London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Oct 20, 2025

Even a mugger didn’t want my old Nokia. So why are so many people turning to ‘dumbphones’?

Even a mugger didn’t want my old Nokia. So why are so many people turning to ‘dumbphones’?

They are low-tech and hard to text on, but the simplicity is comforting. I was a devotee for years and can see the appeal
I was never ideologically opposed to smartphones. Or, at least, I wasn’t at first. It all began one spring afternoon in 2006, when a group of friends and I were mugged. The assailant demanded our phones and wallets but when I handed him my Nokia 1110, whose keypad was strapped to it with an elastic band, the mugger’s response was categorical: “Nah, mate.”

It was humiliating. While my friends could bask in universal sympathy – they had, after all, lost their beloved and expensive BlackBerrys – I had to tell the rest of our school and the police that my phone was so crap it had been rejected. Even as a trophy.

But there was another way of looking at it. My Nokia had been through a lot. Dropped so much its case had smashed (for a while, when I lost the keypad, I even texted using the end of a blunt pencil), it had now survived a robbery. A more glamorous device would have crumbled under the pressure, but my phone was made of sterner, simpler stuff. In some ways, its crapness was its biggest asset.

When I thought about it like that, I wasn’t ashamed of my phone; I was proud. And when I lost it in my second year of university, I decided I wouldn’t upgrade. It was 2011, my friends were buying iPhones, but I stayed low-tech. For the next 10 years, I didn’t look back. Now it seems more and more people are recognising the virtues of keeping it simple: just last week the BBC was heralding “the return of ‘dumbphones’”.

Functionality was never a problem. Dumbphones can call and text and, if you have a computer, that’s really all you need. The biggest problem is the way others regard you. There are plenty names for people like me – refusers, anti-technologists, neo-luddites – and most of them are negative, defined in some way by saying no.

True, I wasn’t saying “yes” to a smartphone, but then I didn’t exactly have Apple executives banging on my door offering me an iPhone. My resistance, if it could be called that, was pretty passive. Besides, I was hardly living in a cabin in the woods. I had already succumbed to Facebook, I used Gmail. I still had a device in my pocket that was capable of converting a message into radio waves that travelled at the speed of light – even if, in predictive text, “food” always came out as “done”.

The more smartphones took over, however, the more my resistance hardened into something more principled. Like anyone outside the mainstream I was forced to construct a rationale for my modus vivendi, not least to justify it to my friends, who had grown tired of sending me tailored invites to events because I wasn’t on any WhatsApp groups.

I would opine that smartphones aren’t really about making our lives easier; they’re about allowing private companies to profit from areas of our lives that were previously closed to them. It might be quicker to order a cab through an app than to find the number of a local service, but in exchange for that efficiency you allow a company to log and sell your data. They make millions from this and what do you save? Seconds. And what precious time you gain you’re likely to squander scrolling through content anyway.

I would even argue that smartphones can make people worse at performing everyday tasks. Basic orienteering skills and transport knowledge have been outsourced to apps like Google Maps, leaving us lost and confused the moment those services fail. If my friends called me a hypocrite, I would reply, haughtily, that my poor sense of direction was entirely God-given.

In short, in order to defend myself, I became an “ideologist”, someone whose “rejection stems from a formulated, critical worldview towards the mobile phone”. When I met another dumbphone user, I felt an instant affinity. We would swap techniques for navigating the world – how, before we flew to foreign cities, we had to print out maps to take us from the station to our hotels. We would bemoan how hard old-school texting can be on thumbs, and how most of the time we just called, which our friends found alarming.

But in August last year, I lost my footing on a sheep track and tumbled 15 feet into a ravine. Dumbphones are strong, but even they have their kryptonite. When my Nokia felt the kiss of that Scottish stream, it gave up the ghost after a decade of loyal service. At the start of the pandemic, my mother had sent me her old iPhone 5s in the hope that the isolation of lockdown might finally convince me to join the family WhatsApp group. At first I had politely declined, but I knew if I bought another Nokia now she would never forgive me.

I would say it’s made my life easier, but in complicated ways. I no longer have to carry my laptop with me, ducking into coffee shops to check my work email. But then my 5s is not much better than a Nokia. It can’t support iOS 14, which means that most apps are beyond it. And for some mysterious reason it will only send and receive messages, even via SMS, when it’s connected to wifi. And when I turn on mobile data, it promptly switches off.

In some ways, it’s a good compromise. I can still feel like a survivalist, finding new ways around my phone’s shortcomings, while also being able to receive images of my brother’s new baby. So long as I’m near a wireless router, that is.

But such is built-in obsolescence, pretty soon I’ll have to get a new phone. If I decide to stay with a smartphone, it’ll have to be second-hand and at least a little bit crap. Because if there was joy in using an old Nokia for a decade, it never came from shunning the mainstream. It was about saying yes to something that others rejected. Something only the most discerning mugger could love.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
China Warns UK of ‘Consequences’ After Delay to London Embassy Approval
France’s Wealthy Shift Billions to Luxembourg and Switzerland Amid Tax and Political Turmoil
"Sniper Position": Observation Post Targeting 'Air Force One' Found Before Trump’s Arrival in Florida
Shouting Match at the White House: 'Trump Cursed, Threw Maps, and Told Zelensky – "Putin Will Destroy You"'
Windows’ Own ‘Siri’ Has Arrived: You Can Now Talk to Your Computer
Thailand and Singapore Investigate Cambodian-Based Prince Group as U.S. and U.K. Sanctions Unfold
‘No Kings’ Protests Inflate Numbers — But History Shows Nations Collapse Without Strong Executive Power
Chinese Tech Giants Halt Stablecoin Launches After Beijing’s Regulatory Intervention
Manhattan Jury Holds BNP Paribas Liable for Enabling Sudanese Government Abuses
Trump Orders Immediate Release of Former Congressman George Santos After Commuting Prison Sentence
S&P Downgrades France’s Credit Rating, Citing Soaring Debt and Political Instability
Ofcom Rules BBC’s Gaza Documentary ‘Materially Misleading’ Over Narrator’s Hamas Ties
Diane Keaton’s Cause of Death Revealed as Pneumonia, Family Confirms
Former Lostprophets Frontman Ian Watkins Stabbed to Death in British Prison
"The Tsunami Is Coming, and It’s Massive": The World’s Richest Man Unveils a New AI Vision
Outsider, Heroine, Trailblazer: Diane Keaton Was Always a Little Strange — and Forever One of a Kind
Dramatic Development in the Death of 'Mango' Founder: Billionaire's Son Suspected of Murder
Two Years of Darkness: The Harrowing Testimonies of Israeli Hostages Emerging From Gaza Captivity
EU Moves to Use Frozen Russian Assets to Buy U.S. Weapons for Ukraine
Europe Emerges as the Biggest Casualty in U.S.-China Rare Earth Rivalry
HSBC Confronts Strategic Crossroads as NAB Seeks Only Retail Arm in Australia Exit
U.S. Chamber Sues Trump Over $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee
Shenzhen Expo Spotlights China’s Quantum Step in Semiconductor Self-Reliance
China Accelerates to the Forefront in Global Nuclear Fusion Race
Yachts, Private Jets, and a Picasso Painting: Exposed as 'One of the Largest Frauds in History'
Australia’s Wedgetail Spies Aid NATO Response as Russian MiGs Breach Estonian Airspace
McGowan Urges Chalmers to Cut Spending Over Tax Hike to Close $20 Billion Budget Gap
Victoria Orders Review of Transgender Prison Placement Amid Safety Concerns for Female Inmates
U.S. Treasury Mobilises New $20 Billion Debt Facility to Stabilise Argentina
French Business Leaders Decry Budget as Macron’s Pro-Enterprise Promise Undermined
Trump Claims Modi Pledged India Would End Russian Oil Imports Amid U.S. Tariff Pressure
Surging AI Startup Valuations Fuel Bubble Concerns Among Top Investors
Australian Punter Archie Wilson Tears Up During Nebraska Press Conference, Sparking Conversation on Male Vulnerability
Australia Confirms U.S. Access to Upgraded Submarine Shipyard Under AUKUS Deal
“Firepower” Promised for Ukraine as NATO Ministers Meet — But U.S. Tomahawks Remain Undecided
Brands Confront New Dilemma as Extremists Adopt Fashion Labels
The Sydney Sweeney and Jeans Storm: “The Outcome Surpassed Our Wildest Dreams”
Erika Kirk Delivers Moving Tribute at White House as Trump Awards Charlie Presidential Medal of Freedom
British Food Influencer ‘Big John’ Detained in Australia After Visa Dispute
ScamBodia: The Chinese Fraud Empire Shielded by Cambodia’s Ruling Elite
French PM Suspends Macron’s Pension Reform Until After 2027 in Bid to Stabilize Government
Orange, Bouygues and Free Make €17 Billion Bid for Drahi’s Altice France Telecom Assets
Dutch Government Seizes Chipmaker After U.S. Presses for Removal of Chinese CEO
Bessent Accuses China of Dragging Down Global Economy Amid New Trade Curbs
U.S. Revokes Visas of Foreign Nationals Who ‘Celebrated’ Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
AI and Cybersecurity at Forefront as GITEX Global 2025 Kicks Off in Dubai
DJI Loses Appeal to Remove Pentagon’s ‘Chinese Military Company’ Label
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
×