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.
Jokes aside, but in Russia, when NFC stopped working on Apple phones, some banks made payment stickers like this.
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.
Oh well, that works then.
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 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.
I don’t want it to be “dumb” but I’m fine if it’s more “basic”
I think less technology would be pleasant.
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
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.
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.
While certainly not the majority, feature phones (known as garakei) enjoy a cult following in Japan.
Bear in mind that feature phones in Japan were a literal decade ahead of smartphones in terms of features. They already had features such as GPS, email, internet browsers latest 90s and early 2000s.
The Mysteries of Japan-Only Phones — sabukaru - https://sabukaru.online/articles/the-mysterious-early-world-of-japans-cellphone-culture
https://www.docomo.ne.jp/english/product/feature_phone/. they are still on sale and it is still popular for old people and business persons. Hell, even some flip phone model are even water resistant.
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?
Not as far as “dumb” per se but I would accept “less smart” in exchange for physical buttons and a removable battery.
The removable battery is achievable by moving to Europe.
This is an interesting interpretation of “achievable.”
Nobody is discussion the level on convinience for it, here
Did you have a stroke
This gave a good chuckle, thanks :-)
People are probably like 3%
I rather go with something like this:
https://unplugged.com/products/up-phone
At the very least a degoogled phone.
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.
lol, lmao even
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.
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?
Dumb phones don’t have all the gooey “track everything we do” goodness in the middle so I doubt it.
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.
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.
I had the same take–less going on to exfiltrate.
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.
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.
Speech to text exists.
You’re still over estimating him. He grew up with leaded gas. He still goes out of his way to buy the stuff at airports.
Eh, can’t fault and old guy for loving heavy metal.
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.
Sounds like you need to set better boundaries with people you know. Or block their texts.
Boundaries? Guy is talking about life or death emergencies…
I’m taking about people spamming him with messages when it’s not an emergency.
I’ll fuckin do it. How hard can it be to make minimal technology with a decent interface for a demanding market who will all happily pay a little bit of extra upcharge because they don’t want the shiny new biz?
