarily the word I'd use, but I didn't feel like using that slow cursor to figure out how to delete it. There is also a YouTube app, which was a little less laggy [00:06:30] than the internet, but still slow at times and because the display is so small and gets too dark to see the video at certain angles. I didn't use this app much either. Now I have to say I am impressed that this little flip phone can run these sites at all, but because they're slow squished and often limited in functionality, I didn't love being online on this phone, but that did mean I was on it less, which isn't a bad thing. I appreciate that this phone has Google Maps because I rely on maps [00:07:00] heavily, but it doesn't indicate which direction I'm facing like my iPhone does. See how
Speaker 8: As I'm spinning the iPhone has this little shadow showing me what direction I'm going in. I
Speaker 1: Missed that on the Nokia, but if you have a better sense of direction than me, this probably won't be an issue for you. This phone doesn't have turn by turn navigation. You have to press the upper right hand button to see the next direction and there's no voice navigation. So I didn't drive anywhere new because again, I have a bad sense of direction. Not having voice navigation definitely would've been difficult [00:07:30] for me.
Speaker 1: I bought two albums and some of my current favorite songs, put them on a micro SD card and popped it into the phone to listen on the music app. This reminded me of buying music for my iPod so nostalgic. Now, halfway through the week, I did get tired of my songs but couldn't justify buying more yet yet, and Spotify doesn't work on this phone, so sometimes I'd listen on YouTube, but as you know, that wasn't my favorite app. There's also FM radio. The battery life is solid on a busy day [00:08:00] where I was navigating, taking lots of photos, posting to Instagram and listening to music on top of calling and texting, I had a hundred percent battery at 10:30 AM and 3% battery by 10:30 PM getting a full 12 hours of heavy use. Simulating how I'd use my iPhone isn't too shabby. On more chill days where I'm really only using the phone to call and text, I can go a day and a half or two before needing to charge.
Speaker 1: This phone forced me not to Uber. This was stressful when I was running late [00:08:30] and would've been unsustainable long-term because although I love to walk when I'm out at night, I usually feel safest. Ubering home but not Ubering for the week was good for my bank account. I'm also so used to Apple Pay that I often left without my wallet. I just went to go grab something from the store and totally forgot my wallet, so I just grabbed my wallet and I am running the errand for the second time. Very important purchase secured. Truly, how could I go without this? This was also probably [00:09:00] good for my bank account because it gave me extra time to decide if I really needed to buy something. So how was the digital detox? To be honest, very uncomfortable, which I wasn't necessarily expecting. I tested a minimalist phone called the Light Phone two a few years ago, and that video is linked on screen.
Speaker 1: I really liked how much more present I was without checking social media all the time. And while I still enjoyed being more present with my friends, while using the Nokia 27 80 flip, the rest of the time I felt anxious. [00:09:30] I feel like my phone is like an adult pacifier and I miss being able to go on Instagram. Totally. And I feel like when I can check it on my computer, it's like a de-stressor. Yeah, and I'm like, what is wrong with me? Overall, using this flip phone has made me realize how much more attached I've become to my smartphone in the past few years, which is a little concerning, but maybe this digital detox thing will get easier over time. Comment below if there are any minimalist tech products [00:10:00] you want me to try next, and make sure to hit like and subscribe for more. Thank you so much for watching.
