Keyphone: Holding Pattern

When I last wrote, I talked about my plans for the Keyphone, and its potential fit in my life as I conducted my own Digital Minimalism analysis.

As the time for pledges to lock is narrowed (after it was extended) I was reaching the end of my own journaling and thoughts, and ended up cancelling my pledge. To it's credit, I am still very interested in the Keyphone and will continue to follow it as Beta units are handled and release units get into hands. In my case as I conducted my review, I settled back on configuring my iPhone as a minimal iPhone (from my perspective), as some key functionality is currently just necessary in my daily and working life, that the Keyphone just can't meet yet.

The most essential of these tools were for my work, both Duo and Microsoft Authenticator (with required number matching, limiting TOTP app options) are part of my daily workflow, as for many. While I could potentially deploy a YubiKey, it might not work everywhere. This meant the MFA apps would still be needed on something like my iPad, or I would still have to have the iPhone available (and my Keyphone plans included selling the iPhone). Keyphone has in their future plans to support Duo, but no timeline, and I find it less likely that they would expand that to Microsoft tooling.

In the near future, I'll write a lot more about the results of my journaling on Digital Minimalism for my needs, as it filled many pages while I reviewed various apps, and categories of apps, under the scenarios of:

Then for each app/category, for each of those possible device scenarios, what the options were, the alternatives, and some thoughts on what suited my home and working life. It is still an ongoing process as I have not implemented all of my plans on the Minimal iPhone approach, but I am getting close, and learning/adjusting as time and usage passes.

I may yet end up moving to a more simple device, only more time will tell, but I do need to look at getting a YubiKey to further validate if it meets my work authentication needs, and maybe writing here about my Digital Minimalism thoughts will bring further clarity in direction.

—Scott