I tried an Apple Watch. It had a couple of issues that prevented it from working for me. When it's on LTE the battery only lasted me about 5-6 hours. It's just not designed to be used away from an iPhone for more than a couple hours. So you have to carry an Apple Watch charger with you, and it can only charge if you take it off your wrist. Also while iMessages would come thru, text messages would not reliably get sent to the watch while it was on LTE only. Another issue is you can't send/receive messages from social media apps like instagram/snapchat. 80% of my communications with friends is through Snapchat. Maybe there's a Facebook messenger or telegram app for the watch but I don't use those apps. Also, there's no way (that I know of) to stream music to your car radio from the watch, streaming music over LTE to your headphones drops the battery life to 2-3 hours.
Similar to the Watch it has short battery life. Maybe ~8 hours with sending some texts and listening to an hour long podcast or music. It uses Micro-USB so you have to carry one of those around because everything is USB-C now. It can receive texts but no images. So anytime someone sends you a picture in a text you have to ask them what it is. Again no way to send messages in social media apps. Also there is no way to stream music from any streaming service.
I then tried an iPhone SE. It can do everything you need, but not very well. It's screen was often too small, and too dim outside. Compared to high end phones the camera sucks, and again it has bad battery life. I eventually came to the conclusion that if I'm going to carry a full smartphone It may as well be a good one.
So after all that I'm back on an iPhone 13 Pro Max. Not using a smartphone for a few months did seem to "reset" my brain tho. I don't really use any Apps on the iPhone aside from safari, camera, YouTube music, and Snapchat for messaging. Having a good camera on you at all times is really hard to give up.
My previous phone died on me suddenly and at that time I didn't have spare cash for another one, so I got an old Nokia 3600 classic from a friend and spent 9 months using it while I was working my way to get my finances in check.
The moment I bought a new phone all the old habits came back, so I guess the answer is "nope".
Yes, I use an Apple Watch for maps/subway directions and a flip phone for my phone. Works well, best of both worlds. Apple Watch is hard to waste time on due to the cramped UI.
* Using an apple cellular watch and leaving your phone at home
* Using a smaller phone like an iphone mini
* Using a lower tech feature phone
* Using screentime
And found success that way?