I've spoken to quite a few people that do this which was very interesting, especially how a hard lock has helped them hard reset and start building healthier phone habits
Using iOS 26 with the glassy-reflective elements feels like a storm in a teacup with making people even more addicted to their phones the moment they pick them up, observing all the shiny effects with a slight tilt of their wrist.
I wish Apple would open up customization capabilities to properly kick the addictive elements from the phone, like Android with custom launchers...
I've also experimented with Apple Configurator many months ago but unfortunately it's too tedious for most people wanting to enforce a simplified phone, but its beauty is in its level of power of creating a bespoke iPhone experience.
fwiw I'm the maker of the Dumb Phone app (dp) that somebody mentioned below and what's mostly kept my daily average screen time to 1-2 hours is getting rid of the addictive elements from the home screen.
No more color, icons, fancy wallpapers, just a simple single-colored text-based list of my most essential apps that open when tapped. Zero social media.
We live in 2025 and as much as i'd love to experiment with a nerfed feature phone, I personally need a high quality camera each day, maps of course, banking apps, authenticators, etc.
Kicking that dopamine hit has helped me use my phone as a utility again, otherwise I put it away. I have an Apple Watch too with all alerts turned off except for calls, texts - so another reason to keep the phone down.
Since I also run a business I do need to leverage mobile social apps, so these now all live on a "separate" iPhone which stays in a drawer until I need to perform a particular task with it, then it goes back in right away.
Genuinely feels good to have my phones work for me now rather than the other way around, and I see a lot of common sentiment when I speak to people who have also done the same thing to their phones.
Highly recommend cleaning up your Home Screen as a good starting point, and purge your notifications.
edit: I also begrudgingly installed Beeper last week to keep in touch with an important group chat on FB messenger on the main phone, but it's bliss only seeing a list of group messages vs the long list of story buttons along the top in the main app, green and red dots, so i'm not inclined to tap around afterwards.
This. The I feel the significant nerfing of important functionality in the Camera app (as an example) suggests assistive access isn't geared toward the general folk like myself.
Wow thanks for the shout, I'm the maker of Dumb Phone! Always super nice hearing how much that set up has helped improve their relationship with their phone / tech in general and be more present every day. Thank you!
One of my friends from Spain sent me this link from La Revuelta earlier this week where the host talks about making his phone a “soviet phone” with just the bare basics.
Kinda crazy and cool to see people following this dumb phone style on mainstream national TV of all places, even just cleansing their home screen of all the dopamine instead of using a flip phone.
Rough translation for English speakers btw:
David Broncano: Look what I have as a wallpaper. Nothing.
Dani Martín: Nothing? Are you angry?
David Broncano: No, because I want to use the phone less, look what I did! My phone, if you unlock it, I took everything out. It’s like an ‘82’s phone.
David Broncano: Well there weren’t phones…like one in ‘97. I got it like this: I unlock it. Can you see it here? I unlock it and this appears: there’s not even icons. It only says: calls, messages, emails, browser. It has nothing, it’s a soviet phone from ‘99.
