Google launched a new lineup of Digital Wellbeing apps for Android phones, all aimed at helping users fight their smartphone addiction. All the apps are experimental and, frankly, a bit quirky, although in a clever way. The Unclock Clock, for example, is a live wallpaper that shows how many times you’ve unlocked your phone during the day, while PostBox collects all your notifications and shows them all at once at a set interval, so you can concentrate better instead of being constantly distracted. The quirkiest of the bunch of new apps is definitely Paper Phone: the software, available for free on the Play Store, lets you create a selection of contents from your phone, such a map itinerary, a group of contacts or your next appointments from the calendar and prints them in a pre-formatted booklet with folding instruction. The idea is that with this printed information in your pocket you’ll be free to wander around for a day without feeling compelled to check your phone all the time for important information. Nobody will of course ever use Google Paper Phone as actual proxy for their phone, except maybe some very committed luddites, but it’s certainly an artsy and refreshing take on the not-so-novel idea of unplugging from technology for (at least) a full day.
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- 2019