Single Purpose Devices
Welcome to the Single Purpose Devices community on the Fediverse!
A community dedicated to the growing trend of using devices for a singular purpose, rather than relying on (often digital) "do everything" devices, like a smartphone.
Share your favorite tricks, devices, habit changes, media formats and more!
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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.