i'm ditching my iphone

no, i'm not trying to convince you to do the same

As I write this, I’m looking next to me at the phone that got me through the worst years of my life, knowing that I’ll be replacing it in a matter of hours. I feel guilty about it, if you can believe it.

My beautiful iPhone SE, my lifeline. There hasn’t been a moment since I got it in 2018 that I have been without it, and as dystopian as it sounds I have an attachment. When I look at it, I think of the fact that I managed to look after something for over seven years, and for a phone I think that’s amazing, but it has finally started to pack in. The battery life isn’t as good, and eventually the iOS updates will stop happening for it, and don’t even get me started on the storage. 64GB if I don’t want to pay for cloud storage? Even so, I will not be paying for magical storage that could have simply been put into it to begin with. These things are expensive enough, thank you very much.

So when I started considering which phone I wanted to upgrade to, was at a loss. I mean, I’m going to sound like a total pick-me girl here, but my hands are tiny. I don’t like the new phones that are basically tablets, ones that don’t fit in your pocket comfortably and that just look massive. Cue the very funny size doesn’t matter jokes. Regardless, I knew that I would have to sacrifice my teeny little baby, which honestly was the main reason for me keeping my SE for so long.

Apple phones were expensive for very little innovation. Don’t get me wrong, the iOS interface is my absolute favourite, but do I really need ten cameras dotted on the back? I dread to think how people with trypophobia feel. Frankly, I couldn’t justify spending all that money on what was essentially my current phone with a better battery.

And so, and don’t applaud me too loudly for my bravery, I decided to make the switch to Android.

A part of me feels as though I no longer belong to a club, the exclusive group of anyone that has an iPhone. My very first phone was my mum’s old Samsung Galaxy S2, and when I eventually upgraded to her hot pink iPhone 5 it felt like gold dust. I never looked back since then, so changing something that I use all the time so fundamentally was daunting to say the least.

But I did not want a Samsung, either. It was the same as Apple for me, too big, strange features that I did not want, and insanely expensive for something that is absolutely made by modern day slaves in sweat shops. No, thank you. As a girl in her twenties, I am basically attached to my phone, with it practically being another appendage, so it has to be perfect for me. With the two main brands knocked out of the running, I had to go through the lesser-known ones.

My younger brother had a Huawei and hated it, so that was out. A friend of mine had a Nokia and said she wouldn’t recommend it, so I didn’t even look into it. Then, by the magic of the algorithm, I got the best advert ever.

The Nothing Phone.

I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for consumerism. The brand name, Nothing, interested me, and I looked into it. What I found was a phone with the same quality of the current Apple and Samsung models for half the price, because the brand was, well, nothing. The design was interesting, and it had this funny little glyph function that, while a gimmick, was at least something new.

I told Ben about it, and sure enough by the end of the day he had found the perfect set; the phone, the matching smart watch, a charger and two lanyard carriers for 649 euros. At last, I have a phone that has 5G capacity and 256Gb of storage. Ben’s arrived first, and it was beautiful. The watch can track his sleep and his stress, and the first day at work after he got it I received messages throughout the day telling me that it was still at 95% charge.

It’s strange, because even though it was a purchase, it feels as though I’m refusing capitalism in a way, late-stage at least. I don’t want to have an iPhone anymore, not because I don’t love the phone but because I don’t want to support the idea that you’re either one person or another. I’m not a Samsung girl with a tablet in my pocket, nor am I an iPhone girl with my pretty coloured case and my film-ready quality camera. I’m just a girl with a phone, and with that I’m hoping to have a fresh start.

As I said, my current phone has been with me through some of the worst times in my life. With it, I have proof that I was abused, that I was stalked and harassed, that I was in the thick of an eating disorder for years. I also have pictures of my first date with the love of my life, our dog’s adoption photos, call logs from the seven hour conversations we would have when we were long distance. It contains seven years of life, and by the end of today it’ll be shut away in favour of a new beginning.

Yes, it is just a new phone, a new piece of technology that I am excited to get to know, but it’s more than that. I promised myself a while ago that I was going to step away from the things that have happened to me, and this feels like the final step in a way. This is it, no more looking back into the past. My pictures will be uploaded to my computer and my favourite chat logs stashed onto a Google Drive link to revisit because WhatsApp cannot be transferred to save its life. I’ll miss this phone just like I will miss the person I was when I owned it, but it’s time to move forward.

Unfortunately, it means I’ll have to be one of those people that wears a smart watch now. I’ll take it off for weddings, at least. I’m not that bad.