Posted on Thu, Jul 11th, 2024 | 2583 words | ~12.18 minutes read
The day has finally come, after working and getting my OWN salary, I finally have my own source of money that I can spend on without guilt. So, what's the first thing I should get, a new furniture? PC upgrade maybe? Nope, it's a fucking keitai (aka Japanese flip phone).
Well, because I want to get off the internet, or rather, the social media part of it, I would love to goon and that other stuff still, and besides, my current phone is the recent Poco F5, that runs just about anything I throw at it, which is amazing but it's not helping me reducing screen time just because of the fact that it's so good at everything it does.
While it is nice to have a somewhat powerful (Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 12GB ram) phone, it's really easy to get into that spiral of doing absolutely fucking nothing. For example, mindlessly scrolling on TikTok/Youtube Shorts for hours on end. I personally, don't use TikTok (this started off as a joke, when the app was new, because I was a proud redditor), so I cant speak for that app, but Youtube Shorts, GOD, the amount of time it took me to realize that I was wasting my time, is just awful. I could be scrolling for hours before that part of my brain realizes that something was wrong and suddenly I gain back my awareness, it's weird, I don't like it.
Easy. Just get rid of the phone, or the "smart" part of it. This way it forces me to go using the desktop and waste time there, which has less (dangerous/addicting) effect on me because usually I'd end up doing code or some other boring shit, which is great!
Now, I never had a flip phone before, mostly because when the time I have my own phone, it wasn't a thing anymore, so I had to do some research!
If you've spent any time researching "dumbphones", there's a high chance you'll found the r/dumbphones and r/garaho subreddits, which are great! Considering the amount of resources that it has.
Basically, I need a phone that can do:
After hours of just looking around the internet, I decided to go with Sharp Aquos 601SH or Sharp Keitai 2. Unfortunately, there has been a whole lot of complaints from westerner people (those being on the USA and Europe) about the phone not supporting the bands required for their carrier but, fortunately, I live in Asia. Japanese Keitai tends to just work in Asia countries. So yeah, pretty cool.
Buying a Keitai is not exactly easy because you have to jump thru a lot of hoops to get it to you, but, again, fortunately, my Amazon equivalent for this country, Shopee, has it for sale, So I don't need to use proxies or pay any of those expensive import/export tax, thank GOD.
After waiting for a week for the phone to arrive (I swear, theyre not usually this long, at least in my region), it's here.
Now, the first thing you should do after getting a keitai is to give it a strap.
Ok nice, now let's get to the real thing, installing applications.
So, how the hell are supposed to install apps into this, because the browser that my phone came with can't download files.
Easy, we use ADB.
I'm using linux so all I had to do it to just run sudo pacman -S android-tools in the terminal and ... that's it :D.
For windows folks, I guess you had to find a binary somewhere and then put it in your enviroment path (or just rawdog it inside the extracted folder like a maniac).
Anyways going back to the phone, enable the developer options and the USB debugging options inside it, so that ADB can detect our device!
After that, just run adb install <path/to/app.apk> with your apks.
Here is the not-so-detailed list of what I installed:
(Important!!! cuz we dont have google services installed)(Anon Login)(Super old version but supports CBZ archives!!)and... that should be all I needed. Funnily enough, the native email app that it came with just works with my email so no need for third party app there :D.
The phone only has 1GB of ram, and most of it is being used by those silly japanese-region only apps like Emopa and the likes.
Considering I can't even use these, it's better off to just disable them :D
List of apps that I disabled (won't affect phone usability in any way)
| Package Name | Purpose |
|---|---|
com.android.dreams.phototable |
|
com.android.inputmethod.latin |
|
com.android.phasebeam |
|
com.mobisystems.office |
Office Suit |
com.svox.pico |
TTS |
jp.co.sharp.android.copyhistorysh |
|
jp.co.sharp.android.emopar |
Emopar |
jp.co.sharp.android.emopar.internalcontent |
Emopar content 1 |
jp.co.sharp.android.emopar.internalcontent2 |
Emopar content 2 |
jp.co.sharp.android.nfphomesetter |
|
jp.co.sharp.android.passnow |
PASSNOW |
jp.co.sharp.android.wallpaper.sougen |
|
jp.co.softbank.mb.pim |
|
jp.co.softbank.wispr.nfp |
|
jp.co.yahoo.android.apps.map.galaph |
Yahoo! Maps (JP only) |
jp.naver.line.android |
LINE (deprecated) |
jp.softbank.mb.addressbookdelivery |
|
jp.softbank.mb.dmb |
|
jp.softbank.mb.ichinaviclt |
|
jp.softbank.mb.tetherAuthNfp |
|
sharp.jp.android.makersiteappli |
Do note that application like SHSHOW can be use to download emoticons/wallpaper/sfx for your phone, so it's partially useful, feel free to keep this one on.
So after all of this kerfuffle, what works and what not.
| Features | |
|---|---|
| SMS | ✔️ |
| Phone Calls | ✔️ |
| ✔️ | |
| 4G Connectivity | ✔️ |
| Decent Camera | ✔️, has that shitty camera aesthetics if you're into it |
| Good Battery Lifetime | ✔️, VERY |
| External Storage | ✔️, spec said 32GB only but it seems to work fine with 64gb SD Card |
| Google Services | ❗ (Can work with MicroG) |
| Browser | ❗ |
| Wired Headset | ❌ |
Here's some picture I took with the camera.
