A Tale of Two Tiny Phones, Social Media, and the Immeasurable Tragedy of Lost Focus

Two months ago, I got two tiny phones.

Don't get me wrong: I only meant to buy one. When the shipper lost my package and refunded the purchase, I turned around and purchased the only other tiny phone on the market. Like magic, my original purchase was recovered, and in a few days, I was sitting on a tiny phone two-for-one special.

And when I say tiny, here’s one of them alongside an iPhone 13 Pro Max for scale.

The first phone (and the one that was lost) is the Palm Phone PVG100. Ostensibly, it's the nicer of the two phones, but I don't recommend it. The form factor, screen, and overall fit-and-finish are excellent, but it is a severely undercooked product. The internals were outdated when the phone was launched a few years ago, and even with minimalist usage, the phone can be frustrating.

Here are the main cons, though:

• The sim card tray doesn't eject like normal phones. You have to hook a paperclip into the hole and pull the tray out. This is acceptable the first time you do it, but if you tend to swap sims (or if this seems like a lot of work for a phone), it quickly becomes problematic.

• The battery is a goddamn sieve. It's a tiny phone with an even tinier battery at 800 mAh. My Apple Watch gets better life and performance, and that's with regular usage (versus almost no use of the Palm Phone).

• Bluetooth is spotty, at least with Airpods. I have no inclination to spend hundreds of dollars on various shitty headphones to find a pair that works well with the Palm and fits my finicky ears. A USB-C audio adaptor works with wired headphones, but a persistent static interference made anything more than an audiobook a pain to listen to. And even that was pushing it.

So why did I buy this shitty little thing? First, it's the last fucking gasp of Palm, and I'm sentimental. Secondly, I wanted a small phone because -- newsflash -- I don't actually use my phone a whole lot. When I go out on walks, I'd like something that doesn't feel like a goddamn brick in my pocket. But I still need a few critical work-related apps for availability.

In the world of tiny phones, you have the Palm Phone and the Unihertz Jelly 2. The Jelly is the more modern, cheaper, and recommended of the two devices. While it doesn't feel as good in the hand, it nevertheless runs modern hardware, has an excellent battery, headphone jack, modern Bluetooth protocols, and a sim tray that ejects normally.

The cons of the Jelly are brief:

• It has a slightly smaller screen than the Palm, but even those few millimeters make a massive difference while typing.

• The screen seems to be of lesser quality than the Palm. Which is weird -- there's about a $30-50 price difference between the phones, and the Palm phone undoubtedly feelspremium. The Jelly doesn't feel bad, but the screen definitely doesn't look as good as the Palm. This might not be a huge problem if you aren't comparing them side-by-side.

While I used the Palm Phone for the last two months, my partner spent a few weeks on the Jelly. She had some issues with Nest and Uber Eats notifications, which were a problem for her -- other than these inexplicably dysfunctional notifications, she actually loved the tiny device.

The thing is though, I never wanted a tiny phone to do all the things a regular smartphone would do. I wanted a "bridge" device, something minimal but not abjectly dumb. I wanted something that disappeared in the pocket and was unobtrusive. I wanted something that would never be loaded with Twitter and Reddit.

I wanted a relatively single-purpose device as a way to reclaim my focus.

And it worked.

As much as I don't recommend the Palm Phone, the last two months have been great. Although I don't have a problem with social media, per se, I'd rather be protective of my focus. And if I have a feed to scroll, well, the feeds will be scrolled!

Here's where everything went to shit.

At the same time I'm ramping up the Emergency Creative Twitter feed to promote my new book and build a healthy cadence of marketing for my work in general, my partner is mulling and researching the adoption of a dog. After a few weeks, she found a rogue Easter gift on Craigslist in immediate need of a new home (please stop buying pets as gifts), and I was faced with a quick dilemma:

I needed to leave the house, but I also required full accessibility to work. And there was literally no time to test anything or get functions or features correctly set up. And while the Palm Phone had my Outlook and Teams apps at the ready, it didn't have Trello or any other data that is critical to my day job.

So I swapped my sim into a Pixel 6 Pro, and we hit the road. (This is where that issue with the Palm's sim-tray became relevant. After finally getting the tray out, I decided that would be the last time I used the Palm Phone.)

The doggo rescue went swimmingly, and even though I didn't end up requiring any work access, it was comforting to know there wasn't anything I wouldn't have been able to do on the Pixel.

I left my sim card where it was, stuck the tiny phones on a shelf, and enjoyed the robust functionality of a full-featured smartphone.

I continued to manage my Emergency Creative Twitter feed. I engaged in more robust texts with friends, quickly sharing pictures of the new dog. I took a break from the multi-device lifestyle and appreciated having everything I needed in the palm of my hand.

And then I went out for a walk. I carried my phone, because it's too big for my exercise shorts, and then Twitter notifies me of direct messages.

Hm.

Later, when I go sit out on the porch with Harvey Two-Cheeks, instead of writing or reading or simply enjoying the evening, I'm scrolling those infernal feeds.

Twitter.

Reddit.

The latest news about the explosive pandemic no one wants to acknowledge.

The latest news about our crumbling democracy, crumbling culture, and yes, the crumbling fucking world itself.

I've been outlining the next Abraham Owens novel and got all the way to the third act before tripping over myself. Before the doggo and the phone-pocalypse happened, my brain was this close to being ready to hammer out those last scenes.

Then I started scrolling again.

I had worked out the story details (aside from exercise, that's the whole point of so many walks!), but I needed to sit, put my head down, and fucking focus ...

... or scroll. I could just scroll, too.

As my partner and I have discussed at length, the problem is that having too much of everything in the palm of your hand is just no good. She has a serious problem with social media, and I have a problem with scrolling, but the real problem is having unfettered access to everything at all times.

I miss my Palm Phone, but I miss what it represented even more.

Focus.

Freedom from the scrolls.

The joy of intention -- picking up a device for a specific purpose, fulfilling that purpose, and moving on to the next thing, even if that next thing is nothing.

This isn't about productivity and being able to do more things in less time -- this is about not being a slave to that slab of glass and being free to be bored.

Or free to focus.

One device to rule them all sounds great, but it's not for everybody (and maybe not even for anybody). And this is coming from a guy who loves gadgets and technology -- I acquired two tiny phones just for the hell of it, right after I bought the largest phone I've ever owned. And whatever you do, don't ask about my iPads.

But single-purpose devices mean that I can cast aside, step away, and focus.

And if there's one thing a 9-week-old puppy in the house has taught me, it's that there is no greater, more immeasurable tragedy than the loss of focus.

Protect it. No matter what the cost.

###