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The Hottest Phones for the Next Billion Users Aren’t Smartphones

183 points by skilled 7y ago

nerdponx 7y ago
Can we please get these here in the US too?
- deleted 7y ago
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TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Interesting. I wonder how long it’ll be before these people, or maybe between a cohabiting family, can afford the cheapest smartphones. I think the idea is supposed to be that internet access, even of such a limited form, I supposed to inspire at least some people to upgrade, up-skill, want more for themselves and their families, etc.
- em-bee 7y ago
  it may or it may not, in fact i may be motivated to downgrade. i really don't want my phone to be that all-encompassing device that takes over my life. the more limited its use the better. for me that is messaging and voice calls and maybe video calls. and playing audio. web on the phone is for looking up things on the go. likewise apps for work that needs to be done while outside (todo lists, maps) i don't want to upgrade, and i expect that someone who does want that will be better served with a cheap laptop alongside that phone than a more expensive phone. of course that makes me one of the nay-sayers who is rejecting the smartphone revolution. but i can dream, can't i?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    I'd happily downgrade if one of these smart-feature-phones had a good camera and better typing method. I guess I could just delete all the apps off my phone, or develop better habits. But I meant to frame my previous comment in the context of the article, where it's talking about those who can't yet afford a smartphone but probably want one.
    - em-bee 7y ago
      good point. but my comment can be extended to that group. do they really want a more expensive phone or do they want their problems solved? no matter which though, speculating from the sidelines isn't going to help. unfortunately i fear that a big drive to more expensive phones is because they are being used as a status symbol. but that too is a sideline comment and is not nice to the people we talk about
whizzkid 7y ago
Interesting article but title is pretty bad. Amount of users have risen for these kind of phones not because they are the new iPhones, but because pay-gap between countries have stood same while technology reached all over the world. Everyone wants to chat and send pictures of loved ones to each other, but while someone is earning 4-5 thousand dollars a month, another one is earning 80 dollars a month. Companies know this and try to make the best possible device possible for the situation.
taneq 7y ago
In what sense are these not smartphones? They run a flavour of Linux, they have internet access, they're programmable and have an app store. They sound just as capable as flagship phones from a few years ago, except that they're not primarily touchscreen based and they don't use the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.
- colordrops 7y ago
  By that definition my old Nokia brick from 2005 with a black and white screen was a smart phone. The boundary is fuzzy, sure, but the term usually means a phone where the app usage is front and center and phone usage is secondary. Now these new phones might be somewhere in-between.
  - jamesrcole 7y ago
    I don't see anything in the article that suggests phone use would be greater with these 'smart feature phones'. The only reference it has to how they're used talks about app usage "Now he listens to Bollywood music on the job, using Google’s built in voice assistant to search for Hindi-language tunes on YouTube. At night his family crowds around the device to watch movies."
  - ollie87 7y ago
    It isn't of course, Nokia smartphones from that period had colour screens and ran Symbian. They had 3G, Video calling, MP3/Video playback, fairly okay web browsers (I used to use Opera), and okay-ish photo/video capabilities. You could even edit documents on them if you hated yourself that much. They just lacked CPU power and RAM capacity compared to what came when the iPhone launched. Models would be: 6600 6630 6680 N70 N73 I actually had another Symbian powered Smartphone when the iPhone launched, the Motorola Rizr Z8 which made the Nokia powered Symbian's at the time look really slow. I sort of miss that phone and it's form-factor, it even came with a pair of Stereo Bluetooth Headphones. Massively ahead of it's time, of course not as slick as the iPhone and AirPod combo I have now, but great in it's own way.
    - 7y ago
kome 7y ago
If only web dev would stop putting megabytes and megabytes of JS crap in their website, and use plain HTML and server-side script (just when needed), they would be able to capture those new users...
- jmkni 7y ago
  Or actually learn how to develop natively for the OS these feature phones use. Does the JioPhone run the same OS and use the same app store as the equivalent Nokia feature phone, for example?
  - em-bee 7y ago
    you expect us web developers to cater to every different device out there? i am sorry, but the whole promise of the web is that i don't have to do that. it's impossible to test for all the different devices out there, so either the devices follow a common standard where the only difference for web is screen size and resolution, or they can expect to be ignored.
    - acqq 7y ago
      The current web developers have a huge problem not only with having the pages downloading many megabytes for the article of a few kilobytes, but also with the required memory footprint. Specifically, a friend of mine tried to use iPad 2 (which had 500 MB RAM) as long as possible and gave up already around, if I remember, late 2014). I didn't understand why he complains that the surfing on it was impossible, but I've tried to do the same with the 1 GB iPad, and surely enough, a year or two later, there were already the apps and the "news" web pages for which even 1 GB of RAM (!) was practically not enough. I of course know it's not about the developers only but the practices of the markets, delivering hundreds of ad trackers on a single page etc. But it's still for me on some level hard to accept the fact that a single web page delivering a few kilobytes of some news needs more than 1 GB of RAM.
      - em-bee 7y ago
        good point. i was almost going to add cpu and memory capabilities into the differences a web developer should be able to handle, but unfortunately those are exactly among the issues that are hard if not impossible to test for. i can easily emulate a different screensize and maybe resolution. but i can't emulate the different cpu and ram of any other device.
hamilyon2 7y ago
I don't understand what this article is about. I owned feature phones, most inexpensive ones. They had internet access, web browser, maps application, chat clients. I used all of that in 2004 and it was regular feature phone maybe at $100. I am sure I can buy one now and it has gotten somewhat cheaper, but. How is it news 15 years later?
- XCSme 7y ago
  The news is that their popularity is drastically increasing in some regions I guess?
- tiniuclx 7y ago
  This article talks about a developing market made of first-time internet users that are buying cheap feature phones. It is interesting because this is taking place in New Delhi and because this cycle is exactly what the west went through in 2004.
- dominicr 7y ago
  I suppose because WSJ covers markets and there are still many places in the world where the number of people who do not own a smart/feature phone greatly outnumbers the current users. In these markets the companies that dominate are unlikely to be commonly known names from the West.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  The news is that those people can now afford to have a phone to start with. And for a large majority even that feature phone is the first kind of computing device they ever own.
- Dunedan 7y ago
  What makes KaiOS powered phones stand out from other feature phones is that they support 4G, which gets more and more important as network operators continue to shut down their 2G and 3G networks.
cryptozeus 7y ago
“Smart feature phones, as they are known, are one of the mobile-phone industry’s fastest-growing and least-known segments, providing a simple way for some of the world’s poorest people to enter the internet economy.” ....sure tomato tomato
firefoxd 7y ago
There is no difference in smartness here. Or at least, now we get to see that marketers meant internet when they said "smart".
dreen 7y ago
So does anyone know an actually good feature phone I could buy in UK right now? 4G capability and maps are a plus but neither essential.
- masklinn 7y ago
  Not sure how it panned out but the Nokia 8110 4G looked pretty interesting when it was announced: limited intrinsic capabilites (and long battery life) but IIRC able to act as a hotspot / WiFi AP bridging 4G to your non-cellular tablet or laptop.
  - dreen 7y ago
    wow it actually looks pretty cool (dont like the curve but its fine)
asaddhamani 7y ago
The article is paywalled
- mrweasel 7y ago
  This is basically the same article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-hottest-phones-for-the-next-billion-users-arent-smartphones/ar-AAEJVvO https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-hottest-phones...
acd 7y ago
I have one of these simpler feature phones and use it as my primary phone device. It started as an experiment when my phone screen broke as a backup device and to get rid of smart phone addiction. Positive cutting down wasting time in phone apps. The phone forces me to call people more often as it is tedious to text on its interface which is a good thing. There is very few apps so time trap like that can be avoided. It has quite good battery time days to weeks. The phone is very sturdy. Drawbacks, cannot purchase train tickets online, cannot use online bank. Drawback camera. One needs to use the brain to navigate so one forces to know the way how to navigate. Its a bit hard if you get stuck in the middle of nowhere but then the phone has a navigation map app. Smartphone zero.
- cheeze 7y ago
  > The phone forces me to call people more often as it is tedious to text on its interface which is a good thing Most folks I know don't really use calling anymore. If one of my friends called me, I'd probably pick up because I assumed it was an emergency. If they just called to talk, I'd tell them to text me. YMMV here but younger crowds seem to shun voice calling IMO.
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  - lazerwalker 7y ago
    Probably depends on what you mean by "young". Anecdotally (family friends + news articles, although who knows what the latter is worth) a lot of teens are super-into videochat as a primary means of communication. Facetiming someone is (allegedly) as common and casual for teens as texting is for 20-somethings.
    - iamnotacrook 7y ago
      You've answered with information about a different concept. Videochat is different to voice chat. Many young people use videochat (with 1 or more other person involved). It's pure voice calls which are far less common (and typically involve just 1 other person).
dmix 7y ago
> So the company developed the JioPhone, teaming up with Hong Kong-based KaiOS Technologies Inc., which makes the most widely used operating system powering smart feature phones globally. It's cool that a (potentially) billion more computers will be running linux: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS
- carlob 7y ago
  The version of KaiOS that shipped with HMD new Nokia-branded phones was such a piece of garbage compared to s40/s60 I had to return mine. I hope this one is better.
samstave 7y ago
When i first interviewed with danger, they had the hip-top. I want one device that can do the following and only the following: * gps * browser * text/mms * camera Nothing else. Make it connect via data to a family console. It logs everything. Give these to all your family/kids and have them be a connected cluster. It all logs back to a server on the home network. Backs up your shit auto. Oh one other feature: * walkie talkie only amongst the family group. All data sims.... no cell. Cell would be sip routed through the home router only.
lovasoa 7y ago
Do you remember FirefoxOS, the smartphone OS that was developed by Mozilla ? It was abandoned in 2016, but KaiOS, the operating system powering these feature phones, is its descendant. Firefox's rendering engine, Gecko, is at the core of the OS, and all apps are written in HTML5/JS/CSS.
- jonathanstrange 7y ago
  I can still not see the sense in programming cheap underpowered phones with HTML5/JS/CSS instead of writing native software for them.
  - arcturus17 7y ago
    Cheaper because the skills are ubiquitous. I'm also assuming the apps are simple so the web triad can cover most use cases.
    - madeofpalk 7y ago
      It's irrelevant because still no one will build for the platform. MS, Blackberry, Nokia have all demonstrated there's just no market for a third "app platform". These phones will have the apps from the factory, and nothing more.
      - cameronbrown 7y ago
        The point was to convince developers to write their apps for the open web as well. Something that definitely was justifiable.
      - panpanna 7y ago
        Maybe you can not earn tons of money by writing a "drink beer" or "I am rich" app, but people are writing simple games and utilities with millions of installs.
        madeofpalk 7y ago
est 7y ago
I have a VoLTE phone with a dial pad. It works great. However the launcher seems to be restarting from time to time, because it's Android Go running under 512MB memory.
raxxorrax 7y ago
Reflecting on it, it is completely crazy that these devices are available for 25$. Somewhere along the line of production the exploitation chain must really work out. Just ordered a pack of µC the other day for under 1$ per unit. These come with powerful computation cores, floating point units, analog-digital converters, countless integrated serial interfaces... You don't even get a coke for that price. Completely insane world...
- linux_devil 7y ago
  One of the best non-smart feature of these smart feature phones is battery. These batteries can go on for days ofcourse depending on the usage.
- VvR-Ox 7y ago
  I don't think they use harsher practices in production. Smartphone production is just the same: First the people are enslaved to get the resources out of some mines, then some Asian workers (inc. children etc.) have to assemble (996 without a loan you'd want to live with). Then it's transported via logistics which is another sector that refuses to treat people like human beings. In the end of the line we have the eager sales guys who knowingly lie to customers and themselves to get a lot of sales. The difference is that companies earn a lot more on a single sale for a smartphone but the scale of the sales of these feature phones could end up being more revenue I think. On the other hand marketing costs could be much lower because the price plus features alone would beat every smartphone at once. I think it's crazy we still didn't modularize these devices and have nice OS'es for them.
  - jdc 7y ago
    Do you have a source for the slave labour claim?
    - raister 7y ago
      Let's not be naïve... If he had a source, they would have to act on it, close everything down, and else. Then the phone price would rise to $400 and the factory would close as well, and all the supply chain would suffer. I guess they just turn their heads the other way on this kind of things.
godelmachine 7y ago
Leading the fray is India's own Reliance JioPhone
puranjay 7y ago
I would genuinely like a smart feature phone. I've been trying to cut down my phone usage but need Whatsapp just to stay connected to friends and family.
- mrweasel 7y ago
  That's going to be one of the main issues for these types of phones. The applications people really do need vary enormously. I basically just need two applications, both for work, Google Authenticator (or similar) and a specialised app from our telco that manage our on-call number. The rest I can do without. Perhaps it's worth remembering that these "smart feature phones" aren't meant for people who just doesn't want a smart phone. They are meant for people who can't afford a real smart phone, so the feature set will creep towards being a full featured smart phone. For those of us who genuinely do not want smartphone, there's currently not much on offer, unless we truly do not need a single smart phone feature. I have a small set of features I'd like to see in a phone: * Hotspot support, so both WiFi and 4G * A TOTP application * BlueTooth, for wireless headset and writing SMSs and managing the contacts from an application on my computer Other than that the screen can be a black and white LCD for all I care.
m3nu 7y ago
If it supports TOTP and QR codes, I'd buy one just for 2FA.
JD557 7y ago
If you are interested in this new feature phones running KaiOS, I recommend taking a look at the BananaHackers website[1] and twitter account[2]. Some of those devices (such as the Jio phone shown in the article) can be jailbroken to support a lot more applications. [1]: https://sites.google.com/view/bananahackers/home https://sites.google.com/view/bananahackers/home [2]: https://twitter.com/BananaHackers https://twitter.com/BananaHackers
nashashmi 7y ago
Ever since I came across Paul Graham's blog article a couple days ago on PR stories and how ubiquitous they are, I have been on the lookout for them. And this is a PR funded/fed story. Sorry. Article on KaiOS came up a few months back. This is a rewrite.
- rchaud 7y ago
  So, an article in the WSJ about a $25 phone sold only in India with a feature set rivalling that of a 2005 BlackBerry is a PR push for...what, exactly?
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    You don't see the problem here? This guy sells mangoes on the street and can afford a data plan that lets him stream music all day and watch movies on his cell phone in the evening. This is unthinkable in Canada (except for those socialists in Sask.).
  - nashashmi 7y ago
    KaiOS. The entire article is selling KaiOS. Side feature is JioPhone.
nerdponx 7y ago
The other day I had spent some time reading up on the whole GPL v2/3 debate and Tivoization. Would it have been impossible to use Linux on these phones under GPL v3? I assume that it would be very difficult to provide "installation information" required by the license.
NoGravitas 7y ago
I would absolutely use a Nokia 8110 4G as my main phone except for just a few missing apps. Mainly Signal; I'd also want an XMPP client that supports OMEMO, though Converse.js might work. I love the retro styling of it, especially that it looks just like the phones in The Matrix.
Zigurd 7y ago
A lot of them will be Android, or based on Android. Android was created with the ability to accommodate non-touch form factors and d-pad navigation in the UI. Applications that aspire to portability to non-touch use cases in cars and TVs still need to use widgets that correctly implement up/down/left/right/select navigation, displaying a navigation highlight color. These are, nevertheless, smartphones. Just smartphones that squeeze out every drop of cost. They will have access to most Android apps, and a full featured browser. There may be a market niche for phones without a color screen, no installable apps, etc. It will be challenging to eke out significantly lower costs than lo-end hardware suitable for lo-end Android configurations, due to volume efficiency.
rv-de 7y ago
If I'd have to I could live without all apps except for two: - Google Authenticator - Password Safe (- E-Mail would be nice, though) Actually I find appeal in only being able to check messages (except for urgent messages via SMS) when I'm home at my computer. But I need a device for the 2nd factor and an auxiliary organizer for passwords.
- icebraining 7y ago
  http://motp.sourceforge.net/ http://motp.sourceforge.net/ runs freakin' everywhere, even on J2ME phones ^^
xutopia 7y ago
I would like to have an old Nokia style phone that provides a voice activated GPS. No Facebook, no Messenger, no email.
- woodrowbarlow 7y ago
  i hear this often. if you want a stripped-down phone and GPS, why not purchase a standalone GPS? do you use the GPS often outside of your car? honest questions.
  - plants 7y ago
    Good handheld GPS units are expensive. Plus, you look eccentric - to say the least - carrying a handheld GPS unit in addition to your phone.
    - cr0sh 7y ago
      Have you considered building your own phone? Sure it won't be very stylish - nor will it be slim - but all the parts are out there with more than enough example code to hack together exactly the phone you want. I'm seriously considering going this route for my next phone, since 4G modules recently became more widely available and much lower in price. But even 3G would suffice for my needs. I'm just wanting a "smart phone" which I have complete control over - or close to it. I understand not everyone has the option or skills to build such a phone, but if you do (or are interested) - google around for DIY phones based on the Raspberry Pi (especially the Zero W), or the Arduino (using a variety of processors, though the original Arduino Phone was made with an ATMega328P iirc). For your use-case, either one of the more powerful "standard" cores could be used (ATMega2560, ATMega644, SAM3X8E) - or maybe something based off the ESP line (ESP-12 or 32 would be my choice). A small 3G GSM module, plus a GPS and maybe an IMU, some kind of keypad, and a small OLED screen or something - keep everything at a 3.7 volt level and run it off a LiPo cell(s). With a bit of luck, you could probably fit everything into something about the size of an Altoids tin.
- plants 7y ago
  Ugh... I check online for exactly this every 6 months to no avail. I see the same things turn up - lightphone, punkt MP01/MP02, Nokia phones with KaiOS. I have tried using a "dumb phone", which works for 90% of what I want to do with it, but it's inconvenient when meeting a friend at a new place or exploring a new city. Similarly, I have tried using a smartphone, but I find myself in cycles where I am inevitably checking it every 5 minutes to see what new stimulus there is to hold my attention.
rahimnathwani 7y ago
Back in May, I spent a little time looking into developing an app for KaiOS, using the official documentation. Here are some notes I wrote to myself at the time: - there seem to be fewer apps on the Kai store than on the Banana Hackers store, which seems odd, as all of those apps in the BH store should be useful to KaiOS users - The official docs are kind of unclear, e.g. the API docs include some options about storage, but don't tell me whether localStorage is available. If I'm a web developer then I probably want to use the storage API with which I'm already familiar. - another doc issue: the documentation for d-pad navigation and emulated cursor is very confusing. I can't tell whether they are two different ways of using the arrow keys, or whether they serve two different purposes. This means I need to do a bunch of experimentation to see what happens - someone on Reddit mentioned they were waiting for app store approval, and they had waited 6 weeks so far; seems hard to get developers that way?
- jmkni 7y ago
  The last one seems kind of bad. If you are going to spend your time developing for a niche platform, you would hope they would at least be on the ball in terms of app store reviewing.
- nefitty 7y ago
  This helps a lot, thank you!
- writepub 7y ago
  The big question is: "How likely are KaiOs users willing to install third party apps". From the article, it seems like pre-installed apps have ample usage, no mention of installation post hardware purchase.
  - rahimnathwani 7y ago
    The JioPhone can run WhatsApp, but it isn't pre-installed. For that reason, I'd imagine 90% of Jiophone users in India would install at least one third party app. However, they would get this from the JioStore, not from the KaiOS store: https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/kaios/26000183/?category=5245235 https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/kaios/26000183/?category=5245235 So if the majority of KaiOS users are using carrier-branded phones with carrier-branded app stores, maybe the developer story for 'vanilla' KaiOS isn't as important.
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Spearchucker 7y ago
Bought the Nokia banana phone with KaiOS earlier this year. Sold it on after discovering that it came pre-infested with both Google and Facebook. Sailfish OS still seems the best choice. Alternatives are my old Nokia N900 or my more recent Microsoft Lumia 980XL.
skizm 7y ago
As an American, where can I order these phones, and are they easy to develop on? Seems like a good opportunity. Whatsapp turned into a $19 billion dollar business by targeting this demographic (their app worked on pretty much any phone you could find).
rerpha 7y ago
Kinda want one just so i can beat my phone addiction.
jbverschoor 7y ago
Well good luck running all these non-native apps on them
dillonmckay 7y ago
There are probably so many replacement parts that exist for iPhone 4,5, and SE series, Apple could easily create an updated low-cost iOS hardware offering, but that won’t be until they fully embrace being a services company. Their lower-end offerings would be ‘lowcost’ thin-clients.
Mikeb85 7y ago
These sound like smartphones. The fact they're not as advanced as higher end phones doesn't mean they're not smartphones. They seem to have all the features that the first generation of smartphones had.
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jillesvangurp 7y ago
Even feature phones ten years ago were pretty capable and MS and Nokia had plenty of smart phones priced at feature phone prices back in the day. I used to work in Nokia when they were still the biggest phone manufacturer. A cheap phone does not have to be lacking in features. Mostly the reason we don't see them a lot in the west is because manufacturers prefer to sell you a more expensive phone. It's that simple. Operators and manufacturers conspire to keep these thing out of the market because they want to sell more expensive products. What's happening elsewhere is that the competition elsewhere is heating up for the rest of the world. For the last decade that market was dominated by landfill Android and a multitude of cheap rip offs and legacy products. E.g. Nokia kept milking S30 well into this decade and there might still be a few variants that they are selling. The original version of that dates back to the early nineties. Before they sold their phone business, Nokia had big plans for bringing linux to feature phones and they had a platform in advanced stages of development before they layed off the entire unit. They actually had two different linux platforms, meego for smartphones, which did launch publically before killing it off and Meltemi (internal code name) which they never launched. Meltemi was intended for cheap phones (replacing the S40 platform, not Symbian in case you confused that with S60) and based on QT/QML and linux running on cheap hardware. S40 was actually a quite capable system and effectively the money maker for Nokia. The Meltemi strategy is basically what is happening now almost a decade later in the form of SailOS, KaiOS and other linux based platform trying to fill the gap left by a mostly indifferent Google and Apple when it comes to low end platforrms. Apple simply does not sell to poor people and Google isn't much better. They like talking about it but it's an after thought in their platform strategy. Samsung tried pushing Bada (basically an evolved Meego) for a while. LG had WebOS and there have been a few more. The problem with all of these (and Nokia) is that electronics manufacturers are not great at developing software. Apple is a lone exception and arguably they are a software developer that happens to produce hardware instead.
kazinator 7y ago
> The gadgets look like the inexpensive Nokia Corp. phones that were big about two decades ago. But these hybrid phones, fueled by inexpensive mobile data, provide some basic apps and internet access in addition to calling and texting. In other words, they are maybe like Japanese phones two decades ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mode#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mode#History
8bitsrule 7y ago
"There is a trade-off for the low price. The devices typically have slower and less powerful components, only basic cameras and their screens are usually just a few inches in size...." IMHO, that's a feature, not a bug ... if all you really want is a phone.
VeninVidiaVicii 7y ago
I'd really love to buy something like this for my 80 year-old mother in law, she's absolutely terrified of mobile phones and still uses a landline. Will it be available in the US?
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  You could buy something like a Nokia e63. It does just as much.
- rasz 7y ago
  $70 Nokia 8110 4G is same hardware in different package.

183 points by skilled 7y ago

nerdponx 7y ago

Can we please get these here in the US too?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

Interesting. I wonder how long it’ll be before these people, or maybe between a cohabiting family, can afford the cheapest smartphones. I think the idea is supposed to be that internet access, even of such a limited form, I supposed to inspire at least some people to upgrade, up-skill, want more for themselves and their families, etc.

em-bee 7y ago
it may or it may not, in fact i may be motivated to downgrade. i really don't want my phone to be that all-encompassing device that takes over my life. the more limited its use the better. for me that is messaging and voice calls and maybe video calls. and playing audio. web on the phone is for looking up things on the go. likewise apps for work that needs to be done while outside (todo lists, maps) i don't want to upgrade, and i expect that someone who does want that will be better served with a cheap laptop alongside that phone than a more expensive phone. of course that makes me one of the nay-sayers who is rejecting the smartphone revolution. but i can dream, can't i?
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  I'd happily downgrade if one of these smart-feature-phones had a good camera and better typing method. I guess I could just delete all the apps off my phone, or develop better habits. But I meant to frame my previous comment in the context of the article, where it's talking about those who can't yet afford a smartphone but probably want one.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    good point. but my comment can be extended to that group. do they really want a more expensive phone or do they want their problems solved? no matter which though, speculating from the sidelines isn't going to help. unfortunately i fear that a big drive to more expensive phones is because they are being used as a status symbol. but that too is a sideline comment and is not nice to the people we talk about

whizzkid 7y ago

Interesting article but title is pretty bad. Amount of users have risen for these kind of phones not because they are the new iPhones, but because pay-gap between countries have stood same while technology reached all over the world. Everyone wants to chat and send pictures of loved ones to each other, but while someone is earning 4-5 thousand dollars a month, another one is earning 80 dollars a month. Companies know this and try to make the best possible device possible for the situation.

taneq 7y ago

In what sense are these not smartphones? They run a flavour of Linux, they have internet access, they're programmable and have an app store. They sound just as capable as flagship phones from a few years ago, except that they're not primarily touchscreen based and they don't use the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

colordrops 7y ago
By that definition my old Nokia brick from 2005 with a black and white screen was a smart phone. The boundary is fuzzy, sure, but the term usually means a phone where the app usage is front and center and phone usage is secondary. Now these new phones might be somewhere in-between.
- jamesrcole 7y ago
  I don't see anything in the article that suggests phone use would be greater with these 'smart feature phones'. The only reference it has to how they're used talks about app usage "Now he listens to Bollywood music on the job, using Google’s built in voice assistant to search for Hindi-language tunes on YouTube. At night his family crowds around the device to watch movies."
- ollie87 7y ago
  It isn't of course, Nokia smartphones from that period had colour screens and ran Symbian. They had 3G, Video calling, MP3/Video playback, fairly okay web browsers (I used to use Opera), and okay-ish photo/video capabilities. You could even edit documents on them if you hated yourself that much. They just lacked CPU power and RAM capacity compared to what came when the iPhone launched. Models would be: 6600 6630 6680 N70 N73 I actually had another Symbian powered Smartphone when the iPhone launched, the Motorola Rizr Z8 which made the Nokia powered Symbian's at the time look really slow. I sort of miss that phone and it's form-factor, it even came with a pair of Stereo Bluetooth Headphones. Massively ahead of it's time, of course not as slick as the iPhone and AirPod combo I have now, but great in it's own way.
  - 7y ago

kome 7y ago

If only web dev would stop putting megabytes and megabytes of JS crap in their website, and use plain HTML and server-side script (just when needed), they would be able to capture those new users...

jmkni 7y ago
Or actually learn how to develop natively for the OS these feature phones use. Does the JioPhone run the same OS and use the same app store as the equivalent Nokia feature phone, for example?
- em-bee 7y ago
  you expect us web developers to cater to every different device out there? i am sorry, but the whole promise of the web is that i don't have to do that. it's impossible to test for all the different devices out there, so either the devices follow a common standard where the only difference for web is screen size and resolution, or they can expect to be ignored.
  - acqq 7y ago
    The current web developers have a huge problem not only with having the pages downloading many megabytes for the article of a few kilobytes, but also with the required memory footprint. Specifically, a friend of mine tried to use iPad 2 (which had 500 MB RAM) as long as possible and gave up already around, if I remember, late 2014). I didn't understand why he complains that the surfing on it was impossible, but I've tried to do the same with the 1 GB iPad, and surely enough, a year or two later, there were already the apps and the "news" web pages for which even 1 GB of RAM (!) was practically not enough. I of course know it's not about the developers only but the practices of the markets, delivering hundreds of ad trackers on a single page etc. But it's still for me on some level hard to accept the fact that a single web page delivering a few kilobytes of some news needs more than 1 GB of RAM.
    - em-bee 7y ago
      good point. i was almost going to add cpu and memory capabilities into the differences a web developer should be able to handle, but unfortunately those are exactly among the issues that are hard if not impossible to test for. i can easily emulate a different screensize and maybe resolution. but i can't emulate the different cpu and ram of any other device.

hamilyon2 7y ago

I don't understand what this article is about. I owned feature phones, most inexpensive ones. They had internet access, web browser, maps application, chat clients. I used all of that in 2004 and it was regular feature phone maybe at $100. I am sure I can buy one now and it has gotten somewhat cheaper, but. How is it news 15 years later?

XCSme 7y ago
The news is that their popularity is drastically increasing in some regions I guess?
tiniuclx 7y ago
This article talks about a developing market made of first-time internet users that are buying cheap feature phones. It is interesting because this is taking place in New Delhi and because this cycle is exactly what the west went through in 2004.
dominicr 7y ago
I suppose because WSJ covers markets and there are still many places in the world where the number of people who do not own a smart/feature phone greatly outnumbers the current users. In these markets the companies that dominate are unlikely to be commonly known names from the West.
pjmlp 7y ago
The news is that those people can now afford to have a phone to start with. And for a large majority even that feature phone is the first kind of computing device they ever own.
Dunedan 7y ago
What makes KaiOS powered phones stand out from other feature phones is that they support 4G, which gets more and more important as network operators continue to shut down their 2G and 3G networks.

cryptozeus 7y ago

“Smart feature phones, as they are known, are one of the mobile-phone industry’s fastest-growing and least-known segments, providing a simple way for some of the world’s poorest people to enter the internet economy.” ....sure tomato tomato

firefoxd 7y ago

There is no difference in smartness here. Or at least, now we get to see that marketers meant internet when they said "smart".

dreen 7y ago

So does anyone know an actually good feature phone I could buy in UK right now? 4G capability and maps are a plus but neither essential.

masklinn 7y ago
Not sure how it panned out but the Nokia 8110 4G looked pretty interesting when it was announced: limited intrinsic capabilites (and long battery life) but IIRC able to act as a hotspot / WiFi AP bridging 4G to your non-cellular tablet or laptop.
- dreen 7y ago
  wow it actually looks pretty cool (dont like the curve but its fine)

asaddhamani 7y ago

The article is paywalled

mrweasel 7y ago
This is basically the same article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-hottest-phones-for-the-next-billion-users-arent-smartphones/ar-AAEJVvO https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-hottest-phones...

acd 7y ago

I have one of these simpler feature phones and use it as my primary phone device. It started as an experiment when my phone screen broke as a backup device and to get rid of smart phone addiction. Positive cutting down wasting time in phone apps. The phone forces me to call people more often as it is tedious to text on its interface which is a good thing. There is very few apps so time trap like that can be avoided. It has quite good battery time days to weeks. The phone is very sturdy. Drawbacks, cannot purchase train tickets online, cannot use online bank. Drawback camera. One needs to use the brain to navigate so one forces to know the way how to navigate. Its a bit hard if you get stuck in the middle of nowhere but then the phone has a navigation map app. Smartphone zero.

cheeze 7y ago
> The phone forces me to call people more often as it is tedious to text on its interface which is a good thing Most folks I know don't really use calling anymore. If one of my friends called me, I'd probably pick up because I assumed it was an emergency. If they just called to talk, I'd tell them to text me. YMMV here but younger crowds seem to shun voice calling IMO.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lazerwalker 7y ago
  Probably depends on what you mean by "young". Anecdotally (family friends + news articles, although who knows what the latter is worth) a lot of teens are super-into videochat as a primary means of communication. Facetiming someone is (allegedly) as common and casual for teens as texting is for 20-somethings.
  - iamnotacrook 7y ago
    You've answered with information about a different concept. Videochat is different to voice chat. Many young people use videochat (with 1 or more other person involved). It's pure voice calls which are far less common (and typically involve just 1 other person).

dmix 7y ago

> So the company developed the JioPhone, teaming up with Hong Kong-based KaiOS Technologies Inc., which makes the most widely used operating system powering smart feature phones globally. It's cool that a (potentially) billion more computers will be running linux: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS

carlob 7y ago
The version of KaiOS that shipped with HMD new Nokia-branded phones was such a piece of garbage compared to s40/s60 I had to return mine. I hope this one is better.

samstave 7y ago

When i first interviewed with danger, they had the hip-top. I want one device that can do the following and only the following: * gps * browser * text/mms * camera Nothing else. Make it connect via data to a family console. It logs everything. Give these to all your family/kids and have them be a connected cluster. It all logs back to a server on the home network. Backs up your shit auto. Oh one other feature: * walkie talkie only amongst the family group. All data sims.... no cell. Cell would be sip routed through the home router only.

lovasoa 7y ago

Do you remember FirefoxOS, the smartphone OS that was developed by Mozilla ? It was abandoned in 2016, but KaiOS, the operating system powering these feature phones, is its descendant. Firefox's rendering engine, Gecko, is at the core of the OS, and all apps are written in HTML5/JS/CSS.

jonathanstrange 7y ago
I can still not see the sense in programming cheap underpowered phones with HTML5/JS/CSS instead of writing native software for them.
- arcturus17 7y ago
  Cheaper because the skills are ubiquitous. I'm also assuming the apps are simple so the web triad can cover most use cases.
  - madeofpalk 7y ago
    It's irrelevant because still no one will build for the platform. MS, Blackberry, Nokia have all demonstrated there's just no market for a third "app platform". These phones will have the apps from the factory, and nothing more.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      The point was to convince developers to write their apps for the open web as well. Something that definitely was justifiable.
    - panpanna 7y ago
      Maybe you can not earn tons of money by writing a "drink beer" or "I am rich" app, but people are writing simple games and utilities with millions of installs.
      - madeofpalk 7y ago

est 7y ago

I have a VoLTE phone with a dial pad. It works great. However the launcher seems to be restarting from time to time, because it's Android Go running under 512MB memory.

raxxorrax 7y ago

Reflecting on it, it is completely crazy that these devices are available for 25$. Somewhere along the line of production the exploitation chain must really work out. Just ordered a pack of µC the other day for under 1$ per unit. These come with powerful computation cores, floating point units, analog-digital converters, countless integrated serial interfaces... You don't even get a coke for that price. Completely insane world...

linux_devil 7y ago
One of the best non-smart feature of these smart feature phones is battery. These batteries can go on for days ofcourse depending on the usage.
VvR-Ox 7y ago
I don't think they use harsher practices in production. Smartphone production is just the same: First the people are enslaved to get the resources out of some mines, then some Asian workers (inc. children etc.) have to assemble (996 without a loan you'd want to live with). Then it's transported via logistics which is another sector that refuses to treat people like human beings. In the end of the line we have the eager sales guys who knowingly lie to customers and themselves to get a lot of sales. The difference is that companies earn a lot more on a single sale for a smartphone but the scale of the sales of these feature phones could end up being more revenue I think. On the other hand marketing costs could be much lower because the price plus features alone would beat every smartphone at once. I think it's crazy we still didn't modularize these devices and have nice OS'es for them.
- jdc 7y ago
  Do you have a source for the slave labour claim?
  - raister 7y ago
    Let's not be naïve... If he had a source, they would have to act on it, close everything down, and else. Then the phone price would rise to $400 and the factory would close as well, and all the supply chain would suffer. I guess they just turn their heads the other way on this kind of things.

godelmachine 7y ago

Leading the fray is India's own Reliance JioPhone

puranjay 7y ago

I would genuinely like a smart feature phone. I've been trying to cut down my phone usage but need Whatsapp just to stay connected to friends and family.

mrweasel 7y ago
That's going to be one of the main issues for these types of phones. The applications people really do need vary enormously. I basically just need two applications, both for work, Google Authenticator (or similar) and a specialised app from our telco that manage our on-call number. The rest I can do without. Perhaps it's worth remembering that these "smart feature phones" aren't meant for people who just doesn't want a smart phone. They are meant for people who can't afford a real smart phone, so the feature set will creep towards being a full featured smart phone. For those of us who genuinely do not want smartphone, there's currently not much on offer, unless we truly do not need a single smart phone feature. I have a small set of features I'd like to see in a phone: * Hotspot support, so both WiFi and 4G * A TOTP application * BlueTooth, for wireless headset and writing SMSs and managing the contacts from an application on my computer Other than that the screen can be a black and white LCD for all I care.

m3nu 7y ago

If it supports TOTP and QR codes, I'd buy one just for 2FA.

JD557 7y ago

If you are interested in this new feature phones running KaiOS, I recommend taking a look at the BananaHackers website[1] and twitter account[2]. Some of those devices (such as the Jio phone shown in the article) can be jailbroken to support a lot more applications. [1]: https://sites.google.com/view/bananahackers/home https://sites.google.com/view/bananahackers/home [2]: https://twitter.com/BananaHackers https://twitter.com/BananaHackers

nashashmi 7y ago

Ever since I came across Paul Graham's blog article a couple days ago on PR stories and how ubiquitous they are, I have been on the lookout for them. And this is a PR funded/fed story. Sorry. Article on KaiOS came up a few months back. This is a rewrite.

rchaud 7y ago
So, an article in the WSJ about a $25 phone sold only in India with a feature set rivalling that of a 2005 BlackBerry is a PR push for...what, exactly?
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  You don't see the problem here? This guy sells mangoes on the street and can afford a data plan that lets him stream music all day and watch movies on his cell phone in the evening. This is unthinkable in Canada (except for those socialists in Sask.).
- nashashmi 7y ago
  KaiOS. The entire article is selling KaiOS. Side feature is JioPhone.

nerdponx 7y ago

The other day I had spent some time reading up on the whole GPL v2/3 debate and Tivoization. Would it have been impossible to use Linux on these phones under GPL v3? I assume that it would be very difficult to provide "installation information" required by the license.

NoGravitas 7y ago

I would absolutely use a Nokia 8110 4G as my main phone except for just a few missing apps. Mainly Signal; I'd also want an XMPP client that supports OMEMO, though Converse.js might work. I love the retro styling of it, especially that it looks just like the phones in The Matrix.

Zigurd 7y ago

A lot of them will be Android, or based on Android. Android was created with the ability to accommodate non-touch form factors and d-pad navigation in the UI. Applications that aspire to portability to non-touch use cases in cars and TVs still need to use widgets that correctly implement up/down/left/right/select navigation, displaying a navigation highlight color. These are, nevertheless, smartphones. Just smartphones that squeeze out every drop of cost. They will have access to most Android apps, and a full featured browser. There may be a market niche for phones without a color screen, no installable apps, etc. It will be challenging to eke out significantly lower costs than lo-end hardware suitable for lo-end Android configurations, due to volume efficiency.

rv-de 7y ago

If I'd have to I could live without all apps except for two: - Google Authenticator - Password Safe (- E-Mail would be nice, though) Actually I find appeal in only being able to check messages (except for urgent messages via SMS) when I'm home at my computer. But I need a device for the 2nd factor and an auxiliary organizer for passwords.

icebraining 7y ago
http://motp.sourceforge.net/ http://motp.sourceforge.net/ runs freakin' everywhere, even on J2ME phones ^^

xutopia 7y ago

I would like to have an old Nokia style phone that provides a voice activated GPS. No Facebook, no Messenger, no email.

woodrowbarlow 7y ago
i hear this often. if you want a stripped-down phone and GPS, why not purchase a standalone GPS? do you use the GPS often outside of your car? honest questions.
- plants 7y ago
  Good handheld GPS units are expensive. Plus, you look eccentric - to say the least - carrying a handheld GPS unit in addition to your phone.
  - cr0sh 7y ago
    Have you considered building your own phone? Sure it won't be very stylish - nor will it be slim - but all the parts are out there with more than enough example code to hack together exactly the phone you want. I'm seriously considering going this route for my next phone, since 4G modules recently became more widely available and much lower in price. But even 3G would suffice for my needs. I'm just wanting a "smart phone" which I have complete control over - or close to it. I understand not everyone has the option or skills to build such a phone, but if you do (or are interested) - google around for DIY phones based on the Raspberry Pi (especially the Zero W), or the Arduino (using a variety of processors, though the original Arduino Phone was made with an ATMega328P iirc). For your use-case, either one of the more powerful "standard" cores could be used (ATMega2560, ATMega644, SAM3X8E) - or maybe something based off the ESP line (ESP-12 or 32 would be my choice). A small 3G GSM module, plus a GPS and maybe an IMU, some kind of keypad, and a small OLED screen or something - keep everything at a 3.7 volt level and run it off a LiPo cell(s). With a bit of luck, you could probably fit everything into something about the size of an Altoids tin.
plants 7y ago
Ugh... I check online for exactly this every 6 months to no avail. I see the same things turn up - lightphone, punkt MP01/MP02, Nokia phones with KaiOS. I have tried using a "dumb phone", which works for 90% of what I want to do with it, but it's inconvenient when meeting a friend at a new place or exploring a new city. Similarly, I have tried using a smartphone, but I find myself in cycles where I am inevitably checking it every 5 minutes to see what new stimulus there is to hold my attention.

rahimnathwani 7y ago

Back in May, I spent a little time looking into developing an app for KaiOS, using the official documentation. Here are some notes I wrote to myself at the time: - there seem to be fewer apps on the Kai store than on the Banana Hackers store, which seems odd, as all of those apps in the BH store should be useful to KaiOS users - The official docs are kind of unclear, e.g. the API docs include some options about storage, but don't tell me whether localStorage is available. If I'm a web developer then I probably want to use the storage API with which I'm already familiar. - another doc issue: the documentation for d-pad navigation and emulated cursor is very confusing. I can't tell whether they are two different ways of using the arrow keys, or whether they serve two different purposes. This means I need to do a bunch of experimentation to see what happens - someone on Reddit mentioned they were waiting for app store approval, and they had waited 6 weeks so far; seems hard to get developers that way?

jmkni 7y ago
The last one seems kind of bad. If you are going to spend your time developing for a niche platform, you would hope they would at least be on the ball in terms of app store reviewing.
nefitty 7y ago
This helps a lot, thank you!
writepub 7y ago
The big question is: "How likely are KaiOs users willing to install third party apps". From the article, it seems like pre-installed apps have ample usage, no mention of installation post hardware purchase.
- rahimnathwani 7y ago
  The JioPhone can run WhatsApp, but it isn't pre-installed. For that reason, I'd imagine 90% of Jiophone users in India would install at least one third party app. However, they would get this from the JioStore, not from the KaiOS store: https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/kaios/26000183/?category=5245235 https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/kaios/26000183/?category=5245235 So if the majority of KaiOS users are using carrier-branded phones with carrier-branded app stores, maybe the developer story for 'vanilla' KaiOS isn't as important.

deleted 7y ago

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Spearchucker 7y ago

Bought the Nokia banana phone with KaiOS earlier this year. Sold it on after discovering that it came pre-infested with both Google and Facebook. Sailfish OS still seems the best choice. Alternatives are my old Nokia N900 or my more recent Microsoft Lumia 980XL.

skizm 7y ago

As an American, where can I order these phones, and are they easy to develop on? Seems like a good opportunity. Whatsapp turned into a $19 billion dollar business by targeting this demographic (their app worked on pretty much any phone you could find).

rerpha 7y ago

Kinda want one just so i can beat my phone addiction.

jbverschoor 7y ago

Well good luck running all these non-native apps on them

dillonmckay 7y ago

There are probably so many replacement parts that exist for iPhone 4,5, and SE series, Apple could easily create an updated low-cost iOS hardware offering, but that won’t be until they fully embrace being a services company. Their lower-end offerings would be ‘lowcost’ thin-clients.

Mikeb85 7y ago

These sound like smartphones. The fact they're not as advanced as higher end phones doesn't mean they're not smartphones. They seem to have all the features that the first generation of smartphones had.

deleted 7y ago
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jillesvangurp 7y ago

Even feature phones ten years ago were pretty capable and MS and Nokia had plenty of smart phones priced at feature phone prices back in the day. I used to work in Nokia when they were still the biggest phone manufacturer. A cheap phone does not have to be lacking in features. Mostly the reason we don't see them a lot in the west is because manufacturers prefer to sell you a more expensive phone. It's that simple. Operators and manufacturers conspire to keep these thing out of the market because they want to sell more expensive products. What's happening elsewhere is that the competition elsewhere is heating up for the rest of the world. For the last decade that market was dominated by landfill Android and a multitude of cheap rip offs and legacy products. E.g. Nokia kept milking S30 well into this decade and there might still be a few variants that they are selling. The original version of that dates back to the early nineties. Before they sold their phone business, Nokia had big plans for bringing linux to feature phones and they had a platform in advanced stages of development before they layed off the entire unit. They actually had two different linux platforms, meego for smartphones, which did launch publically before killing it off and Meltemi (internal code name) which they never launched. Meltemi was intended for cheap phones (replacing the S40 platform, not Symbian in case you confused that with S60) and based on QT/QML and linux running on cheap hardware. S40 was actually a quite capable system and effectively the money maker for Nokia. The Meltemi strategy is basically what is happening now almost a decade later in the form of SailOS, KaiOS and other linux based platform trying to fill the gap left by a mostly indifferent Google and Apple when it comes to low end platforrms. Apple simply does not sell to poor people and Google isn't much better. They like talking about it but it's an after thought in their platform strategy. Samsung tried pushing Bada (basically an evolved Meego) for a while. LG had WebOS and there have been a few more. The problem with all of these (and Nokia) is that electronics manufacturers are not great at developing software. Apple is a lone exception and arguably they are a software developer that happens to produce hardware instead.

kazinator 7y ago

> The gadgets look like the inexpensive Nokia Corp. phones that were big about two decades ago. But these hybrid phones, fueled by inexpensive mobile data, provide some basic apps and internet access in addition to calling and texting. In other words, they are maybe like Japanese phones two decades ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mode#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mode#History

8bitsrule 7y ago

"There is a trade-off for the low price. The devices typically have slower and less powerful components, only basic cameras and their screens are usually just a few inches in size...." IMHO, that's a feature, not a bug ... if all you really want is a phone.

VeninVidiaVicii 7y ago

I'd really love to buy something like this for my 80 year-old mother in law, she's absolutely terrified of mobile phones and still uses a landline. Will it be available in the US?

Scoundreller 7y ago
You could buy something like a Nokia e63. It does just as much.
rasz 7y ago
$70 Nokia 8110 4G is same hardware in different package.