The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I think I've figured out how to use my phone less and not carry it everywhere: getting a phone I strongly dislike (instead of mildly dislike).
I got a new phone because my old phone (6yo Pixel 4) was getting unstable, the battery life was getting absurdly bad, and Verizon offered me a $0 Pixel 10 Pro with a 3-year price contract (I'm not changing carriers, so makes no difference to me).
I strongly dislike the new phone, primarily because it's larger and heavier. The original Pixel was the perfect size. The 4 was too big but overall tolerable. This one is even worse. It is uncomfortably large and heavy in a pocket and I feel like I need a purse to haul the stupid thing around. So far it's been easy to leave it at my desk (work or home) and not take it places.
With my old phone, I would usually not take it along when doing stuff with friends, so I had plenty of the "sitting quietly while everyone else is deeply absorbed in their phone and not talking to anyone" experience. I guess I'll get to have more of that.
Well if you really want "small and I hate it" there's always Unihertz, e.g. jelly star at 3" screen diagonal, for $220.
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Actual numbers:
You've made the classic blunder of confusing the screen size and the device size. The pixel 1 is about 6.3" on the diagonal. Later phones are closer to their screen size with the advent of tiny bezels.
I have updated the table accordingly.
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You've saved me, thank you. I have the same-aged Pixel 4 and would've taken the same Pixel 10 deal, but I didn't think of the size and know a bigger phone would bother me. Although the info that it's apparently impossible to get a sane-sized phone is tempting me to ditch the smartphone life altogether (a perennial temptation.)
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That's funny, I also had a pixel that I'd loved the dimensions of, and ended up replacing it with an iphone 13 mini which was even better. Now, since there is apparently no market for what I (dating myself) consider the "normal" smartphone size, I'm basically hoping that the future foretold by the apple exec ("you may not need an iphone in ten years") has a sneak preview offering in 3-4. Something literally like Joaquin Phoenix's little makeup compact device in Her would be -great-.
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Does anybody know why phones keep increasing in size? I'd say 85% or more of the people that I know complain about how uncomfortable and inconvenient they are, but they keep growing. There must be some incentive on the design and production side that I don't understand. More room for batteries or something, maybe?
Back when they first started getting big, it was foreign/third world markets; people wanted the phone to be a computer since they didn't have anything else. Also, simpleminded bigger=better. A small phone might sell in the US or Europe or Japan, but nowhere else.
Now everyone has become a third-worlder in their phone habits.
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Ah great, so I am not the only one annoyed by this. I had been looking for a decent small phone for years, and looks like they just died out. Really, if I want to enjoy iMAX-sized cinematic productions, that extra inch is not going to help me. But they make it heavier and less convenient to carry in my pocket. I'd gladly support manufacturing smaller ones with my money, but there seems to be no market at all there. Maybe those newer flippers though, have to check them out. I used to have a flipper phone for years, before modern mega-bricks became the standard.
I would pay $2000 for an iPhone 17 Pro Mini.
I cannot understand why there is such a market failure here. If you need way bigger or smaller clothes than other people do, your options are limited, you might have to pay more, but you can at least get them. But with phones there's a seeming refusal to meet that market niche. It's bizarre to me.
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If you look at the way people actually use smartphones, they spend several hours texting, watching videos, and playing games for every hour they spend talking. These are all activities that benefit from a larger screen, so phones have evolved to become as large as possible while still (barely) fitting inside a pocket or purse.
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Bigger screens for watching videos. As phones become more and more of a computer replacement, the incentive to maximize screensize goes up.
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