My phone broke, and although at the time it was the worst thing imaginable, it’s one of the best things to ever happen to me. In this blog post, I want to talk about my inner debate of whether or not to replace my phone, and how not having one has changed my daily routine.
In the great British heatwave of 2026, my iPhone 15 pro overheated, died and never turned on again.
This happened about a week before my birthday, two weeks after I left my job and three months before my contract would run out. It had been a while since I had backed it up too, so on that day I lost all the videos my boyfriend took at the Minecraft experience, countless embarassing photos of my boyfriend and all my videos of Harry Styles’ Together Together tour. It was a dark day indeed.
That was about two months ago, and I haven’t replaced it.
I’m 24-years-old. I’ve had smartphones since I was about 10, and after two months without them I can confirm: it IS the damn phone.
My old habits
My screen time was diabolical.
Most of it was Instagram, honestly. I would scroll reels for hours, thinking I was just taking a five minute break before doing something I wanted to do. It was never five minutes. It got so bad I deleted Instagram from my phone altogether, but I would end up playing mindless games or scrolling on Facebook, and I don’t even like Facebook!
I have lots of hobbies, from reading and writing to crafts. I wasn’t doing any of them because I was tired, and scrolling was the easiest thing to do. I was checking my phone so often, pulling it out of my pocket every five minutes, and abandoning tasks as soon as I got a notification.
It was not healthy, at all, and I knew this. I wanted to give my time to things I wanted to do. I wanted to create things, and absorb myself in stories. I was already trying to stop, then came the day the phone overheated.
The Early Days
The first thing I noticed was that literally everything now involves phones.
I have an iPad, and that helped me stay connected. There were so many apps I didn’t have on there that I needed to download and sign in on.
- Vinted. I had outgoing orders and had to take my iPad to the post office. It was a low point ngl.
- My banking app. When I forgot my purse before, it wasn’t a big deal. Suddenly I had to remember it, and I got to look at my bank balance on what felt like a cinema screen.
- Gym. My gym is 24 hours and uses a QR code to get you in. I drew the line at bringing my iPad to the gym, so I could only go during the staffed hours and had to sign in and out manually. By talking to people. It was hard.
I felt like a child, like I wasn’t old enough to have a phone. If I was out with friends and everyone pulled out their phones, I would end up lighting up the room with my iPad. I couldn’t take photos very easily. Turning off my music when I walked suddenly became a huge inconvenience. I love my iPad and use it all the time for work and uni, but this was not its intended purpose.
The Solution
Like I said, everything involved phones. I needed a phone number. Verification codes, doctor’s calls, phone calls in general.
We charged up my Aunt’s old phone. She passed in 2022. The phone hadn’t been turned on since.
My dad found the pass-code to get into it, but couldn’t find the iCloud password. All I could do with it was make/receive calls and texts and take photos.
I could have reset it, but there were so many things left there by my Aunt. I looked through photos of her last holiday, spied on the texts she never read and snooped on the array of apps she had (she had the Wish app. That was a throwback.) It was a time capsule, and I didn’t want to wipe it out for my own personal vices.
Issues
More and more things turned out to be tied to phones.
I got locked out of my Whatsapp for a day. When I signed back in, I’d lost my chat history. This included business chats but also family chats. None of the media passed over, meaning I’d lost years of photos and videos. I’d been meaning to get loads printed. Now I wouldn’t be able to.
I had a day long crash out over Microsoft Authenticator. If you have ever been locked out of Authenticator, you will understand my pain. I couldn’t get into my uni emails, my study page, anything. Thankfully, after a call with the university tech support, I was back in.
It seemed every day, I found another part of my life that was tied to this stupid glass brick. My memories. My money. My work. My studies. My income. My social life. My fitness.
But everybody has a phone, right? So these things are easy?
It didn’t feel like anything was actually mine, and I was locked out of the physical world because I didn’t have a digital one.
My New Habits
Although I was annoyed at the important apps I now needed on a 15″ screen, I wasn’t pulling out my iPad out of my pocket.
Everything that is normal for people to do now was suddenly an inconvenience. Texting. Scrolling. All of it. While I still used my iPad consistently for tasks, I used it more intentionally than I ever used my phone.
Before, I would wake up and open Instagram. I really didn’t want cinema-sized reels, so I reached for my book instead. I did the same in the evening. Before, I would watch something on my iPad while doing crafts, but my phone would keep snatching my attention. Without the phone there, I was more focused on my hobbies.
It’s really not revolutionary. We have known for a long time that phones are designed to steal our time and attention in a ploy for corporate greed. Our pinkies have dents in because of how we hold them. We all listen to the same snippets of the same six songs on repeat. We buy things just because we saw a picture of them and someone said we need to “run don’t walk” before it sells out. We have filled the world with waste faster than ever, and thrown away our time more easily than ever. We know this, so why do we keep doing it?
Time For an Upgrade
It’s about time I get myself a new phone. I’m between upgrading it or getting a Nokia brick.
When I get a new phone, it’ll be a glorified camera that can take calls and texts. I’ll put my social media on there for my public page, because that’s been doing really well since last week’s post, and maybe a silly game. I won’t have to bring my iPad to the post office, can check my bank balance without worrying about blasting it to the world and enter my gym as antisocially as ever. I can text my boyfriend when everyone else at the table is looking at their phones.
I’ll probably end up scrolling, because let’s be honest: it’s simple entertainment. In moderation, it’s not the end of the world. But I don’t need another smart device. My iPad is great, and helps me focus more than my phone ever did. And while my bag will be lighter when I’m not carrying it with me everywhere, I wouldn’t have made it these months without it. I’m in a very privileged position in that way.
No, I did not go on a full digital detox. I still had a device with social media, but I’ve become more mindful about the tech I surround myself with. We live in a world where everything is digital, and none of it is really ours anymore.
What I think more people should do is create a more mindful balance of the digital and physical worlds. We do not need to go all the way back to caveman days to discover joy and whimsy again, but we need to step away.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of this topic, but what I can say for certain is my phone overheating was probably the best thing to ever happen to me.
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