Loup Ventures Finds Phoneless Experiment Freeing, Frustrating

In a smartphone-obsessed world, can anyone stay off the ubiquitous gadgets for even a single day?

Four team members at Loup Ventures experimented with going phoneless for seven days. The staffers used Apple Inc. AAPL's Apple Watch S4 while their iPhone screens were dark.

"Going phoneless was less painful than we thought it would be," the team said in a Loup Ventures blog post. "The cellular Apple Watch is great for temporarily leaving your phone behind, but not for powering it down permanently."

The team found some core phone use cases such as making and receiving calls, reading emails and checking calendars to be easy on an Apple Watch.

Freeing Up Time

The test team reported fewer distractions and notifications, allowing more time for work and non-tech activity.

"Some of us felt freedom from the obligation of constant communication (email/text/social), and some of us felt freedom from information (news/YouTube/other video)," according to Loup.

While being phoneless, the team said it checked email/messages 80 percent less than while using a phone.

Message, Travel Anxieties Among Pitfalls

Just as a coin has two sides, the team identified a few frustrations associated with being phoneless.

The chief among these was two-way message anxiety: the team feeling that it was responding slowly to friends and relatives and vice versa.

Staying off phones also made travel difficult, as using Uber and maps on an Apple Watch was not as easy and effective as with a phone, Loup Ventures said.

"Additionally, the watch doesn't operate as a wireless hotspot, limiting our ability to stay connected on our laptops outside of public Wi-Fi."

The Aftermath

Following the phoneless experiment, some Loup team members reported using their phones less. The team also raised possibility of it going phoneless again, with half of the members using an Apple Watch and other half using a device optimized for reduced connectivity.

The firm's experience suggests that a market exists for a device that limits the apps available on a phone to ride-hailing, airlines, hotels, cloud storage, note-taking, hotspots, audiobooks and the like — without email, Slack, social media, Google's GOOGL YouTube, Netflix, Inc. NFLX and other video platforms, according to Loup Ventures.

"In the case of going phoneless, the tradeoffs seem more between types of freedom," the firm said.

"You can choose to have the freedom of unfettered access to apps, messages and content with the hopes that you'll self-limit (unlikely) or you can choose to find a device with built-in restriction, giving you the freedom of greater productivity and, in our experience, happiness."

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Photo courtesy of Apple.