Why I Got Rid of My Brand New iPhone 11 Pro Max
By: Bob Pepe
Tags: Gadgets, Life, Tech, Digital Life, Digital Minimalism

Photo by Gadgets Now

Why I Got Rid of My Brand New iPhone 11 Pro Max

My daughter needed a new iPhone and I had just bought myself a new iPhone 11 Pro Max a few months ago, I did what any good dad would do — I gave her mine.

I have had a million phones over the years as I handle the Smartphones for my company. I am surrounded by them on a daily basis. I generally keep an iPhone as my daily driver, but I always have a few Androids sitting around my office.

This has been a part of my life for decades, going all the way back to bag phones in the late ’80s. But that is all about to change (I hope). When I bought the iPhone 11 Pro Max a few months ago, I felt terribly guilty the minute I took it home. It was big and beautiful and the screen was amazing. I just had this guilt knowing that I had an iPhone SE 2016 sitting on my desk, I had an iPhone 7 plus that was returned by an ex-employee, the last thing I needed to do is to spend over $1000 on a new phone that would just suck up even more of my precious life.

The 11 Pro Max is the exact opposite of where I want my life to be. I want to be less on my phone, not dragged into more wasted hours by a screen that is like an IMax movie. A battery that can last longer than I can. A camera that is far better than the one they used at my wedding.

I know the evils of the smartphone, I know social media is terrible for so many reasons. I have watched the movies, watched all those woke millennials giving up their smartphone for a flip phone on YouTube, I actually found a flip phone in my desk and it is sitting with me right now screaming at me telling me to “put your SIM card in me right now, you know it is the right thing to do.” I have known all this for years, but I still went out and bought an $1100 iPhone 11 Pro Max?

Is it the marketing that made me do it? Or is it the addiction that so many people are suffering from that made me do it? Or is the marketing part of the addiction? I don’t really know, but I do know that for those people who want to live a better life, a real life, a more satisfying life. Do not go out and buy an $1100 iPhone! Hardly a pearl of wisdom, but I think that smartphones today are so good that fighting smartphone addiction is almost impossible to overcome if you have one of these devices in your pocket.

An iPhone SE 2016 will not solve all your problems. You can still waste copious amounts of time on it, but there will be some pain points that you will have to overcome to do it. There may be enough friction to hopefully slow you down enough to get you to think about what you are about to do. The screen is tiny, the battery not very good, the camera is good enough to capture whatever happens in your daily life, but not in the same league as the iPhone 11 Pro Max.

I do not advocate living in a digital cave. The smartphone can be very useful if used properly, the problem is most of us do not use it properly.

I am not comparing smartphone addiction to drug addiction, but you are much more likely to snort some coke if it is in your nightstand drawer as opposed to finding a dealer and going to meet them somewhere, buying the drugs, and then coming home to do them. Hopefully, all that additional friction might keep you from doing the coke, and not doing the coke is always the best decision. (Another pearl of wisdom).

So that brings me to today. I have a flip phone, a used iPhone SE 2016, a used iPhone 7+ available to me right now. The SIM card has to go into one of them. Am I fighting the urge to go out and buy the iPhone 12 right now? Damn right I am! Did I think when my daughter told me she needed a new phone that I thought it was an opportunity to go buy the iPhone 12? Yes, I did.

I am in the grips of this addiction and am hardly one to give advice, I am just saying that you are not alone and the problem is real. There are many strategies out there and most of them are great if you can actually do them. I would suggest that to give yourself a fighting chance at this, not only do not go out and buy a new phone but sell your current phone and downgrade it to something far less addicting.

Going from a top-end smartphone to a flip phone might be too much of a shock to your system, so maybe get an older model of whatever phone you have. The flip phone would be the best choice if you can do it, but you may want to walk before you try to run. You will save some money and possibly improve your life.

Sometimes a downgrade of your phone can be a huge upgrade in your life.

As for me, the SIM is going into the iPhone SE and hopefully, it finally sticks.