The digital detox vibe is real, and one company might have the answer in a gadget that makes an Apple Watch into a phone. Kind of.
Smartphones may well be what most people are looking for in their day to day, but in the past few years, we’ve heard of some people going the total opposite direction. Not to a big screen, but rather something smaller. Much smaller.
That’s the world connected to the “digital detox”, a phrase that suggests you might want to ditch the doomscrolling and void-filling technology associated with modern phones, and go back to a simpler time that encouraged you to go outside, and to spend time away from a screen. Whatever that is.
It’s partly why older styles of phones are making a resurgence, with devices like reinventions of classic Nokia mobiles popping up with a focus on minimalist features. A smaller screen, a T9 keypad, a low-end camera, and a total lack of apps.
This is the domain of the main digital detox mobile, but there are other options.
In recent months, the Light Phone has popped up as an alternative, a phone with relatively decent specs, but a black and white screen that essentially discourages you from staring at the screen endlessly.
However, one company has a clever idea for a dumb phone concept that takes a gadget many already have, yet reskins it as a phone.
It’s called the “TinyPod”, and it’s an $80 USD case for the Apple Watch that looks a whole lot like the original iPod, complete with a click wheel at the bottom which reinterprets the Digital Crown of the Apple Watch to work as the wheel.
The look is of a classic iPod made tiny, while the Apple Watch runs at the heart, which is clever because a cellular-equipped Apple Watch can do much of what a phone can do, albeit on a smaller screen. It can make calls and it can send messages, even if the latter is a touch clunky. It can play music to Bluetooth earphones and it can give you glimpses of the news, though it can’t ready a full article.
In many ways, the Apple Watch can function as a tiny phone, which makes the concept of the TinyPod so compelling: snap an Apple Watch into place and it’s not far from being a small dumb phone. There’s no camera, but given the camera is typically one of the least impressive parts of any digital detoxing dumbphone featurephone, that may not matter.
Of course, you’ll want the cellular-equipped Apple Watch for the phone and message support, but you’ll also need an eSIM-ready operator. In Australia, that’s all of the majors and a handful of smaller players, but not every telco has the support.
One thing the TinyPod does have going for it is price: available for $80 USD, it’s an inexpensive approach to converting a phone to be smaller when you want or need it to be.
Don’t want to make the conversion to a dumb phone, but just want to go without an iPhone for a weekend? Snap the Watch in and folks can still reach you. It’s definitely clever, and works with a variety of models, ranging from the small Apple Watch SE to the extra large Apple Watch Ultra and Ultra 2.
TinyPod will also have a less expensive model for $30 which does away with the click wheel altogether, and exposes the Digital Crown, acting more like a skin as opposed to a case. It’s a similar concept made even less expensive.
As for whether any local Australian distributors will get the TinyPod, that remains to be seen, but it’s definitely one of the more curious plays on a digitally detoxing dumbphone we’ve seen, and one to keep an eye on, for sure.
