People want 'dumbphones'. Will companies make them?

return2ozma@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 444 points – People want 'dumbphones'. Will companies make them?
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I don't want a dumb phone. I want a circa 2014 smart phone that is not expected to replace my laptop and serve as a constant data stream for corporations. I want to be able to visit a website on my phone and not have it try to get me to download an app, be ads on 70% of the screen, or just be unreadable formatting. Let me call, text, do a basic online search, play a stupid flash game, and take my money. Stop being greedy and trying to make everything I do monetizable

There is something about the Palm Pre or Jolla Sailfish OS that was so endearing back then. Devices that support it just don't exist.

Sad thing is, WebOS still exists.

But it's running on LG televisions

I've already commented on other peoples comments but I'll say it again.

Lineage OS exists and works well with F-droid

Sadly not compatible with everything, though. My phone is off the list ☹️

I can't use my banking app on lineage and those wonderful folk at the bank have made it so that you cant confirm online purchases without.

You have to make it pass safetynet. Iirc there's some magisk modules that let you do that

Well, if you can unlock the bootloader you can port it assuming the device manufacture is in compliance with the GPL.

Might be easier to just look into a supported device when the old one breaks.

Yeah I don't know what any of that means so I'm stuck with good ol' daddy Samsung for now 😂

Most people can port anything. And most of the ones who can have better uses for their time.

That's why I said it might be easier to find a device that already has maintainers

With Firefox and unlock origin it'll remove all the cruft from websites, and you can degoogle your phone, making it more private than it was in 2014 (unless you install apps that don't respect your privacy)

Is fair phone (review) that? Its camera and battery are sub-par for the money, but it says that it makes up for it in many ways, like longevity and ability to swap out components that in other phones can mean almost getting a new one. It sounds kinda perfect for my use case but I've never owned one so can't be positive. When my current phone dies, this is something I'll heavily look into.

I have a Fairphone 5 and it's... ok. It's definitely overpriced for its specs but you can't really expect a cheap phone while cutting down on slave labour at the same time. It's also quite buggy. Not unusably so, but coming from a Galaxy S9 (yes, Samsung bad, that's why I switched), it's a bit jarring. For example, sometimes I'll pull it out of my pocket and it's mysteriously off. I turn it back on and there doesn't appear to be a reason for it and it works fine. A few times I've had the battery drain insanely fast for some reason, despite the phone reporting no apps having high battery usage. Some apps also have issues on occasion, Discord for example tends to get stuck in the gallery view after you send a picture and it doesn't allow you to open the keyboard again. It's also missing some minor, but neat things, like the ability to snooze alarms by turning over the phone (Edit: tbh that's probably a stock Android thing and not really fair to hold against the phone, but I still miss it) and the fingerprint reader is nowhere near as reliable as the one in my old phone.

The vast majority of the time it works just fine and if you don't expect the polish you'll get out of a Samsung flagship, you'll probably be ok with it. But you are very much paying a premium for the sustainability and repairability, not the overall experience. I don't regret supporting Fairphone, vote with your wallet and all that, but I definitely recognise the device itself has issues and when looked at purely on specs and software quality, it isn't really worth the money.

I can't comment on fairphone, but the Discord thing is likely not your phone, it's Discord or something. The same happens to me randomly on a Pixel 6a.

Never happened on my old phone. Might be some issue with the stock Android then, idk

As a fellow FP5 user, I haven't come across the issues you've mentioned - that said, I did install /e/os pretty much immediately, so perhaps that's why.

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences - that should definitely help people!:-)

I wonder if they perhaps have some QA issues, so you got a lemon, or maybe the design itself is just that bad. You wouldn't necessarily know, I'm just musing out loud!:-P

One thing I do want to ask if you don't mind - b/c I don't know how to interpret the specs and I no longer trust paid reviewers - is how smooth does it handle? Like, noticeable lags or no? If it is basically a cheapie smartphone for a sub-flagship price, I might even be okay with that but wanted to know before getting into it.

Keep in mind that my basis for comparison is a Galaxy S9. The Fairphone feels smoother and more responsive most of the time, but you do occasionally get freezes and lag spikes, mostly when you try to minimise an app that is currently loading something from my experience. Particularly heavy websites also slow it down sometimes, but pretty rarely.

And I wouldn't really call the design "that bad", I was listing off my issues with it, so it might have come across that way, but the majority of the time it works completely fine.

So on a scale of 1-5, responsiveness might be a 4?

About the design, I mean like a poorly-placed power button that is easily triggered (and then whatever confirmation procedure is in place can be performed by your pocket), or the sudden drainage of battery issue could be something about poor Quality Assurance when they pick batteries at the factory to put into the devices prior to shipping them out. Or worse, you could replace the battery and that effect could still happen!?

I had a Nexus 5 that would dial things, like even emergency #s (fortunately I don't think it would actually do the call, just dial the numbers) while in my pocket - it may have had something to do with turning the screen on while a headphone jack was plugged into it. I replaced the OS for other reasons and that happened to solve that issue as well:-). So I would not turn a phone away for such a thing, especially if there is a software/configuration fix.

But responsiveness is as much due to hardware as software - e.g. if Firefox runs slow b/c it was compiled for and websites (even mobile) designed for higher-end specs.

Yeah, I'd say 4 is about right. And the power button is a bit recessed (it doubles as the fingerprint reader), so it's really hard to press it accidentally. I genuinely have no idea how it could randomly turn off in my pocket. As for the battery, I'm pretty confident it's a software issue. It's only happened twice in the 4 months I've owned the phone and a restart fixed it both times.

Thanks for the additional feedback!:-) That does greatly reassure me.

Since you said the phone would come right back on immediately thereafter, it sounds to me like it does not seem connected to the battery issue.

Unless the battery issue wasn't "really" a discharge but the sensor somehow being tricked into thinking that the battery was dying - in which case the phone likely shut down gracefully rather than risk a brown-out situation, but then when you powered it up later it realizes once again that it has battery.

But in a more normal scenario, if you have either tap-to-wake or if hitting the power button results in a screen prompt confirmation that does not require a fingerprint or PIN, and especially if you were walking or cycling or some such, then the screen likely rubbed up against your pocket lining and managed to cause the proper combination of actions to shut it off. It could not start up an app that way - that would need your login - but turning a device off usually requires lesser security.

Fortunately the latter may be possible to fix with a configuration setting or other software fix:-).

Hmm, I do have tap to wake and that is giving me an idea. You can pull down the status bar while the phone is locked and in the bottom right corner there's a power button. So theoretically my leg can double tap the screen, pull down the status bar, tap the power button and confirm. Feels like a bit of a stretch but who knows. I've never had it randomly turn off while I was using it or while sitting on my desk after all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That's likely it. Weirdly, turning off that feature may not make all that much of a difference, bc it's so incredibly rare, but if you don't need it - like a long press of the power button would do just as well, in the also rare event that you want to turn it off at all - then disabling that feature would give you peace of mind.

Either way, I'm glad I could help by giving you the idea of how to (maybe) fix it!:-)

The frequency of this issue happening probably varies per person like depending on pockets and usage patterns and such. Like nowadays when I go cycling I either put the phone into an attachment on the front of the bike, or after that broke I put it in my backpack, and either way it never randomly turned off. And in my old Nexus where the issue did happen, the headphone jack working to pull the phone up more than it would have done all on its own probably contributed. i.e., for some people it will never be a problem with their patterns, but if it is for you, then presuming that's it, disabling that power-off feature (if you can) should make you much more satisfied!:-)

Personally I'm very happy with my fairphone. Knowing I can replace parts when they break is nice. And idgaf about camera as long as it can take a halfway decent picture, so a phone that skimps on camera for less cost is a win in my book

That is literally the top feature I am looking for: skimp heavily rather than go all out on the camera, so basically the exact opposite of a Pixel. Whatever amount I pay for a phone - $100-$500 - I want the camera to be perhaps 20% of the price, not well over half as tends to be the case these days. OnePlus especially the "flagship killers" used to be the most similar to that (or at least you didn't pay the Premium for Pixel while getting significantly lesser specs), but after their cofounder left when they enshittified I simply don't trust the company to ever purchase anything from them again.

2014 phones also fit in my hand. I miss that size, you can't even find them now.

Dumb phones don’t help you for tickets, boarding passes, tap to pay, etc. those things require strong security, not the latest tech. I’ve got a few teenage kids and even for them it’s not very practical to exist without a smartphone.

I want to be able to pull up an 80% version of a website on my phone, and have a button to open the full website on my computer for when I get home.

If you use Firefox, you can transfer tabs between your phone and computer.

Firefox can do something like this with the "send tab to device", not sure it is what you want

I would absolutely love a linux smartphone that didn't suck.

I'm starting to miss my iPhone 4

As long as you didn't hold it wrong.

I got it long after the Antennagate problem got fixed. I believe iOS 4.3 was out when I first bought it.

Was Antennagate fixed? Or did people just learn not to hold it in the wrong place?

I thought it was about physical placement of the antenna, I’d be surprised if a software update fixed it.

I loved my LG v10 and galaxy s5. Those phones just worked and worked great for a long time.

This sounds good, but I'm still not downloading Tapatalk...

People want phones that don't cost $1000+, lack basic features and constantly prey on their personal data. That's what they want. Some express that by saying they want "dumb phones", but the first part is the larger driver here.

A big part of the markup is simply the proprietary systems that run the phone. Apple's restrictive OS, combined with the planned obsolescence strategy for older units, corral their customer base into buying newer models every 3-5 years.

Android's open system allows for competitor brands to compete alongside the bigger publishers - Samsung and Sony and Lenova and Motorola. But even then, we've lost the more modular phone design to a hobbyist-hostile manufacturing strategy that precludes people from swapping out old batteries or doing basic repairs.

This, combined with data providers that try to bake the price of new phones into the subscription service (AT&T, Verizon, and Tmobile all offering "free" phone upgrades on painfully expensive plans) make the industry this extractive rent-seeking mess.

I want those things and I want a phone that's easy to use, doesn't constantly advertise to me, and is more of a helpful tool than a distraction.

I think that last bit is more of a 'what you make of it' situation, regardless of how smart or dumb a phone is.

Unfortunately the manufacturers want the data and advertising revenue, and they'd only be persuaded to offer an alternative if they made the same amount of money.

If each sale of a $900 smart phone gives them $100 of ad revenue over a couple years, I'd bet my bottom dollar they would charge $200 for the 'dumb' version.

I think the distractions are partially a user issue and partially a company issue. Companies make their programs noisy with notifications by default that I only change it once I've found it annoying. They also make their program so bloated that they are slow to load and execute. By the time the app loads, I've lost my flow and now the tool is a nuisance. My mind is already cluttered. I don't need tech to slow it down.

I see what you mean. People use their devices at different levels. That may not be the best way to put it.

My meaning is that a portion of the users will be the type to spend a couple hours digging through each setting on a new device to set it to their needs. Another group will use the device with minimal initial adjustments, and tweak things as they find things they don't like. Then there's a third group that will almost never open a preferences panel and just use a device by its factory settings, likely to never consider potential improvements to their user experience.

From what you've said, I imagine your in that second group. I myself am in the first one I described; I look at the options of any hardware I purchase or software I download before I actually begin to use it.

Unfortunately - in the context of this post - the number of people in that third group I imagine outnumber us by multiple orders of magnitude, and therefore companies with shareholders to appease will always manufacture devices with as much bloat and advertising and invasive data mining as they can be paid to put in.

People want phones that prey on personal data?

Uh, they DO still make dumb phones. And people still buy them.

Yep, 79 year old father in law has a brand new dumb phone with a t-9 keypad, made by TCL. Works perfectly fine.

Yeah but this type of story doesn't generate click bait headline.

Yeah, for around 20-30 euros you can get a cheap Nokia branded phone as far as I'm aware (105 and 106 series for example).

Yep. They even made a new 3310.

proprietary Chinese processor (Unisoc) AND operating system (Mocor), nothx

Step 1: Reformat your Android phone

Step 2: Turn on ultra power saving mode (this disables everything in the system except a few apps such as phone and messaging)

Step 3: Never connect to the internet

Et voila. You have a dumb phone.

Now that I've seen this... Most of the things people want out of a dumb phone can be accomplished by putting an android on ultra power saving mode. Except physical keyboards.

I want a dumb TV!

You can just never connect your TV to the Internet or make it forget all networks, that works pretty well if you have a console or PC hooked into it that is doing the actual content for it

You still have to deal with the piece of shit taking forever to turn on, and the possibility of it simply dying because any component of the "smart" part died.

In that case you replace the part that died, instead of throwing away everything. (see Hulk meme)

At some point smart TV manufacturers are going to catch on and require Internet, it's only a matter of time

I looked at this when replacing my TV. If you want a nice panel the options are pretty limited, or you have to pay for commercial sets or a projector. I settled on creating separate VLAN for my smarttv and limiting what apps are installed on it and sourcing a blocklist for all its tracking shit.

Dumb phones don’t have all the gooey “track everything we do” goodness in the middle so I doubt it.

The new ones would surely do that.

Exactly. If dumbphones made a comeback, companies would simply achieve it by presenting the user with a dumb UI while the data harvesting would still go on in the background.

I guess there's the valid argument that you'd be doing less on your phone so there'd be less to spy on, but there'd still be spying, and much of it would simply be shifted to the user's PC instead of a smartphone. Guess what, spying is rife there too.

The answer to stopping the spying is privacy laws that put people, and their privacy, above tax-dodging multinationals.

I had the same take--less going on to exfiltrate.

I want a real software dev team for linux phones. I don't have programming knowledge, but I can pitch in for a reoccurring crowdfund to pay them. The Pinephone is nice hardware, but Pine64 has always said that they're leaving the software up to the community.

I don't think people really want dumbphones, I think they just want apps that better support their self-control. Digital Wellbeing on Android is a start, but it's way too easy to bypass.

I wager some people want "dumbphones". A phone you open and just dial into without scrolling through apps. A phone with a simple screen that doesn't just gobble down battery life. So, like, a smartphone could fit this need with the right interfaces available.

I mean, yeah, but that's a different desire than this article is talking about because they're more or less talking about flip phones.

I want people to stop thinking that their little quip to me is of the utmost importance. I want people to wait a few hours to tell me something instead of calling me while I'm driving and act insulted when I tell them to hurry up because I'm either driving or pulled over.

If you don’t like being disturbed while driving you should use do not disturb while driving.

I'm a farmer. There's always the chance the someone is hurt in a field and is calling for help.

Ew, people call you? All my friends text, because they know we are busy adults, I'll get to the chat when I can get to the chat. Little monster stays on vibration only or complete silence until I decide so. I control the damn thing not the other way around. Everybody who knows me or I give my phone number knows that phone call means someone died, there's blood everywhere, or the building got set on fire. Nothing else requires phone call level urgency.

Phone calls are for urgency and very often I do need to respond quickly. I also expect and am disappointed when people don't answer calls from me because I only call for urgent matters.

Even if my father knew how to send text messages, his fat, dry fingers can't use the on screen keyboard.

Not as far as "dumb" per se but I would accept "less smart" in exchange for physical buttons and a removable battery.

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Dumbphone maybe not. But a Linux phone that is fully functional and eschews the corporate app eco system? Yes please

I admit I would miss tap to pay tho

Stick your credit card under the phone cover and you have tap to pay.

true. Though I don't know how you'd lock it behind biometrics.

Above 25 or 30 USD (don't remember exactly) my bank requires me to enter the pin, that's just as good.

Although you should be using an RFID blocking case to hold your cards.

I thought I would miss pay to tap, but then I realized there's another device that supports pay to tap. So instead of taking out my phone to pay, I take out my credit card

I mostly just want a phone that doesn't want to sell me on new ways to use my phone that I don't already do. I don't want a phone that's constantly trying to get me to use voice search, or try out some AI feature, or a search engine, etc. I have a newer Samsung tablet, and by default holding the power button turned on voice search instead of the power off menu? I fucking hate that shit, it was thankfully changeable but it was annoying that I had to change it back. I literally never use voice search. I fucking hate talking to computers, I'm not talking to a machine unless it's actually capable of feeling offended if I don't

B-but if they don't get better every year, the price will go down!

I'm not talking to a machine unless it's actually capable of feeling offended if I don't

lmao

I don't want a dumb phone but I would 100% take a phone with a back that isn't glass, high repairability, and full control over the OS. Make it THICC and put a big battery too.

Why would the back of your phone be made of glass? Lol, wtf?

So that the manufacturer can charge you to repair it when it breaks

From what I understand about phone design, it allows for the smallest possible design that can still do NFC and wireless charging, while keeping that premium feel.

I don't give a damn about premium feel, I just want a no-nonsense phone that does what it's fucking supposed to while still being serviceable.

Have had at least one phone fitting this description. :(

Android, too.

Because if you want wireless charging it's that or plastic and the latter certainly doesn't make for a great premium product

I use my phones with a case, so I actually don't know the difference

What? My phone has a metal back and charges wirelessly just fine, even with a case on it.

I van assure you at the very least the part where the coil is situated has no metal backplate. While technically possible to charge wirelessly with a metal back the efficiency of the charging would drop into hell. Unless absolutely not otherwise doable it's better avoided, not least of all because the back would heat up immensenly when using charging speeds that are remotely useful

Legit the cheapo plastic screens on the less than $100 phones are the most resilient phones i've ever owned

I had a chunk of metal fall on one, and the only thing it did was INDENT the screen, the plastic was soft enough to bend rather than just crack

So a fairphone? Though it doesn't provide wireless charging I think.

And no headphone jack

Yeah that was probably the wrong decision, following their mantra. But personally it doesn't bother me too much. I'm pretty happy with it

  1. Make repairable phone

  2. Remove headphone jack and release wireless bud that not repairable (TWS earbud)

  3. Piss off community

  4. ???

  5. Profit?

(i know fairbud now better, but was not back then)

For now there are Fairphone and SHIFTphone but both only guarantee to work in the EU. They offer very mid hardware but I hear they do actually work.

Not EU so I'll have to wait. It cost me around $40 USD in shipping and taxes just to import a damn Pinecil to Canada, my country is ridiculous.

Wanna to hear worse? In Turkey you can not import a phone with shipping. You have to bring it with yourself and register it with your passport after paying around 1000 dollars.

I'm not 100% sure on this but there is always the possibility your carrier could always block devices it does not recognize. I need to look more into this.

Also, it seems that someone has already started to work on bringing mobile Linux "PostMarketOS" to the new Shiftphone. It's not even released yet. If it's officially supported, I'll have a favorite brand for sure. That kind of software support would be unprecedented (except maybe the Librem as mentioned earlier but their hardware repeatability is much lower).

People want these to avoid watching ads and being a guinea pig for their own money.

If something like Maemo was a thing today, would be different.

So maybe they could just...not use apps that bombard them with ads? How hard is that?

I just want a repairable phone with a headphone jack.

throw in a microSD card slot and I'm sold

The name is silly but the Galaxy XCover 6 pro checks all those boxes as a new phone. It even has the old style notification light, different colors for notifications.

People don't want dumb phones. They're already available and no one buys them.

Yup.

In the 2000s (very young at the time) I sometimes thought about how awesome it would be if we had devices where we could go on the Internet from everywhere.

I do not want the world back where people could only look things up on the Internet from home or work or where there is a desktop computer.

The issue isn't that people want dumb phones, like a Nokia 3310.

They want a smartphone that prevents all the the things they don't like, while still letting them do all the things they do still need their smart phone to do. And in 2024, that's quite a lot. Some places you can't even park your car without a phone.

Apparently they just don't have the willpower to not install the things they don't like.

I actually don't get it. Root that thing and you can make it as dumb as you want. People want to press buttons and everything works. But please private and secure. That's not how it works, not because of the electronics, because of thee greed and people. Nobody wants to learn basic stuff and anything should just work. No. Learn or shut up. Or pay someone who is willing to do it. The "companies" will be as evil as the consumer let them be.

I've just breathed new live into an old tablet that, because of all the Samsung Bloatware + system app updates was 95+% full all the time even though it only had something like 4 apps I actually installed and used, by replacing its factory Android with LineageOS.

Now, I have an EE Degree and 25 years experience in developing software, including years of Android.

It still took me researching how to do it over the course of two weeks and actually doing it took me 4 hours and was a massive PITA (I literally had to re-install the factory OS just to toggle the "Allow OEM unlocking" option because my first LineageOS installation that looked fine actually went into a boot-loop on first restart), though the result was well worth it.

(BUT, the version of LineageOS I have has a stupid bug and if I wanted to upgrade it to fix it I would have to compile LineageOS myself for my device, since it's not officially supported - and I used somebody else's precompiled binary - and I'm not sure if I have the time and patience for it).

This is me with all my experience in related domains and who actually did something similar for my brand new phone a few months ago.

Absolutelly, if you are lucky, have the exact right model, somebody else on the Internet did all the work for you in a nice video, the files you needed hadn't yet dissapeared from whatever file sharing cloud storage *#%$ they were place in, and you are technologically inclined, it shouldn't be too hard.

On the other hand, the average person out there doesn't have the technical expertise to even begin to understand what's going on and the whole thing would fail on something as basic as not having the right USB drivers on their computer.

All this to say that your expectation about what people in general are capable of doing is wildly of the mark.

I'm pretty sure that dumb phones, aka feature phones, are still a thing.

It's just that nobody talks about that stuff.

Sometimes they're marketed as a "senior phone".... Because you know old people. I guess?

I want a phone that has an eink display but an ecosystem for apps. I want my battery to last weeks, I want my communications conduits to be dead simple, and I want to be able to run an OTP authenticator on it.

If the thing I'm expected to have becomes highly useful for the things I'm expected to have it for while also interrupting my bad habit tendencies, I think it would be a good fit for me.

Yes. Make the phone look and be as boring as possible. No more doom scrolling.

This boox palma is a thing... https://shop.boox.com/products/palma not sure how good of a phone it is though

Iirc the Palma doesn’t have a sim slot thus can’t be used as a full fledged phone. The Hisense line of phones (such as the A9 Pro) do have sim slots and run android but I don’t think even they last weeks.

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Do you want e-ink or would you rather have a Gameboy display? Transreflective LCD can be a lot faster and have better colors. You can even add a backlight

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The problem with dumb phones is that the entire world pushes people towards smartphones. For a lot of adults, it's really hard to move to a dumb phone.

Have a security system for your house? Need an app. Router? App. Bank? App. Payments? App. Doctor appointment check in? App. Texting? WhatsApp. Fucking menus? App. Refrigerator? Believe it or not, also App.

My bank is so shitty that sometimes the website doesn't work, but their mobile app does.

You can't always opt out of using an app. I tried setting up my new ISP's router last week and it required an app. No other way to do it.

Currently, I'm thinking something like the Jelly Star might be the best compromise. Has maps and other tools, but the tiny screen prevents them from trapping you.

Some of those apps are optional but advertised as if they aren't. For instance, I've yet to encounter a router that actually needs the app to set it up, but most will tell you to do that rather than trying to give you the "old school" instructions.

Out of all those I only use WhatsApp, Lemmy and an Internet Browser. I guess a real dumb phone is out of the question for me. Though I could do with something smaller (not too small) and cheaper.

Most dumb phones aren’t.

Dumb, that is. Virtually all of them have some version of Android or KaiOS or some other full-fat OS cosplaying as something “simple”. Litmus test: does your “dumb phone” come with a map app? A Facebook app? Can you install apps from an external source? If so, you don’t have a dumb phone.

The hallmark of a dumb phone is the lack of an OS that boots. You turn it on, and everything should be instantly and immediately available, loaded from ROM. No boot sequence, no waiting for anything to load.

The only truly “dumb phone” out there - as something “new” and not actually vintage - is the Rotary Un-Phone.

Not gonna lie, I do miss phones with tactile keyboard buttons. My last dumb phone had a mini qwerty keyboard and I loved that thing.

Absolutely. Sometimes I consider getting a separate Bluetooth keyboard, but I seriously doubt it would be similar enough to scratch the itch. I really miss knowing exactly where all the keys are by feel and typing without looking.

I do have Bluetooth keyboard for my current phone, but it's definitely not the same, plus it's just another thing to lug around

No, I rather have a smarter phone without all the current day B.S.

The article talks about this. You should try reading it instead of reacting to the headline. This is generally a good idea.

And I just want a small Android phone that fits in one hand.
The last one to be around iPhone 13 mini size is the Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact from 2018. And if you want original iPhone SE size, then the "latest" one is the Samsung Galaxy Y S5360 from 2011.

Oh what I would do to magically make my old Samsung S4 Mini usable again...

What are your thoughts on the Unihertz Jelly Star?

It's great, but a bit too small and thick (...let me just stop you there), and the design is just not really modern or elegant. I didn't have problems typing on it, personally. But it's either the Jelly Star, at 3", or you basically jump straight up to 6" minimum.

Interesting, but taking it a too far to the tiny end - I don't need a phone I can hide in my prison pocket, just one that fits in my regular ones.
Also Unihertz has terrible software support and doesn't provide android upgrades for their phones, so it's already in a sense 7 months out of date - and sadly obscure enough that there isn't much custom rom development either.

The reviews of the Jelly series seem to conveniently leave out how it is to type on. I would like that size but I need to be able to type a casual whatsapp message every once in a while or add an appointment to my calendar.

I am considering buying something cheap and (relatively) small from AliExpress to see how that works and if it's a size I like. I'd hate to spend Unihertz prices only to find out it's too small for me.

Shift5me is only thing below 5“ screen i found. Made 2019. 18mm higher and 13mm wider than iphone se.

Screen size stops being meaningful when you start comparing phones released years apart - the 5" Shift5me is 141,5 mm x 71 mm, phones around that width have seen screens all the way from the 4.3" of the 2011 Philips W920 to the 6.2" of the 2024 Samsung S24. For reference, the S4 mini was 4.3" at 124.6mm x 61.3mm.

But if that is an acceptable size of a phone, there are still few of those around, thankfully. It's just about the limit of what I can comfortably handle at all (Pixel 4a currently)

I just want a small […] phone that fits in one hand.

How bloody small are your hands??

Mine are just average for a man’s, and the iPhone 15 Pro Max is eminently usable with just one hand.

This is a phone that fits in one hand.

This is a phone you can barely hold in one hand, but can't actually do anything with it because your thumb maybe reaches 25% of the screen unless if you dangle it precariously on your palm.

I see you and me are looking for a similar phone. I want to be able to comfortably hold and use it with one hand.

As someone else mentioned Unihertz makes some smaller phones that aren't limited in specs but some may be too small for my tastes. I am still looking to see what would be a good size since I want to be able to type on it with some comfort.

The S4 mini wasn't quite that small, but typing comfort on small phones depends entirely on how comfortable you are with using swipe/gesture typing, as that's realistically the only normal way to do it - any on-screen buttons are just too tiny to hit accurately unless you go landscape.

I am still very stuck with typing with two thumbs like I did on my BlackBerry.

I don't think major manufacturers ever will make them. We'll continue to get one-off kickstarter-esque fringe phones that'll keep the most devout Luddite happy and the rest of us will buy what we are offered whether we want a dumb phone or not.

What are the chances we get custom built/open source phones?

I wouldn't mind a dumb phone, but I'd need it to have whatsapp at the very least, otherwise I'll be "that incommunicable weirdo"

I would miss Google maps too.

I'd love a cool gimmicky phone that flips open or whatever, and has a small screen or a really bad frame rate. Just to discourage me using YouTube and social media.

I just don't know what I would use to navigate around

If you'd buy the cheapest of the cheapest, you'll probably get terrible performance. So that sort of works.

I want complete control of my technology after I buy it. I don't want my phone to assume things that I like based on my input. If something goes wrong, I want it to be my fault because I enabled the wrong setting. I also want physical buttons. I miss those so much.

They exist

https://www.thelightphone.com/

https://techless.com/pages/home

I think people say they want them by don't really want them.

Some of the other comments show that off pretty well. When people say they want a dumb phone they usually want a "dumb" phone that also has X, where X may be their favorite messaging app but it can also be anything else really, like a good camera or support for NFC payments.

+1 For the Light Phone. Owned both their Kickstarter edition and their latest generation, and makes travel, camping, and more easy when I forward my calls/texts. Great battery life with still some creature comforts we have all gotten used to, smart phone wise.

I want a dumb phone that acts as a hotspot for my tablet and other devices.

You can already buy those. They seem to commonly be referred to in online stores as ‘pocket wifi’. Just stick a sim card in them and you can manage their settings through any connected device with a web browser.

You can’t use them as a phone though. And dumb phones that do somehow support tethering don’t do so at modern speeds.

Can't also use those as a phone, though, which I think the parent comment was intending.

I had an LG and a Kyocera back in the day that could do that. They had some small non-connected games. Of course I couldn't do much with the hotspot as this was on 3G.

As the actual headline itself says, this is a niche. The editorialized lemmy headline makes it sound like much more than that. Dumb phones still exist, but not many people choose to buy them

I want a “dumb” phone that can run signal. Just text, calls and signal. No camera, no other apps. It’s time we split the data honeypot back up in to smaller pieces.

I used a nokia dumbphone and it was awful. Not awful due do a lack of features, but awful due to how poorly those features are implemented. Kaios is teal garbage.

But the form factor was lovely, and physical buttons are so much more precise and comfortable to use than a touch screen.

The phone that I really want is a small smartphone with physical buttons for typing and navigation. As far as I am aware that is something that is not made these days.

I had the HTC Desire Z back in the day, with a full qwerty keyboard underneath the screen. It was awesome to write on, but it lacked performance.

Sometimes I miss my blackberry because it had a keyboard and would read the name of who was texting me as an alert. It also fit in my pocket a lot better and the screen never cracked.

Wish they'd make a new model of that phone. I'd consider getting one if they could manage to not fuck it up with unnecessary features.

If you want to eliminate distractions try installing one of the linux phone distros: Sailfish Mobian,Ubuntu Touch,PostmarketOs,Plasma Mobile.

I would love to, but it seems they only work in very specific phones. And even then with questionable functionality. It kinda feels like trying to use Linux as a daily driver twenty years ago.

Or just Lineage OS

I used to recommend AOSP but all the apps have been abandoned

I’d like a smart phone with the latest Android, a great camera, and a color e-ink display. I’ve yet to find one.

dumb phone like flip phone it is still popular in Japan.

Gonna need proof of this.

Nearly everyone I met was rocking iPhones. It was kinda frustrating as a android user.

define popular. iphone wiped out almost the entire phone market in Japan.

Drop all the corporate inclusions and youll sell more

I thought I wanted a dumber phone. Not a flip phone necessarily, but not a pocket supercomputer. I looked at the majority of options out there and concluded that (ignoring the ones that are basically just running Android) they’re all missing a feature or two I really like, like the Light Phone looks great but I listen to audiobooks on Libby all the time. So then I just decided to delete a bunch of stuff from my iPhone, and then I didn’t get around to that so I still just have the same phone. 🤦‍♀️

Person: has problem

Person: attempts to fix

Person: fails

Person: attempts band-aid fix.

Person realizes they have no motivation, and just lives with the problem.

This is where we're at America.

I want a dumb phone I can side load on to.

Just my essential apps and nothing else

Nothing is stopping you from doing this on GrapheneOS

For one soon HMD/Nokia will come out with a new Nokia 3310 as the first dumbphone with 5G

What do you need 5G for on a dumb phone, anyway?

Two words: future proofing. In many places, 2G and 3G networks are either turned off already, or will shutdown in a year or two. Especially with the dumb phone target audience, a phone that will become a brick in a couple of years, is most definitely not something they're looking for.

companies will make them, it's just capitalism. It's a question of whether or not people will buy them.

Companies are already making "dumb phones" go buy one if you want one.

Disclaimer: The below rant does not include things like healthcare where choice in the market is either not a thing or not possible. Lest someone think I am being absolutist. It is purely railing against the average consumer widget, not grandmas oxygen tank refills.

That depends on how many people want them.

Companies will make, or stop making/doing, nearly anything if the money for doing it goes away. But not enough people want "dumbphones" bad enough to stop buying "smartphones".

Just like not enough people want small phones to stop buying the big ones. Or not enough people want the price of Netflix to go down to stop paying for Netflix, etc. Consumers in general need to learn the power of and build up the mental discipline to do without when the available options aren't what they want. Apple, Google, etc can't force you to buy it from them after all.

Companies prey on the inability of the consumer to go without when they find the terms of the deal distasteful to great success. Large chunks of every companies marketing department think about nothing else.

The real "sin" in all of this is there not being enough smaller players around to fill those smaller segments, because we kept buying from the company that bought up all of the competition years ago despite finding those practices distasteful.

Companies, and politicians, have figured out that the average majority is all bark and no bite. And the average majority would be wise to start to figure that out.

This is why I want a Raspberry PI based PDA and a Tablet. Nothing fancy, even if its somewhat thick and not water proof, etc... It should be modular and repairable. Put a flavour of Linux on it and configure it to be secure. Then have a dumb phone which I can use as a modem if I want but otherwise call and text and turn off when I don't want it.

A Raspberry Pi wouldn't be great for a phone. The pinephone looked interesting.

Definitely wouldn't want a dumbphone. Rather the opposite, like a super-smartphone, something like Raspberry Pi inside my pocket (PinePhone may be getting there).

This post got me to try installing Jellyfin server in Termux under proot, only to realize it's fairly useless for random videos and then wipe it 5 minutes later, but anyway that's the kind of things I do/want to do with my phone.
And hell, I'd definitely want a keyboard attachment like the PinePhone has.

Go check a place like AliExpress: plenty of those there.

It's not even as if dumbphones are amazingly complicated and highly dependent on complex software to work - the actual complex mobile network stuff comes inside modules that do most of the work.

If dumbphones aren't reaching people's hands in some countries the problem is in distribution or maybe lack or awareness: we do live in a Marketing-heavy society and people are almost conditioned to go for expensive branded stuff.

Go check a place like AliExpress

They've got a lot of referbs and knock-offs (and the occasional rocks-in-a-box scam), which is one reason why prices can seem suspiciously low.

Which isn't to say American phones aren't overpriced. But the way AliExpress vendors make money isn't by simply undercutting American retails. They still have to source their product from somewhere, and that often means cutting corners or using substandard parts.

we do live in a Marketing-heavy society and people are almost conditioned to go for expensive branded stuff.

The other side of the marketing-heavy society is constantly being burned by "discount" products that are low-quality imitations. Case in point, back when Black Friday was a big deal, retailers would often source cheaper versions of well-known brands and use deceptive advertising to convince people the big TV you were buying at a 80% discount the day after Thanksgiving was comparable to the one you'd have gotten the day before.

Buying "full price" is often a hedge against getting one of these bait-and-switch marketing gimmicks.

I suggested AliExpress because it's internationally accessible, but I've actually bough small cheap phones both were I am now, Portugal and were I lived before, the UK from local eBay sellers and even mobile phone repair shops.

It's stuff that costs 20 bucks and the reason for that is because the price of the electronics needed for that really is stupidly cheap nowadays as it's all so heavilly integrated and even in China stuff like circuit board assembly is mostly automated.

Going directly to some seller from China just removes most of the middlemen as well as any brand markups (though the seller is almost certainly a middleman since factories don't usually sell by the unit, at least not in my experience way back when I had a small business importing and selling electronics).

It's the same reason why a perfectly good TV Media Box will cost you €35 (including VAT and shipping) even though that thing has to have enough power and memory to run Android and something like Kodi on top of it, which doesn't apply to a basic mobile phone.

(I've actually made my own basic mobile phone a couple of years ago when playing with Electronics, though it wasn't that practical to use, since it was all stuff hanging from a breadboard and connected to a 2G module ;)

It's shocking just how huge a fraction of the prices we pay nowadays for consumer electronics in the West are markups.

Sure, more complex and expensive devices it does make sense to get it from a brand (though I would advise against big brands, or at least get something you can put a Custom ROM on, beause of enshittification) even if the quality of no-name-Brand goods from China is actually better than it used to be, because it's so much money at stake that the risks of scams, bad quality and inexistent support in getting if from random-Chinese-brand make it maybe not such a good idea for products worth hundreds of dollars (which would also favoured by scammers).

Simple mobile phones, however, are not "complex and expensive devices" nowadays and the same companies making €35 TV media boxes or €50 Single-Board-Computers (like the Banana-Pi or Orange-Pi stuff) have enough expertise to make basic phones and the price of those things is pretty low if you're not expecting similar features as bigger smartphones (i.e. no high resolution screens, not much memory or processing power, no high resolution cameras with good optics) since that's were most of the parts cost is.

But yeah, I get your point and I myself generally have a maximum price point for the stuff I'm willing to source from there since because of the risk involved, but if you're after a mobile phone that costs $20, just get two or source it for a bit more from a local seller in a place like eBay to be a bit safe when it comes to replacements.

Only if they can hardwire all the data collection in. That is too big of a money maker for them to give up.

No.

Next question.

What is the meaning of life? What are we doing it for?

I'll take a shot: Life is a disease of chaos that spreading itself across the universe that long forgot about it. In order to survive it must consume itself, but keeps spreading slightly faster and has only recently started to shape its own future.

We as a species? We do it because it feels good for the most part. Nature was cruel and we figured out how to keep the pleasure center of our brain happy, and are trying to do that as efficiently as possible. Evolution is cruel and humans are no exception. When primates are threatened they go straight for the throat and balls to remove all challengers. We as a species can get more together; but greed has tipped the balance. Hard times are here and it will likely take drastic change to correct the scales.

We as a collective individual? As our perspectives and priorities change, there will never be a single answer for an individual at any point in their life, so it's hard to provide insight to anyone reading. The first task is to get to know yourself, what are you good at, what do you suck at, what's the most attractive part of your body, what's your best hairstyle, we are all unique and unless you can honestly answer this, you still have work to do. If you had unlimited cash, what would you do? Keep in mind quit my job is not an answer! Aside from getting bored in a few weeks, the actual point of this exercise is to identify what your priorities are. Would you run an organization to do something? What's your passion project? It might be to spend it with your family and that's a great answer for a happy life. Bill Gates went to Africa to help people, Elon Musk bought Twitter so people would talk about him. At the end of the day, your reason for doing it and mine will be different, but you need to find what you can do that will bring you efficient happiness. If it helps; I like chasing a lot of different things and finding the best it has to offer, I also love my dogs. Best of luck in your search.

We as a species? We do it because it feels good for the most part.

I think I'm being a human wrong. Everything hurts, I hate everything, and nothing has ever made me feel good.

I'm genuinely sorry to hear that. From my own journey, I recommend trying to find something that you realize is tolerable to fun. Engage in that activity and actually stop to appreciate that you are in that moment. Just absorb how those emotions feel and try to embrace that frame of mind. Often I would get wrapped up in doing something and not appreciate that I was enjoying myself. I would spend my 8 work hours hating my job, getting worked up by the news and wallowing in those emotions and that becomes your mindset. Identifying that change is constant and trying to embrace what you have now creates moments that are worth indulging in. Now I add slurpee runs to project plans just to make my days slightly more enjoyable and novel. They will likely get stuck down, but at the least it's a softball for someone to roast for a good laugh. But more often than not we take 15 minutes and get a slurpee. Those coworkers are now friends. It took years before discovering I was neuro atypical, don't be afraid to seek help and see if there is something different about you and if you can do something about it.

I've been getting my family into lora. It's nice just having Ubuntu that texts. I still use my phone for mobile connectivity as a hot spot but apps are largely going un updated, and their silly ads unviewed.

Obviously not the solution for everyone but damn its freeing if you can.

dump phone with GPS and google login :v

And email. And whatsapp. And banking. And NFC payments. And...

i just recently found my dumbphone (samsung intensity 2) from right before I got a glowiephone. It has access to email, apps for facebook, myspace, and twitter, and a web browser plus full slideout keyboard. So whatsapp, banking, and NFC shouldn't be difficult at all. Only issue is that unless the bank makes a dumbphone compatible version of their webbed sight they'd need to make a unique app for every manufacturor ecosystem instead of the relative ease of one android and ios app to rule them all. Or have an API for the manufacturors to make their own doggone apps.

I want a dumb phone for day to day use, but I'll wait until my s23u is out of contract then just keep it like a tablet.

I don't want a dumb phone, I want a reliable PDA that doesn't hallucinate it's smarter than me. Older android on a current hardware could've been the best but it's not supported anymore by major devs. As a consumer, I don't understand why that's the case. I'm not interested in their new design choice or whatever they market it with while bloating the shit out of it, I want a low-powered portable PC to edit docs and browsing the web without eating through 8gb and 6000mah like it's nothing.

Some new competiton would be nice too. I remember when companies like Palm made their own competent OS. I wouldn't even mind if Windows mobile made a reappareance. What do people even need anymore except a versatile browser and the ability to play games?

Communication, GPS, web browsing, camera, occasional use as a flashlight, media player, and a multifunction clock. And yeah that's about it.

And make them with a high-rez multi-touch screen for old screens sucked ass at typing.

Screens suck at typing. Full stop.

It's true, but it's no longer a reality. Keyboards now can only happen in dumb phones or some luxury concept phones. It's against a couple of current paradigms: making phones easily replaceable, incentivizing quick and short-term usage, having full control over UI\UX, maximizing interactive screen's real estate, making sure you always look at the screen, and, besides that, engineering challenges that are kinda hard by themselves, but moreso they are in a conflict with banning replaceable batteries, holes for headphones and so on. We are out of luck.

Nevertheless, I'd probably do any stupid thing to get the modern version of something akin to that beast.

Nokia N9000 slider with a full physical keyboard

Guys just pay for a good app-blocking app. You don't have to get an entirely new phone to do this. They work great.

It's fun that you need an app to keep all your apps in check.

🤷🏻‍♂️ true but, I do like having access to social media as addictive as they are designed to be. it keeps me in touch with people, local activism, pop culture

Kind of not the point my friend.

Some people want to disconnect from all the digital distractions and just use their phone as a phone.

They intentionally want to disconnect. I get it, that's not you. You still want the social media connection, and there's nothing wrong with that. Other people, mainly, those who want "dumb" phones, don't.

You can completely block the social media apps from your phone then. Anything that encourages someone with a fully functional phone to go out and buy another one is a waste of resources.

I do like to disconnect, which is why I have the app blockers lol

And planned obsolescence isn't a waste of resources? We are basically forced to toss away fully working phones after 3-4 years because the batteries can't be swapped. You have to take it to some shop you've never been to, and have them take it apart in a specific way, in order to get a new battery. Usually the cost isn't worth it and for a little more you can get a brand new device... The sales people always push you that way regardless.

So having the option of a feature phone when the forced upgrade inevitably happens, wouldn't that be better than forcing people to buy an over powered phone with more capabilities than they want?

I'm not saying someone should take their perfectly working iPhone 12 and toss it in the trash for a feature phone just because.

This argument is invalid.

lmao calm down.

if you're worried about planned obsolescence... buy a fair phone? or a Samsung with a replaceable battery? (they sell those) ... and put an app blocker on it? tons of people hold on to their phone for more than three years. iPhone 6s kinda have a cult following at this point. the problems of screen addiction and planned obsolescence do not require a shiny new dumbphone.

it costs less than $100 to replace the battery on your phone, that is way less than a new phone. it's way less than a used phone. take care of it, clean out the storage ... you're good.

buy a new phone if you want, if you replace your working phone with this it's pretty shitty though, and the people I have seen with these phones usually just like ... have two phones. the market for only having a dumb phone is extremely small so any company that makes these is going to inevitably end up pushing extraneous devices on people in order to turn a profit. seems like this ticks people's boxes for "buying a new gadget" as well as "being less online", it's a total gimmick. I don't think you need a whole new phone to do something an app on your existing phone can do.

Why? Just download a copy of android without gapps