Could a dumb phone that's also a vape help break my iPhone addiction? I tried the Swype vape phone that's going viral.

• Swype is a vape that comes with a Bluetooth-enabled touchscreen to mirror your phone's.
• Finally, a way to vape while also getting your Instagram notifications!
• The future is here, and it's "Watermelon Ice" flavored.

I believe in progress. I'm optimistic about technology. I believe it can and will improve our lives, unlock human potential, solve big problems.

So initially, I assumed that I'd love a vape that's also a phone. I was wrong.

I first learned of the Swype vape on social media, where a few doctored images of its screen had gone viral. (Sadly, no, it cannot show you Zillow.) It also came up on Reddit's r/dumbphone discussion board, which is for people looking to move away from the addicting glow of the smartphone screen.

I don't vape, but I am severely addicted to my phone. Perhaps I could swap one vice for another, or maybe just double down on both — or something. I'm not really sure what my plans were other than that I knew I simply must have this device, and I immediately ordered it from a site called General Vape.

Now, an obvious disclaimer: Business Insider does not endorse vaping or starting to vape simply because it seems like it would be funny to have a vape phone.

The Swype vape is a nicotine vape (not weed, in case you were wondering) and comes in a variety of flavors like Blue Raspberry, Gum Mint, Pina Colada, Pink Burst, and "Fucking Fab" (which was sadly sold out). I went with Watermelon Ice. (Samatha Cole of 404 Media also tried out the Swype vape; we didn't plan this. Coincidentally, we both got the same flavor.)

The vape costs around $20, comes prefilled, and is single-use and disposable. Yes, a disposable phone.

Swype uses Bluetooth to connect to your phone

The Swype does, indeed, feel like you got what you paid for: a $20 disposable phone that's also a vape. It's very janky in ways that you probably haven't encountered in modern electronics, which, for the most part, tend to actually work as advertised.

First of all, it's not technically a phone. It works by syncing with your phone over Bluetooth. You can't actually take phone calls on it (it has no speakers, microphone, or cellular connection). You can tap it to answer a call, but it just picks up on your real phone.

The touchscreen does display notifications when you swipe up — I could see messages from Signal, news push alerts, X notifications, and texts. I have to say, there is something truly thrilling about reading a tweet on the side of a vape. (You can only see individual tweets that come to you as notifications — you can't scroll through your full X feed.)

The WearinOS app is very buggy

However, none of this works very well. To set this all up, you need to download an app to your phone called "WearinOS." This app seems designed not for the Swype vape but for some sort of wearable fitness tracker. (I forgot to mention: The Swype does also have a built-in fitness tracker so you can track your outdoor cycling while huffing down Watermelon Ice vape juice.)

WearinOS is broken in strange and funny ways. There are elements of the app that, when you're using your iPhone to configure it, simply don't fit on an iPhone's screen — like the app wasn't properly formatted. There are buttons that, when you tap them, nothing happens, like the button to check for firmware updates. The weather feature crashed the app every time.

And using the touchscreen on the Swype itself also was really buggy. There were similar problems of trying to tap buttons that simply didn't seem to tap. Two video games came on the Swype, Aircraft Battle and 2048, which is a number tile game. But 2048 didn't seem to work at all — you couldn't tap any of the tiles. (Samantha Cole had the same problem with this game, so it wasn't just my one device.)

Other elements didn't really work as you'd expect. For example, you could view some X posts and iMessages, but in reality, I just got a mirror of the push notifications I was getting on my phone: news alerts, some social alerts, iMessages, Signal messages, and even push alerts from the Target shopping app — all lumped together, and it was sometimes confusing to tell what app they were coming from.

But the biggest issue was that the Swype just didn't seem to update reliably with new messages. I'm not sure if this was the Bluetooth connection dropping or some other issue. It went half a day without updating the notifications, and I could never figure out why exactly it did that or what eventually fixed the problem.

It's worth noting that "WearinOS" is listed on the Google App Store as owned by the Shenzhen Communication Technology Co. Just to be clear: I'm doing this for fun, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend you do the same. (I've contacted the company, which is based in China, for comment.)

The vaping experience

I am not a vaper (I tried a Juul years ago), so my judgment on the actual vaping experience is limited. The Watermelon Ice scent was overwhelming as soon as I opened the package; my editor was convinced he had a contact high from it before anyone had even hit it. (I am not sure this is possible, but it DID smell.) [Editor's note: It is possible!]

My first hit was accidentally far too large. I had been trying to take a selfie to document my first puff, imagining I'd look cool. Instead, I snapped it just as my face was contorted in shock and disgust at the blast of watermelon.

My guess is if you're a regular vaper, this is probably fine. It comes with 5% nicotine juice, has three puff strength levels, and claims to last up to 30,000 puffs.

But can it actually replace your phone?

Tragically, for the brain-rotted nic fiends out there, the Swype isn't going to replace your phone.

The bugginess of the Swype means that there's no way you could use it to replace or reliably supplement your phone. But I have hope — if it did actually work a little better, I could imagine that it might work as a way not to have to stare at your phone but still get important notifications.

For many of us, the temptation of the phone — getting sucked into checking email or scrolling Instagram when you meant just to check that text message — is strong. I like my Apple Watch for this reason: I know I'll get alerted about important things (calls and texts), but I can leave my phone in my purse or the other room and not worry about checking it constantly.

People are feeling oppressed by their phones, looking for ways to claw back some of their brain space and break the dopamine cycle of idly scrolling. "Dumb phones" are becoming popular. The Light Phone, a $300 dumbphone that only makes calls and texts with no extra apps aside from an alarm and calendar, has become a hit.

A friend of mine, frustrated with how she always felt distracted by her phone, replaced her iPhone with the Light Phone. She made it two days before giving up and going back to her smartphone. "It's impossible to be a human without a smartphone," she told me. (Business Insider's Jordan Hart also only made it a week with the Light Phone before she came back to reality.)

Frankly, I think it's time we start expecting more from our smartphones. Why can't my iPhone also provide me with a hit of melon-flavored nicotine? Tim Cook, you need to dream bigger.