Less is More

My rant (Skip if you want to)

The last phone I had was the Note 10 Lite. I was doing my internship at TTN and receiving a stipend. I was fed up with my old Redmi phone, which I had been using for a few years. Redmi phones came with a bad OS, so I decided to buy a clean phone around 30K. My budget was 30K, which was a big amount for me at the time.

I searched the internet and narrowed it down to three options: Note 10 Lite, iPhone SE, and Pixel 6A.

I watched almost all the videos about these phones and still couldn’t decide which one to choose. Then I recalled my childhood dream of owning a phone with a stylus. I compromised on the processor and camera and bought the Note 10 Lite. Man, I fell in love with my phone. I still feel it has been the best value-for-money phone to date; Samsung will never produce anything like it again.

It had an awesome OIS camera, a telephoto lens (which became a trend five years later), a stylus, an in-display fingerprint scanner, and more. What else does a person need in a phone? When we went to Goa, all the pictures were clicked on this phone.

Now that my phone has died—its motherboard crashed—I bought a cheap Moto G04s for 6,500 without thinking too much. It has a triple slot, but everything else is bad. It crashes every time I use it. There’s no network as soon as I leave my hometown; in life-or-death situations, it simply abandons me.

I tried getting my phone repaired but couldn’t, so I am left with no other option but to buy a new phone. This small thing has become a challenge for me.

What is the Challenge?

Maybe I expect too much, or perhaps there are simply too many options. Back when Nokia released just one model at a time, life was straightforward—you just bought that phone. Now, the process is much more complicated. You have to filter through countless models, watch tech reviews (only to realize many are sponsored), search for genuine opinions on Reddit, and check teardown, crash, water, drop, Antutu, battery drain, and camera tests. Then you compare prices across multiple sites and weigh your options against other phones in the same category. Just when you’re about to decide, a new phone with better specs is announced in the same price range, and the whole cycle starts again.

Sometimes, we tease others by calling them iPhone, Samsung, or Nothing fanboys, but their lives are actually simpler. They don’t spend countless hours researching details that ultimately don’t matter much in life.

What is the Paradox of Choice

Rolf Dobelli notes that selection is the yardstick of progress. While abundance can be exhilarating, there is a threshold—once crossed, an excess of choices can actually diminish our quality of life. The technical term for this is the paradox of choice.

Simply put, if you struggle to decide between a phone, a bike, a car, or even a partner, you are experiencing the paradox of choice.

Barry Schwartz explains that:

1. A large selection leads to inner paralysis.
   He illustrates this with a supermarket experiment: on one day, 24 varieties of jelly were offered as samples, and customers received a discount to buy one. The next day, only 6 varieties were available—and people bought ten times more than the previous day. This experiment was repeated with different products, yielding the same results.

2. A broader selection leads to poorer decisions.
   Today, when young people are asked what they want in a life partner, the list is long: intelligence, good manners, warmth, responsibility, education, a good job, physical attractiveness, and more. In the past, a man might choose from 20 girls in his village, with families knowing each other well, making decisions based on familiar qualities. Research shows that the stress from overwhelming variety is so great that the male brain often reduces the decision to a single criterion: physical attractiveness.

3. A larger selection leads to discontent.
   When I was in BCA, people would show off their new laptops, only for someone to say, “For that price, you could have gotten something better,” or “If you’d added 5K, you could have bought a superior model.” The more choices we have, the more uncertain and dissatisfied we feel afterward.

Solution

How to Overcome the Paradox of Choice

1. Define Clear Criteria:
   Write down your requirements and be as specific as possible. For example, instead of saying “good processor,” specify “Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.” Instead of “good OS,” list exactly which operating systems you prefer, such as One UI, Oxygen OS, or Moto UI.

2. Filter Your Options:
   Use tools like Phone Finder to apply your criteria and narrow down your choices. This helps you avoid getting overwhelmed by irrelevant options.

3. Accept Imperfection:
   No decision will ever be perfect. Striving for the “perfect” choice among endless possibilities is a form of irrational perfectionism. Learn to appreciate a good decision rather than chasing the elusive “best.” This mindset applies not just to gadgets, but to all areas of life—including relationships. In a world full of options, “good enough” is often the most practical and satisfying choice.