I recently ordered an Alt Mive Style Folder 2 as part of my digital minimalism journey, and I am really enjoying it so far. It’s led me to use my phone less and be more intentional with it reducing my screen-time to an average of 30 minutes a day. I will still check my emails or messages on it occasionally out of boredom and since the opening and closing sound is satisfying.

I ordered the phone from eBay for about $360 AUD, which, for a full Android phone, isn’t that bad. It shipped from Korea with FedEx and only took about a week or less, which was nice. They did ship the wrong colour and there were some issues with the phone touch screen not working, but nothing too major that couldn’t be sorted out.

I was worried the phone wouldn’t work, but it ended up working fine with my carrier at the time, Aldi Mobile, although it wasn’t the best, so I ended up switching to Telstra, which had better 3G service.

The Alt Mive Style Folder 2 still has all the features of a regular phone as it runs Android 14 Go edition, so you can use WhatsApp, Discord, email, 2FA and Google Maps, but with a flip phone factor as it was designed for seniors.

Up to this point, I had already tried the Opel Mobile Touch Flip 4G but ended up reverting back to my smartphone, as although it could call and text, it didn’t even have maps, which was extremely inconvenient.

The phone has a very retro aesthetic with all the buttons feeling quite nice to use and it even having physical buttons for contacts, camera and buttons you can assign to whatever app you want.

The phone is however quite large, especially when open, almost the same size if not bigger than a normal iPhone. It doesn’t feel that way however due to the device weight distribution and design. The Alt Mive also comes with a headphone jack with it’s audio player being satisfactory and an expandable SD card slot, which is a plus given it’s 32GB size.

The screen is also touch-sensitive, so you can use it to type messages or search which is a godsend since I hate using the T9 Keyboard to type. However, I have big fingers, which makes it annoying to use as I frequently mistype things and I can’t get the spellcheck to work, but it does lead me to using it less.

I am also using the before launcher, which I quite like due to it’s minimal design and it working well with the navigation button on the phone making opening apps easier compared to the stock launcher, and it’s free, so I would highly recommend it.

Overall, I would highly recommend giving the phone a try. It has significantly reduced my screen time and reduced mindless scrolling just due to the form factor of the device and the small touch screen. It does everything I need to and I haven’t had any issues with it so far.

I’ve recently gotten into photography and didn’t know what camera to get so I was lucky that my friend recently lent me his Ricoh GR III so I could try and I’ve had it for nearly 2 weeks at this point. Let me start out by saying I think the Ricoh GR is an amazing camera especially for street photography. It has a 24 megapixel sensor so the photos are very high resolution more than enough if you want to print them out matching bigger, heavier and more expensive cameras. It’s also built very solidly, is compact and feels a joy to use and shoot with.

It does have some limitations though or advantages depending on how you look at it. First is that there isn’t any zoom; you can crop the image to 35mm or 50mm but it does make it harder since you really have to get close with your subject to take a good shot which might not always be possible with wildlife or animals for example. But the camera is mainly designed for street photography so that isn’t really an issue most of the time (except for introverts like me). I do wish the screen was brighter during the day but it’s nothing putting your hand over the camera LCD can’t fix. I think the main advantage of the Ricoh GR is it’s portability. It fits in your pocket (well your jacket pocket; pant pocket would be a really tight fit) and is really compact so it makes me want to take it everywhere with me which is really important as you end up capturing a lot of everyday moments which is why I got into photography. It also really helps with street photography as most people don’t like a big camera pointed at them and it’s more conspicuous so it can ruin the shot vs the Ricoh GR which almost looks like a toy and is so small most people don’t even notice compared to pulling out a much larger camera.

I’m still a total beginner when it comes to photography but so far I’ve had a good experience. Photography is hard especially street photography and my photos need a lot of work but that’s more to do with me as the photographer than the camera and honestly no matter what camera you get it won’t fix your skills as a photographer when it comes to composing good shots and making art with light essentially. I can see it being limiting in a sense as a beginner photographer you probably want to experience different lenses / focal lenses which is a bit difficult with the Ricoh GR but at the same time shooting with one lens and focal length really challenges you to find good shots that fit and eventually it becomes second nature or at least I hope. All in all I’d recommend getting yourself the Ricoh GR III or maybe wait for the GR IV to come out or at least that’s what I’m planning on doing.