merlin

I genuinely hate using my phone and I'm going to destroy it

As of now, I habitually spend too much time on my phone being unproductive. I regularly scroll on the feed knowing I'm wasting time. I have tried blocking apps but to no surprises, any well-being feature is no match to my lack of willpower to do actually important things.

I'm done blaming myself or being ashamed. I think advice like "uninstall the apps, put a timer, put your phone away" is overdone, oversaturated and shallow like the shortform content we're all trying to run from. It's not effective. The issue goes deeper than that and clearly a different solution is needed.

And it's not a dumbphone. The "dumbphone lifestyle" as I know it, which I exclusively know about from social media is fake and it's just undercover ads trying to sell an aesthetic. I think those are meant to entice people more into buying a Y2K-style phone for the thought of living like it was the 2000s or what have you, rather than actually overcoming scrolling addiction. It's a badaid solution to the issue, because how does having two phones fix anything? Like disabling timers, you can just use the smartphone. Also that costs money, and I don't think things should cost money anymore.

My plan is to try and extend my current phone's lifespan as much as I could. It's nearing its fifth year with me but I think it still works as long as I don't have any issues with the touchscreen calibration. The only obvious issue it has are some red lines on the screen which I think can be fixed by a repair.

I think I can increase my general appreciation for my phone if I become more sentimental about it. Currently I really don't care if my phone gets replaced since it's old even if it still works because I have the budget to buy a new one.

One way I could do that, as I've done with my laptop, is to customize its software.

Camera: One thing I want my phone to be good at is being my camera, which it isn't. The camera is really slow on startup and sometimes I need to hold still for five whole seconds just to take one picture, because if I move immediately the picture it captures will be blurry. It also makes me wait 20 seconds before it lets me see the pictures in the gallery app.

Music player: I would also like it to be my music player but I'm really not liking the music player app the phone came with. For some reason whenever my phone's alarm goes off, it shows me a "recommended morning song" screen that I don't want. It also keeps the screen on to show whatever is playing, even if I press the power button, it keeps turning the screen on.

Reading device: I don't like reading on my phone because I need big text to read and my phone is small. The things I read also are not design for small screens. I prefer reading on my laptop. Still I think I shouldn't throw away any expectation for my phone to function as a good reading device away when I know that I will be reading on it every once in a while. It's something to appreciate.

Gaming phone: I only play one game on my phone. It's something both my brother and I enjoy and play together which is why it's important to me that it's able to run smoothly. As of now, I'm playing on the lowest settings and still I encounter some issues. I think it's an optimization problem on the game's end, but it can't be helped. My phone doesn't have high-end specs so it would help to debloat it.

Installing a custom ROM or a GSI into my phone to give it a refresh is something that I've been thinking of. As far as I understand, it's free and open source software for my phone. I'd really like to use FOSS over proprietary software on my phone since similarly, switching my OS from Windows to Linux made me appreciate my laptop a lot more. I think I'll have a greater degree of phone customization when I do, but more importantly I won't have to worry about spyware and (hopefully) lag.

However, a concern I have is the security of these custom phone OSes. I often up a banking/digital wallet app which I feel might not be compatible with the new software. I see that there are workarounds to its security features, but I also worry about the overall safety of using a banking app on a custom phone OS.

Besides all of that, this is going to be my first time ever trying to mess with my phone's root or bootloader and stuff. I also worry about "bricking" my phone, or basically making it unusable if I mess up. Which is why though I don't want a new phone, I think I should have another one just in case of emergencies. I have the budget, so some time in the near future I think I could settle on a really cheap smartphone that I won't ever use for purposes other than emergencies. I still want to keep my current phone as my main one and I don't want to let anything get in the way of that.

[25 October 2025]: Actually that sounds terrible. What if I'm successful on every account and everything on the custom ROM worked fine? I would not want to have that extra phone anymore. Really, the only thing I'm worried about is the digital wallet app. I think I should just bring cash like old times. I think I should just go ahead one day and try installing the custom ROM stuff, dive in head first.