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
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.
It’s probably a mix of both.
I loved my LG v10 and galaxy s5. Those phones just worked and worked great for a long time.
I wonder why companies can’t just make something as good as these again.
2014 phones also fit in my hand. I miss that size, you can’t even find them now.
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.
Firefox can do something like this with the “send tab to device”, not sure it is what you want
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’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?
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.
No, I rather have a smarter phone without all the current day B.S.
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
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 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”
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.
People want phones that prey on personal data?
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.
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.
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
This boox palma is a thing… https://shop.boox.com/products/palma not sure how good of a phone it is though
deleted by creator
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.
Yes. Make the phone look and be as boring as possible. No more doom scrolling.
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.
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.
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.
I want a dumb TV!
People don’t want dumb phones. They’re already available and no one buys them.
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.
Dumb phones exist though?
