Eighteen days. I’ve been keeping count. Eighteen days without a smartphone and I’m barely keeping it together. Only for the fact this is all for a great cause in the Irish Cancer Society I’d have switched back to my beloved Galaxy S6. One man can only play so much Snake. Dean and now Martin with his upgrade have been blessed with the fancy Snake 2. I can’t go through the walls playing Snake and the lack of Tinder is seriously affecting my love life. Well sort of, but I’ll come back to that.

Why do I miss my smartphone?

Let’s start with the basics. No one texts anymore. We type messages to each other every day using WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, but why doesn’t anyone send SMS these days? Pretty much every single provider is offering “free” texts, but not a soul wants them.
I mean phone calls are all well and good and it is easier and great craic to hear the old tones. But that novelty wears off after four days, or when you’re called and the people around you don’t know you’re doing this for charity.

As Martin and Dean have said muscle memory is something crazy. Every two minutes fishing out the Nokia with the intention of checking out Facebook, only to realise it’s still 2:15pm and nothing has changed. That and, you know, the phone barely has a phonebook let alone a Facebook. What I would give to even have a text flashing up it would make my day. Martin showing his phone clogged with SMS messages doesn’t help either.

I’m sticking to the excuse that I’m on a temporary number and can only forward calls from my old number. I’ll surely be inundated with notifications once the Galaxy S6 gets powered back up.

Silver lining on our silver night

It’s not all about minor inconveniences either. You’d be forgiven for easily forgetting how many simple things we can’t do these days without access to a smartphone. Seriously how did we get around without Google Maps? How did people ever know what we were at? Goos3D.ie nabbed a silver at the Littlewoods Ireland Blog Awards. We began feeling much like Liverpool, saying next year will be our year and focussing on the improvement from last year’s bronze.

A look at our social media would suggest we didn’t attend the awards, but I assure you we were there. Not a photo in sight but I found something very interesting and probably the only silver lining I have been able to find in an otherwise bleak couple of weeks.

We must have been the only group in the building not glued to our phones trying to get a snap to let the world know we were in attendance. We actually got to soak up the atmosphere and it was a hoot to say the least. We actually spoke to each other and started conversations with other, who would have guessed it. Watching the acts was a blast and Deans cold, dry humour had me in convulsions all the while the flicker of flashes surrounded us with people more interested in perception rather than enjoying the moment. Afterwards, we sat around with a few pints chatting, without the distraction of a smartphone – not needing any gadgets to help either.

Genuine hassle living with and old Nokia

But getting to the venue, in short, was a nightmare of epic proportions. Poor Martin, bless him, had to get across Dublin City by sticking is hand out and hailing a taxi. Try being the poor lads from Limerick searching for a Hotel in Dun Laoghaire without a sat nav. I actually had to plan the route the night before, stopping short of buying a map.

Getting to the red cow was grand, but then it all went wrong – it’s a bloody maze! Of course, it was nothing a last second swerve and a possible crash couldn’t solve. So after our fair share of panicking and learning how to use road signs, myself and Dean made it to Dun Laoghaire. Then we asked no less than fifteen people how we were to find our hotel. After much back and forth and circling the area we actually stumbled on the hotel. That was the moment we rang Martin like children given their first Happy meal. We were simply that happy to have finally made it.

Are we there yet

Three weeks in and this cold turkey crack is making me creative. I would like to consider myself a social guy and not being able to Snapchat my daily routine in all it’s glory to the Goos3D team is weird. Full disclosure, there are loopholes. It’s like a tech nerd Bear Grylls survivor was living deep down in my soul. Without the smartphone, I started looking up Android Emulators to scratch that itch. The emulator allowed a small bit of access to Snapchat. I didn’t fully exploit the loopholes though, with WhatsApp and Viber have stayed sidelines.

Tinder? There’s barely even an ember!

This is something that shocked me. As a single man, I was surprised how much the old love life could be affected by the lack of a smartphone. Working nine-to-five and not being a big drinker because of football commitments, apps likes Tinder are the best way to meet a member of the fairer sex. The love-life has nose dived a little since the start of the challenge. This craic of approaching someone in the street like they do in the movies is absolute nonsense – unless it’s just me? Still, when they see my old Nokia 8830 and its aerial, that’s the end of it.

I am personally counting down the days to the end of this challenge, so this bit really hurts. You can help us make it one more week. We need to hit €750 for one more week of this torture to continue. Ultimately, we are trying to hit the €1000 mark and we genuinely do want to do it.

We all know someone close to us who has been affected by cancer. Here at Goos3D.ie, we are downing our smartphones as part of Today FM’s Dare to Care in aid of the Irish Cancer Society. Your donations will punish the lads, but more importantly, also go towards stopping cancer.