Jul 31st, 2026 Friday Rainy
This is my cellphone, named “momo”.
It is a flip phone, a style popular maybe two decades ago, and mostly out of fashion as soon as smartphones took over. While it theoretically has the capabilities to go online, the performance rendered that feature pointless. As a result, the functions mostly are the same ones that you would expect a phone to have, in your parents’ generation – calling and answering, texting, alarm clock, notes, calendar, etc.
And that perfectly meets my needs, with the bonus of being extra portable (lighter and smaller than most models).
What about the many apps available? You might ask.
Well, this little guy cannot handle downloading, so for any I do enjoy regularly, I have a tablet, on which only four apps have been installed for personal reasons (one of the four was pre-installed by my husband), ever since I received it as a gift three years ago.
If you have a few dozens (or more) of apps in your phone, how often do you benefit from them? Have they made your life much easier?
Everything else works really well, reliably. Even the core characteristic of a phone, i.e. to get calls, outperformed the most updated version of android that belongs to my husband (he missed an urgent one because his phone was unreachable for some reason, and the caller contacted me instead).
You might complain, though, that writing a message on such an old device felt SO SLOW.
And I would agree. Surprisingly, it does not bother me.
If you are able to edit and deliver a text in a few seconds – and your text editor has become so intelligent that it will attempt to finish or even start your sentence for you – many people would go for it. And they pride themselves for being efficient.
By saving a few minutes.
For business-related communications, being faster has an advantage, especially since an average worker needs to respond to a few hundreds of them a day. The spared time adds up, and can be a game changer to the productivity and well-being of the employee.
However, I only use my momo for private relations, and I am by no means so popular that I would get enough messages a day to feel overwhelmed. The moments I spent typing down what I hoped to say, word by word, carefully chose the phrases and the tones, reread before hitting “send”, made me feel connected to the recipient.
Because I was fully focused – I must or the screen would time out – and I was thinking of that person, picturing their face as I was composing my expression.
The short delay in my reply would not make any difference in my relationship with him/her. The time I got to concentrate on this task, might.
I opt to be slow. It reassures me that what I allocate my time to do is actually meaningful.