People want 'dumbphones'. Will companies make them?
People want 'dumbphones'. Will companies make them?
Self-labelled neo-Luddites and the tech-stressed are searching for phones with fewer features. Industry experts cite precarious profit margins and a wobbly market around this need.
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
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.
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 would absolutely love a linux smartphone that didn't suck.
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
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.
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.
TCL
not even once
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.
Or just use Lineage OS with little to no extra apps
Where's the ultra power saving mode? I use Pixel
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
Sounds like a Librem 5. Am currently typing from one.
How is performance? Read spec relatively low.
Why would the back of your phone be made of glass? Lol, wtf?
because steve jobs' ghost wills it
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.
So that the manufacturer can charge you to repair it when it breaks
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
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 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?
People don't want dumb phones. They're already available and no one buys them.
Some still buy, like me
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.
Maybe dumber then
Dumb phones exist though?
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.
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.
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
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
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?
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.
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.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.
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.
I don’t want it to be “dumb” but I’m fine if it’s more “basic”
I think less technology would be pleasant.
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.
I miss palm phones too.
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.
There is Fairphone,Volla and Pine64.
I know and consider those to be squarely on the fringe.
Prepaid flip phones still exist.
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.
What are the chances we get custom built/open source phones?
https://learn.adafruit.com/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-cellphone/overview
This thing comes to mind. It's not exactly an attractive phone.
That's closer to what I was thinking. That is pretty neat though, now we just need to make it smaller and more modular, and I'm not sure of there is a CDMA option as well.
Closes one I can think of is, The Fair Phone https://www.fairphone.com
Repairable, not free
Nearly zero
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.
The prices are ridiculous
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.
Android Roms are a thing
Not very many people want dumb phones, actually. Certainly not enough for anyone to mass produce the things.
Not true: Dumbphone on Amazon.com. Clearly mass-produced.
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 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.
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.
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.
I got the Apple Watch Ultra 2 several months ago and to my surprise I’ve been leaving my phone home about half the time I leave the house. I can still text and answer a call, got my favorite playlists and albums downloaded to it and my Apple Pay setup. Having a dumb phone alone is probably still a step too far back for me but it’s nice having a simpler device that covers all the basics as well as this watch does. I can definitely see the appeal.
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.
I don't understand how you are supposed to look at the photos taken with the great camera on an e-ink display?
It’s not about looking at them on that device, it’s about them looking good when viewed on any device, like if I text a photo to my wife and she looks at it on her phone.
I want a device like this to exist, but every single time a company comes out with an e-ink phone, there’s some huge compromise. Usually, it’s the camera.
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.
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.
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
define popular. iphone wiped out almost the entire phone market in Japan.
I rather go with something like this:
https://unplugged.com/products/up-phone
At the very least a degoogled phone.
Drop all the corporate inclusions and youll sell more
Sigh I miss my BlackBerry
I miss my T-Mobile Sidekick 3.
I miss my SonyEricsson P910i
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.
✨Kai os✨
People are probably like 3%
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.
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Nokia-Dual-SIM-Factory-Unlocked-Smartphone/dp/B0B6WLHKC3
That was easy to find
If they want smartphone with less apps they could go with a gnu phone
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.
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
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.The pinephone is very low end
Only if they can hardwire all the data collection in. That is too big of a money maker for them to give up.
All that data comes almost entirely from apps people install and use.
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.
No.
Next question.
What is the meaning of life? What are we doing it for?
Sam.
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.
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.
lol no
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.
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?
Why? Just download a copy of android without gapps
No
Nope
