Source: punkt.ch

In an effort to delay inevitable smartphone addiction in my children, I introduced feature phones to them some time ago. While my middle child immediately embraced the minimalism of the Nokia 'brick phone' (model 8110, 4G), my youngest wasn't so enthusiastic about the Nokia 110 and eventually persuaded me to move the SIM card to a smartphone running CalyxOS. That's still a win, of sorts.

I use a Light Phone 2 as my daily driver, but have had my eye on the Punkt. MP02 for a while now. Whereas the Light Phone 2 feels like a small e ink tablet with a virtual QWERTY keyboard, the Punkt. looks like a modernised, attractive upgrade to the classic dumb phone.

Our Nokia 8110 had a long run—initially as my first feature phone, then my child's—but the battery is dying. I considered replacing the battery, but then saw a good deal on a second-hand Punkt. MP02, and—completely selflessly—bought that instead.

I test-ran the phone for a week before passing it on to my child, so that I could get a feel for what it's like in daily use. My focus with this article is to see whether the Punkt. M02 could be used as a feature phone for kids. The answer to that is: yes, but with a few caveats.

First contact

The transition away from the greater functionality of the Light Phone 2 was difficult for me. I wasn't used to 9 button predictive text typing, and found the navigation buttons unintuitive. I missed voice-to-text messaging and being able to play sound files.

On the other hand, the Punkt. looks and feels fantastic. It has a solidity, weight and shape that feels reassuring, like what it felt like to carry marbles in your pocket as a kid. In the competitive world of hardware design, that is a noteworthy achievement, fitting with the company's minimalist philosophy, and one that's probably gone a bit unnoticed.

The key features—calling and messaging—work really well. The phone has great sound, and has an alarm clock for those who want to keep smartphones out of the bedroom.

The last must-have feature in our family is tethering. This is when you use your provider's 4G signal to create a local WiFi 'hotspot'. While I encourage minimalism, all-or-nothing approaches rarely work. Sometimes you need to connect a smartphone, tablet or laptop, for example, while travelling. I chose the Nokia 8110 initially precisely for its 4G hotspot capability.

While tethering is simple to set up and activate on the MP02, I did see a rapid reduction of battery charge and felt a noticeable heating of the device. The battery went from 65% to 45% in about 30 minutes of tethering WiFi yesterday, when I needed Internet while waiting for a piano lesson to finish. The person who sold it to me had warned me that, with tethering on, the battery will last a total of about 4 hours.

Hardware features - criticism & praise

I found the following quote by the designer, Jasper Morrison, on the Punkt. webpage:

“The MP02 builds on the paradigm shift of its revolutionary predecessor. From components to aesthetics, it’s an entirely new product inside and out – with a particularly striking contextual user interface.”

I am not sure what a contextual user interface is, nor how a phone can be a paradigm shift. Given the often big cross-section between minimalism and pretentiousness, as well as the high price tag on the device, a critical perspective is in order here. If I am going to encourage my children to use this phone every day, it has to be intuitive to use.

While the buttons and interface are attractively designed, I never got used to their functions in the week I used the phone. This uncertainty about pressing the correct button can lead to worry about accidentally deleting something or calling someone.

Without a touch screen, button navigation becomes extra important. I have seen and used various devices, like handheld audio recorders, where this works exceptionally well.

The phone has an up and a down arrow, with a single dotted button in between, called the 'Punkt. button'. The 'Punkt. button' is, oddly, one of several buttons with which you can confirm a decision. The others are the call button, sometimes the number buttons (for punctuation) and the arrow buttons, to access a secondary menu. Added to that, sometimes you have to select a 'save' option and then press punkt, as when naming the phone. For a minimalist device, have one affirmation button for everything would be clearest and best, and that is not the case here.

The Punkt. MP02 user interface:

Source: theverge.com

The phone has a prominent 'back' button: an arrow pointing to the left. This functions as expected in many situations, but also doubles as a delete/undo button in others. That could lead to confusion, and may not be ideal for younger users.

To illustrate, let me go through the steps needed to set an alarm:

1. press the 'on' button at the top
2. press the 'Punkt.' button to unlock
3. press the 'Punkt.' button again, to enter the apps menu
4. scroll down to 'Clock', confirm, then 'Alarm' & confirm with 'Punkt.'
5. select 'new alarm' & confirm
6. dial in hours, confirm, then dial in minutes and do the same
7. select alarm frequency and confirm

So far, so good. Now I can see my alarm is activated, and I want to go back to the main menu. Pressing the back arrow button seems logical, but when I press it, I end up back into setting the minutes, then hours, then the Alarm app menu. The back arrow literally takes me through the steps I just took to set the alarm, but in reverse. It's confusing, and also... why would I need that option?

At this point, I don't know if the alarm is active, or have just gone through the motions of pretending to set an alarm. That's worrying, yea, alarming, with something as important as setting your morning wake-up call.

Going back into the menu, I can see that the alarm is indeed still activated. I then learn that pressing the 'end call' button is a better way to jump into the home menu.

The same is true for adding numbers to you address book: pressing the back button deletes the last digit of the number you've just entered. You need to press the 'end call' icon instead.

I kept running into these small 'affirm' and 'home' button confusions and never really got comfortable with navigation. I worry about this, because kids will quickly dismiss tools if their operation is unclear.

I do like the direct access buttons for messaging and for the address book. Also pressing the buttons themselves feels good, and they are all comfortably accessible.

Having direct access buttons for some features while leaving out volume buttons is another strange design decision. Of all things, volume is the thing you need to be able to adjust quickly. Perhaps I have missed a shortcut, but the only volume adjustments I see are under Settings, 14 clicks in, and in the status menu, which you get to by pressing one of the arrows.

The screen is great, and the sound quality is very good. Notification sounds are cute, reminiscent of the Nintendo DS. The weight, feel and shape of the phone make this an attractively tactile product.

OS and applications

The software side of things was basically good. The menus are clear and simple. When you start up the phone, you can press either the up or the down arrow directly to see some statistics (battery life, tethering status, etc.) and you can also quickly turn some of these on or off in this secondary menu. Sometimes, the arrow buttons were not responsive right after start-up, and had to be pressed again a few seconds later.

The applications are listed vertically, which works well with the up/down arrows. The phone came with several apps already installed, and some optional ones I could install myself. There is no app store.

The pre-installed tools are Calendar, Clock, Notes (thank you!), Calculator and Settings. These come in their simplest form. The Calendar tool really only shows you an overview of each month, with today's date highlighted. The Calculator is a blank screen which you can type numbers and +/-/x/÷, (), ., and % into.

Under Settings, you can find three additional, downloadable applications, called DailyView, Personalise and Pigeon. Personalise lets you give your phone a name that shows up in the lock screen—we are deep into minimalism territory now! I wasn't able to test out DailyView, but gather it enables creating calendar events via a third party site.

Pigeon caused a stir in the feature phone community, because it enables using Signal messenger on the Punkt. MP02. However, I felt hesitant to try it out, as several reviewers have explained that entering Signal details into the Pigeon apps is limiting, because the Punkt. M02 doesn't have a camera for scanning the necessary QR code needed to use Signal on multiple devices. See the Techlore review on this topic below.

Cost, and discontinued support for v1

The high cost is a major hurdle. I was able to get mine second-hand at half price, and still found it expensive. I hope the high cost will translate to enduring quality and longevity.

Two people commented on my Mastodon that when Punkt. issued a version 2 of the M02, they dropped all updates and support for the version 1 (of the M02), which they had purchased. That's not good. So, if you are looking to buy the Punkt. MP02 second-hand, make sure you get version 2!

Is the Punkt. M02 a potential good feature phone for kids?

I would say, yes, if you can live with the price.

My children found the design immediately appealing, whereas Nokia's feature phones got a rather mixed response. If you are concerned about smartphone addiction and want to delay that chapter in your child's life for as long as possible, the Punkt. M02 promises to be a fun, attractive and useful device for younger kids for calling and SMSing. I am fairly certain my child will most likely continue to use it throughout high school as a daily driver, leaving the smartphone at home.

Parents interested in tackling their own smartphone reliance or addiction might also be interested in trying out the Punkt. MP02. I would recommend it. Punkt. should offer a family deal.

Remember, there is no camera on this phone. For us, this is not really an issue. We have a running joke about the terrible quality of Nokia dumbphone cameras. My kids use a digital camera or a smartphone on WiFi for home use.

Alas, no Snake game.

Having typed up my review, I now have no further excuse to hang on to this oddly comforting device, and will hand it over tomorrow, swapping the SIM card out of the Nokia 8110 after its many years of good service. Perhaps I will ask for feedback and a child's perspective in use in a few months. If I do, I will certainly post that here!

Documentation

'Smartphones Rewired Childhood. Here's How to Fix It.' Honestly podcast, Bari Weiss.

Punkt. website and shop

Techlore: 'Get to know Punkt MP02: A Dumbphone w/Signal for your Privacy' The Pigeon issue is explained at 3:45.

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Kieran Setiya is a Professor of Philosophy and author of several books on how to live a good life. He looks for the practical, positive application of philosophical ideas in our daily lives.

I recently re-listened to a podcast interview with Kieran and became particularly interested by his explanation of two ways of looking at purpose, time and progress, namely by dividing up the things we do into two categories: projects and processes.

Setiya refers to teleology in his discussion. Britannica tells me that teleology comes from the Greek roots telos, 'end,' and logos, 'reason.'¹ So teleology is all about how we look at the reasons behind our activities and end goals.

Context of the discussion

In the two-hour interview, Kieran Setiya focuses on the differences between being happy and living well. He argues, for example, that the process of grieving for a loved one or a relationship that has ended is crucial to living well, but has little overlap with happiness. Happiness, therefore, is secondary to living well.

At one point, Setiya explains that it is his mission is to examine:

...what the project of self-help might look like if it was inspired by the philosophical approach to ethics (20 minute mark)

Kieran and Sam argue that philosophy's initial focus of living a good life has become lost over the years, replaced by intricate language games and other more technical approaches to thought and reason.

All of this was interesting and worth listening to. But what I found most relevant to my blog and privacy journey, was Setiya's discussion of telic and atelic processes.

Projects and processes

Telic activities have a clear end goal that we work towards. Once we've reached the goal, the telic activity is finished. Setiya refers to telic activities as projects.

Our lives are full of projects that keep us busy. This sometimes leads to stress and feeling like we can't keep up. There is also a certain dissatisfaction once a project is completed, because there is not much more you can do with it.

Atelic activities are ongoing, basically until we die. We can think of atelic activities as always being in the present moment. To me, it's a bit like the idea of 'leveling up' in a video game. Setiya refers to atlelic activities as processes.

When I'm not working on this blog, I am a teacher. The idea of projects vs processes resonates with me immediately when I think of my profession. Each academic year is a repeating cycle where I teach different groups of individuals. Our most immediate aim is to get through the year and tick the boxes. This could be, for example, being fully prepared for an external exam, or attaining good enough grades to pass the year.

The academic year is a telic activity, a project. Every teacher knows the strange, empty feeling when a class finishes the year and moves on. Focusing on the telic aspects of teaching can give you a helpful drive and motivation, but leaves you with an ambivalent, unsatisfied feeling at the end of the academic year.

Being a teacher, however, is an atelic activity. It's never static, and I'm constantly reflecting on what worked and didn't work. It's meaningful far beyond finishing the academic year, and not tied to specific classes. I might instill a love for my subject in one or two students, or explore a new topic within the field myself with my groups.

Setiya uses the example of having a child and being a parent. Deciding to have a child is a project, a telic activity. It has a start, and and some point (I'm learning now!) a type of ending, when your child leaves the family home. But being a parent is ongoing and meaningful, because you can always improve and also reflect on your progress, your mistakes, and how you corrected them. You are still a parent when you children leave home; it's your role and responsibilities that change.

The Privacy Dad project

I'm coming up for post #100 soon—this is #95! Coincidentally, I'm also coming up to the point in recounting my privacy journey where I decided to write this blog.

These milestones stimulate reflection. Should I stop describing my own journey at the point where I began writing the blog and call it a day? How and when does a blog project end?

The Privacy Dad blog is a telic activity, a project. It is meaningful to write and publish articles about privacy and to engage with reader responses. Sometimes people I look up to and respect refer to my blog on social media. It's hard to describe that feeling, having started as a consumer of the content around privacy.

But projects come to an end at some point. I'm not sure when that will be for this blog, but I am sure that this is a project.

Writing this blog is one component of my own privacy journey, which began before I started writing and will probably continue for the rest of my life. My personal privacy journey is the atelic activity, the resilient, meaningful process. The Privacy Dad blog is a constituent of that process, motivated by the call from people like Seth for Privacy and Nathan from The New Oil and Henry from Techlore to actively contribute to the conversation, rather than remain passive. But ending this blog, for whatever reason, would in no way mean an end to the process of my own learning about digital privacy.

Final thoughts

I realise this is an unusual post. I'm not reviewing a privacy tool, or describing one of the steps in my own journey. However, when I first heard the interview with Kieran in 2022, I remember being struck by this idea of looking at the things we do in our lives as either projects or processes. It not only gives me a clear framework for this blog and my own privacy journey; it is an idea that can be applied to all aspects of life, and help take the pressure off of failing or succeeding at specific projects, and encourage enjoyment of growth and learning instead.

Documentation

Philosophy and the Good Life: A Conversation with Kieran Setiya Sam Harris Making Sense, episode 295, 9 September 2022

Kieran Setiya's website

Atleic vs Telic

Deleting my Facebook Account—my first post, 22 October 2022.

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Let me begin by quoting from a recent episode of the podcast Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons:

And the cloud, as we like to say, is a fancy term for someone else's computer.

It can't be stated more clearly than this. There is no cloud. When you upload a photo to your social media, or to an online drive, like Google Drive or Dropbox, you are sending that photo, via your Internet connection, to someone else's computer, where that photo is stored for you to access later.

Bad metaphor

I have always felt that 'the cloud' is a terrible metaphor for how our data is stored. It suggests a fluffy, ethereal place high up in the air, barely visible. It suggests that when I upload my photos and documents to the cloud, they sort of hover in a pretty no-man's sky, mixing with other data, waiting float back down to me when I need them.

I stopped teaching high school recently (too many meetings), but I used to ask this question to my students every year: What is the cloud? I would be met with blank stares. Attempts at answers would lead to the false imagery the metaphor of a cloud suggests: a space out there, where our data sort of floats.

I would follow this up with another question: When you upload a photo to your social media, what do you think happens with it? This usually led to a better conversation about file storage and computers/servers, which helped to dispel the misdirecting cloud image.

I do believe in the power of metaphors (although 'privacy journey' is worn very thin these days, by me as well). When I try to think of better metaphors to visualise data storage, 'the basement' comes to mind, or 'the warehouse'. It needs to be a heavy, grounded metaphor, because that is where our data sits: on the earth—perhaps even under— and inside machines that require electricity to keep them running.

First hand experience with servers

This is not my first time referring to this book, but Brian W. Kernighan's Understanding the Digital World helped me grasp some of the facts about the Internet and computers as a non-programmer.

But what really opened my eyes was setting up my own server. This project came about from finding my old (old!) PC in the basement, and looking for a good use for it. A server is a computer that you can connect to remotely and use, for example, for storing your data.

I must admit that this was not an easy journey, and I went through several stages of server building on that computer before I got it right and found a simple method, namely by running a programme called Nextcloud.

Once my own server was functioning as a storage space for my friends and family members' data, I began to recognise how incorrect the cloud metaphor really is. I can hear my server computer when it's processing things, because it is sitting on the floor by my feet where I work.

I also learned that a server administrator has a surprising amount of elevated privileges. I even figured out how to take a peek at user data.¹ I promptly warned all my friends and family members not to put sensitive data on my server.

The problem

If the cloud is not an open space between computers but a misguiding metaphor about hardware, and if the administrators of those computers have elevated rights, then, logically, you are putting your data and into the hands of the administrators that manage those computers.

The bottom line is that—unless your build your own server—you are going to have to trust someone with your data.

While it is possible to trawl through difficult-to-find privacy policies for every company, it might be simpler to start by thinking about the services you currently use, and how they earn money. Written policies from large, well-established tech companies can be misleading or ambiguous, and promises about anonymisation of data often turn out to be false—listen to the podcasts The Surveillance Report and Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons if you want to get a sense of how commonly data is de-anonymised. Unless you are a researcher, it is not worth your time reading those types of privacy policies.

I would therefore avoid any direct² cloud solutions offered by Big Tech companies. Once I learned how cloud storage works, I removed all my files, photos and videos from Google Drive. It was inconvenient, as Google offered so much free storage space at the time, as well as excellent online tools for managing and sharing my files. I had to look for privacy-respecting alternatives, test them out and compare costs. And yes, I did read privacy policies from these cloud providers, and studied reviews from sources I trust.

The (partial) solution

So, what should I look for in a cloud service?

• zero knowledge and end-to-end encryption

If your data is encrypted (scrambled and encoded) on your computer and on the company's computers, then the owners of those computers cannot read your files or see your photographs without the key required to unscramble the data first.

When a company claims to have 'zero knowledge' of your data, they are referring to a deliberate decision on their part to set up their systems in such a way they can never own the encryption keys to your data.

• privacy policies

While I suggested earlier that there is no real point in reading, for example, Google's privacy policies, because their business model—earning off your data—is apparent, I would argue for carefully reading the privacy policies of companies that claim privacy is their main focus, before starting a trial and then possibly a subscription with them.

If you have questions or require clarification, you should contact these companies. I have found many privacy-focused software companies respond to my questions quickly, transparently and honestly. Privacy and trust are their main selling point, after all. And if a company doesn't respond to your questions, then you know not to bother with their product.

• local laws

It is a misunderstanding to think that a provider of private email or storage will play the role of privacy super hero, circumnavigating legal government intervention on your behalf.

While it is true that organisations have resisted unfair or secretive attempts by governments to force backdoors to your data, a company like Tuta, based in Germany, is never above German law. This is a misunderstanding you will sometimes see on privacy forums, where people show disappointment with a company's compliance with the law.

What you can do is research local privacy laws, and in doing so, you might find that a cloud provider that has its computers in Germany will benefit from these laws more than a server in the United States does.

• teachers and forums

By visiting a handful of privacy-focused forums and listening to some of the great online teachers out there, you will quickly develop a sense of the criteria that software products are judged on in the community, and you will begin to notice the same three or four company names keep popping up for each type of product. I use this organic cross-referencing a lot and it has helped me feel confident about making decisions. You can also join the forums and ask for advice or user experiences there.

The problem of trust

In the end, if you are going to entrust your personal data to someone else, there is a limit to what you can do to be 100% sure it's safe to do so. This is why we have the concept of trust.

But making intelligent decisions about who to trust makes a lot more sense than dumping all your personal data with the first company that promises they'll look after it for free, and make your life easier to boot.

Lastly, zero knowledge means that the company managing your data will not be able to help you out if you lose your encryption key, usually a master password. It is therefore important to make safe and redundant storage of your cloud passwords and local backups of your data a priority.

Documentation

Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons podcast, episode "Mitigating AI Risks" from about 55 minutes on

Author Brian Kernighan's books

The Surveillance Report podcast

Parents: Are Your Kids Backing up Their Data? (Recent post on cloud storage for kids.)

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