9 ms·

Not smart but clever? The return of 'dumbphones'

50 points by elorant 5y ago

zppln 5y ago
I really wish I could go back to using a dumbphone as my daily driver. Most of the things I use my phone for are basically the same as they were 15 years ago, but the implementations has changed (Spotify for music, Signal for texts) and I doubt they'll ever bother to target dumbphones.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  Some dumbphones can actually use signal. I am not sure about Spotify, but some could probably use it as well. I am not sure how updated / accurate this list is, but it might be helpful: https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-finder https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-finder
  - zppln 5y ago
    Interesting, thanks for the link. I just assumed those apps wouldn't be usable on dumbphones, but I guess I should look into this a bit more.
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      Many dumb phones actually use Android so compatibility is less of an issue than you may expect.
nonrandomstring 5y ago
Things I love about my dumb phone: - 10 to 12 day battery life - 2 spare batteries in my drawer - charges off a standard USB like an angry bull (about 4 mins to half full) - can remove the battery, flip it over and replace cover - can hide a folded £10 note in there and double the phone's value - has a standard 3.5mm headphone/mic like proper phones should - If I drop it, nothing happens - I put it through the wash and it still works - It pisses-off people with a £900 iThing - It makes that cute Nokia jibgle when you switch it on - it's pink and has a Hello Kitty sticker, which really pisses of people with "serious" phones
- dijksterhuis 5y ago
  > can hide a folded £10 note in there and double the phone's value I never thought of this as a feature until now.
pmoriarty 5y ago
The biggest thing I'd miss from a smartphone was integrated GPS.
littlecranky67 5y ago
I also observed that my own smartphone usage is unhealthy - constantly checking it when I am taking a walk, or when I go into a park to lay in the sun, or read a book etc. I never could go long without checking my phone, engaging in Whatsapp or looking up something on the web. Even so when on an activity I specifically picked to be offline/away from my computer. My solution was also getting a dumb Nokia phone as a "leisure phone", which has no WiFi/BT but a headphone jack and music capability (it has an ancient Opera browser that I never use). Luckily my phone provider offers a "dual sim" service where I get a second SIM card with the same number, so in case someone calls me, both my iPhone and my dumb phone ring simultaneously. I only programmed a number of ~10 close friends and family into the phonebook, and now when I leave the house when I want to have some quiet time, I only take the dumb phone. I have the security of being able to call for help in case of emergencies, and am reachable for friends and family in matters of true emergencies (calls, not Whatsapps). Battery lasts 3 weeks in standby, but since I mostly have it turned off and turn it only on when I take it, it becomes mostly irrelevant. Unfortunately the dumb phone selection isn't perfect; I'd really like to have a better camera because I do want to take snapshots now and then (without the urge to immediately upload it to social media) and the music player is very limited in functionality. As for the experience, I can highly recommend this. Ever since I got it and got into occasional "offline mode", I realize how much BS time I spent on the smartphone. Having those "off" times are relaxing and bring a certain peace of mind. And funily when I am out without the smartphone, you realize how much other people are constantly staring into their phones in locations they actively went to refuel (parks, lakes, beaches, at the movies etc.).
xyzzy21 5y ago
Another angle on this: major semiconductor fabs in Asian DO NOT ALLOW smart phones for espionage/IP reasons. So most vendor sales people have only dumb phones because they can bring them inside and take calls on visits. Smart phones have to be left at the guard shack in the parking lot. This is also true for many non-semiconductor manufacturing industries. Bringing in computers??? Forget about it. I would bring in my computer sometimes but only with special 3rd level manager dispensation and I had to have all the ports taped up with security tape, have all "radios" (WiFi/BT) turned off (under threat of vendor "permaban" - imagine explaining to your boss you got the entire company banned), only being allowed CDRs going in for S/W update (no flash drives) and only taking out written paper notes for debugging back to support or R&D via your phone back in the parking lot. Essentially something worse than returning to the pre-internet 1970s or 1980s but with all the product complexity of today. Dumb phones have been a thing for a long while because of this.
jacquesm 5y ago
It never left. Nokia FTW, I really would not have been able to be as productive as I've been in the last couple of years if I had had a smartphone to distract me.
Friday_ 5y ago
I remember when i used dumbphone,and i had to find certain location I just called person to find me location. It worked allright. You need to check traffic? Just call someone at the internet. I also had system with "dumbphone" to receive alerts on SMS. from online machine.
ksec 5y ago
I could do without Social Media, even Internet Browser and Maps. But a dumb phone without Whatsapp isn't going to work for me.
- Tijdreiziger 5y ago
  KaiOS has WhatsApp.
- Friday_ 5y ago
  Instant messaging was why I bought smartphone in first place. Could as well used it on laptop. On street? No way, it is distracting.
am_lu 5y ago
I never left too. Still using my Nokia E72 business phone. I send and receive lots of text messages for my work, replying using full qwerty keyboard is a breeze. Plus one function i cant live without - "say caller name" when phone is ringing. You know whos calling you without looking at the device. Device is about 15 years old, made in Finland, I have couple of spare ones in my drawer, swapping parts around normally brings it back to life when any problems (once a display went, once the keyboard, 20 minutes fix on the bench with no special tools needed).
- jmrm 5y ago
  I had the "say caller name" in Android 2.3.7 CyanogenMod 7, and I don't know why this wasn't widespread until a year or two ago. For me is really useful when I'm using it over Bluetooth.
Friday_ 5y ago
Im thinking how navigation can work on feature phone. Possible solution and an idea for project : you connect Alexa / Cortana / Siri / voice chatbot to phone number and then you just call whenever need internet from feature phone a.k.a. "dumbphone"
- elorant 5y ago
  My car has navigation. I don't need it on my phone too.
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  It worked before the iPhone on feature phones, albeit with varying degrees of success.
bobkrusty 5y ago
this prevent infomation overload. also repetitive update tht led to over cap storage i wanna build a dumbphone
Victerius 5y ago
I miss the swag of being able to flip open a phone out of my pocket and flip it shut.
- kgwxd 5y ago
  Operator, I need an exit, fast.
- mynameisash 5y ago
  I feel like I may be an outlier here, but I loved the walkie-talkie feature on Nextel. I wish this was a standard feature on phones and across providers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
superkuh 5y ago
I've used a Nokia 6030 since 2008 or so. It works perfectly as a phone or for texting. The battery, still, lasts an entire week. It is tiny and I barely notice it in my pocket. Phones are good phones. Trying to mix computing with a cell baseband modem you can never have control of for legal reasons is just asking for trouble. Even the simplest laptop far exceeds the computing ability of a phone when it comes to actually doing work. I also use a discrete car GPS for navigation, a discrete camera for photos, etc.
MarkusWandel 5y ago
Every time I see these "back to the basics" phone articles, I think camera. Having an adequate camera built into the phone I take everywhere has been a game changer. Before that it was always a decision, do I take the camera or not? Often take it for nothing, and sometimes a killer photo op and you don't have it. So a hybrid of traditional featurephone and traditional pocket camera. No temptation to immediately share on social media. Just to download later for your collection.
- amelius 5y ago
  It takes 5 to 10 seconds to open my camera app, so I usually miss those killer photo moments anyway.
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    Are you using an old Android phone? I recall having this problem on my Nexus 5 (one if the many reasons I gave up on Android) Latest iPhones are lightning fast and the app is on the lock screen so you don't even have to unlock the phone.
    - asdff 5y ago
      But in natural iOS fashion, anytime I need to rapidly take a photo I find the phone registering my horizontal swipes on the lock screen to open camera as vertical ones for a good 5 seconds and I miss the shot.
      - kaba0 5y ago
        I assume you have one with a home button? On newer ones the lower-right icon can be long-pressed to launch the camera very very fast.
        asdff 5y ago
        Yeah its a home button model. Really its just a fault of having to rely on touch screen inputs which become naturally less accurate the more hasty you are. Maybe my quick swipes aren't firm enough, or my hands might be too hot or sweaty, or too cold to register input, etc. I wish there was some way to map a physical button assignment to the camera short of having to jailbreak the phone.
eterps 5y ago
Would be nice to be able to receive messages over Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram etc. However that does not seem to be possible with any 'dumbphone' yet. I just don't use SMS messaging anymore.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SamBam 5y ago
  When someone finally makes a "dumbphone" that accepts Signal and Whatsapp messages as text, has Maps, and has a nice camera, that will be a game changer. But of course my list for what it needs is different from someone else's, and at that point we'll have a smart phone.
  - kkfx 5y ago
    For messages, except for proprietary platform that lock out such option, around the world it's not hard to setup a gateway at home to send&receive chats and mirror them (with relevant limitations about length, images etc) via SMS. For chart, while not on par with Google Maps classic PND devices are still on-sale, I use a classic TomTom on my car and so far while less comfortable have always bring me where I want. That's to say: so far it's doable, and adapt personal habits to personal choices without being an eremite it's again possible, just not as much comfortable, it's a classic trade-off.
SamBam 5y ago
I plan on getting my kids some kind of flip phone or dumb phone when they turn 10. Will try to hold off on smart phones until 8th grade. The biggest problem right now has been the lack of a good mp3 player for the kids. Years ago we had the iPod. It was a perfect device. But Apple has discontinued that in favor of things that are basically iPhones. There are a bunch of cheap Chinese-made mp3 players on Amazon, but they tend to have terrible navigation, sorting songs alphabetically, making it impossible to create playlists, inability to sort by genre, etc etc. I haven't found a good one (recommendations happily accepted). So I gave the kids my old Android phone without a Sim card, and removed most of the apps, but of course they'll use the camera, and the browser... and I realized that this was just a slippery slope to that full-featured smart phone that I didn't want to get them yet.
- falcolas 5y ago
  FIIO still makes MP3 players. They're aimed towards higher end listeners, but they're available. The Fiio M5 is one example.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Will an iPod not just work still? I seem to remember you could use 3rd party software to just dump MP3s onto them.
  - SamBam 5y ago
    iPod classics go for $200 and up for the later versions, and sometimes thousands of dollars for the earlier versions on eBay. iPod nano similarly goes for about $180 used. Hmmm, it looks like I can maybe buy a 5th gen nano for about $60. That may be worth it, if I'm sure I'll always be able to put mp3s on it.
    - kalleboo 5y ago
      Wow I picked up a working nano from the junk bin at a thrift store for $5, didn't realize that was such a deal
  - 5y ago
legitster 5y ago
I know a lot of people who would love some sort of middle option. They are never on their phone - they only use it for texting or navigation. I think people often forget this segment was briefly explored before being killed by the carriers. The Microsoft Kin was supposed to launch with a cheaper, data-light Verizon plan. But Verizon at the last minute decided they didn't want to undercut their data plans and the phone required the same $70 a month data plan as any other smartphone. Obviously, consumer demand for phones that do everything was heavily affected by the iPhone. But I would argue Blackberry and Palm (RIP!) would have ultimately faired a bit better if their data-sipping designs weren't treated so hostile by carriers.
- ortusdux 5y ago
  Verizon has Visible, which offers unlimited talk/text/data for $25/mo. I helped someone setup their basic $100 phone, which is free if you are switching carriers. It's all someone in the middle option you talk about would need.
- wvenable 5y ago
  I'm reminded of this: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/12/09/simplicity/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/12/09/simplicity/
Meekro 5y ago
Does anyone know a good dumbphone that supports 4G/5G in the US and would work on Verizon? I know an older person who was recently forced to get an iPhone by the lack of dumbphones, and hates it.
- ectopod 5y ago
  Same problem in the UK. The dumbphones are all 2G, which is going away eventually. All the "dumb" 4G models I can find come with a Facebook app, ffs.
  - stuaxo 5y ago
    Things from the Nokia series 60 era will often be 3G, but functionally dumb since most of the apps are not supported any more.
- amathres_info 5y ago
  I vouch for the Sunbeam F1. It reminds me of the dumbphones of yore and is totally functional. Also check out r/dumbphones, lots of reviews there.
Gunax 5y ago
I think it's increasingly hard to live without a phone or without a smartphone. Many businesses seem to be eschewing web access in favour of using an app. The restaurant I went to yesterday had it's menu only available by QR code. You cannot book an Uber. You cannot date on Tinder. You cannot buy food on too good to go. You cannot even find some podcasts because they stopped running an RSS feed. But maybe this is just the march of technology. I had no complaints when things started moving to the web, but I guess that's because I liked the web. I suppose that's just me being hypocritical.
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  I'm moving in to a new apartment tomorrow and it comes with this "app" to communicate with your neighbours. Of course, it's just an app and not a site. I installed it on Android emulator just to see what it's like; the entire thing is basically just a web forum, like what we had 20 years ago, except of course it's worse. You can't search (on a page with ^F, or in general), you can't adjust its tiny font size, it only runs on iOS/Android, etc. I must sound like an old man, but I don't see it as anything other than reinventing 20-year old tech except "as an app" and shittier. I think it's very different from the move to the web; in spite of common complaints about it on HN, it really brought cross-platform capabilities to the world. Yes, there's issues with Chrome's dominance, but have you tried running on Linux or NetBSD in 2000? It was all fun and games until someone sent you a .doc file, or until you had to do your taxes, or until you wanted to do a million other things that were "Windows-only". With the web the only thing stopping anyone from creating a new environment that works for a lot of common every-day things is just putting in the work to implement an OS + browser. Yes, this is not easy, but also not undoable (and not as hard as sometimes claimed, IMO), and compared to proprietary protocols and formats of the 90s it's a huge improvement. But with all this mobile stuff now we're back to proprietary protocols and formats that only work on proprietary systems. I don't think it's comparable at all. If anything, it's the reverse, and also worse than the 90s because PCs are "open" platforms where you can install any OS you want, which is not the case with the vast majority of mobile phones, and the "app store" distribution model makes it even worse. I'm not necessarily against smartphones as a concept, but the current implementations are a huge regression in many ways.
- 5y ago
TheChaplain 5y ago
There's a Swedish company that focuses on dumb and half-dumb phones for seniors, they're pretty easy to use for most elderly. https://www.doro.com/sv-se/produkter/mobiltelefoner/ https://www.doro.com/sv-se/produkter/mobiltelefoner/
josefresco 5y ago
I fantasize about Light Phone a few times a year. Their website has some confusing language: "This is a pre-order for the black model, which we expect to ship in June." June 2022? 2021?
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  Their Twitter has an announcement from the 2nd of March (this year), so I assume it's June 2022.
sudden_dystopia 5y ago
Too dumb though. Can I just get a phone that calls, texts, plays music, a good camera, and has navigation. Maybe even a web browser. But absolutely no App Store, games, or social media.
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  That's just a stock smartphone. Don't want any apps on your phone? Don't download any...
  - Steltek 5y ago
    I would add, a stock smartphone with LineageOS or some other de-Googled ROM. A stock smartphone is still going to have Google Play Services, Firebase, and a bunch of other things that could phone home.
  - Beltalowda 5y ago
    Except that many Android phones come with a bunch of apps you can't remove, including things like Facebook and whatnot. Probably differs per brand, but when I test-drove a Motorola last month there were a whole bunch of apps like that. I guess you could just ignore it, but these kind of unremovable apps just makes me unreasonably angry: it's my goddamn fucking phone and I – and only I – gets to decide which fucking apps are on it!
rajeshp1986 5y ago
I think the best middle ground would be a full touch screen phone with camera loaded with an OS that restrict all the apps and no browsing but allows basic features like calling, texting,clicking pictures, playing music, and using maps.
gandalfff 5y ago
I understand the appeal, but dumbphones aren't as good as they used to be. These days the typical dumbphone has some version of Android or a web-based OS like KaiOS shoehorned onto a poorly spec'd device with no touch screen. Dumbphones used to have real time operating systems that were built with the limitations of the device in mind. Many of them were quite snappy and responsive.
- asdff 5y ago
  Can you still buy a razor? That's all you really need for a dumb phone unless you wanted a keyboard.
  - gandalfff 5y ago
    I imagine you could, but with the 3G shutdowns it won't be very useful.
- amathres_info 5y ago
  This was a problem, but in the last year or two there are some good ones again. Check out the Sunbeam F1, which is actually reasonably snappy. I have used a dumbphone all along and agree that they were really bad for awhile. The Alcatel Go Flip 2 was a Kai OS device that was one of the worst pieces of a electronics I ever used, and I was stuck on it for 4 years because there were no alternatives on 4G. But now the phones are alright again. The article highlights the Light Phone, but my impression is its battery life is so bad I wouldn't want it. But it's also custom software on a custom device and has some potential.
upofadown 5y ago
Back in the day you could get a dumb phone with 2 week battery life and a screen viewable in any light from total darkness to direct sunlight. That combination of features seems to be a lost technology. A lot of places have or are in the process of shutting down 2G so you can't just keep using an old phone even if you can somehow find a good battery for it.
- seba_dos1 5y ago
  Even Nokia N900 had a perfectly legible screen in direct sunlight, so it's not like it's being at odds with smartphones. I really miss that.
Nbox9 5y ago
There’s been a steady decrease in my smartphone use from 2016 till today. In the past I used my phone 6+ hours a day. Yesterday I used it to check email once for 3 minutes, I opened safari three times for an average of less than 60 seconds in each use, and used 2FA 5 times. It was a slightly higher than average smartphone use day. As a person that is mostly indifferent about my iPhone I don’t understand who would buy a dumb phone. Is it for the price sensitive? Is it for people that don’t know how to use a smartphone? Is it for security sensitive? Is it for people with cellphone addicted?
igetspam 5y ago
I'd buy a phone that did email and slack (unfortunately) with no camera or anything else beyond making calls and sending SMS. I don't need MMS or RCS either. Plain boring text would be sufficient.
kkfx 5y ago
Personally I do not like much being back to a dumbphone but I do like less to pay for a smartphone and it's connectivity for someone else profit in exchange of crumbs. I've tried the PinePhone, witch is fantastic but not much ready to be a daily driver, so for now I keep my old Nokia (that suffer casual glitches) until GMS network shutdown will impose a 4G phone, hoping that at that time the PinePhone or something else will be ready enough. While I recognize tha Google Maps navigate very well, far better than classic PND devices like my not-so-old but not-that-new TomTom I still being able to travel with the TT... I do not take much photos so a classic cheap wifi-less digital camera (12Mp) with a classic flash memory card accessible via an USB adapter or directly through the camera USB cable on my desktop it's again enough, no good as a phone in my pocket, take more place etc but still enough to have in car. A classic outdoor GPS for trekking it's somewhat better than a smartphone since it's far less prone to fall and breaks while it's UI and cartography are definitively not much etc. It's doable. Uncomfortable but doable. What I fear it the future: I fear that not enough people react so in a soon future we are forced to use some Android or iOS app do do mandatory things like payments, IDs, even just banking third factor auth etc because that's the trend I see everywhere. I fear future cars with mandatory connections and an unknown set of built-in vulnerabilities I can't check nor mitigate much. I fear for my next washing machine if there will be no one on the market without a mandatory connection and automated fw updates... In general I know that if a device is called "smart" that means it's user is considered "dumb" and I do not like that, simply. So I hope enough people will force OEMs to keep some alternatives around.
esnowrackley 5y ago
For those who might be interested in exploring dumb/ feature phones, there are a few out there that offer some kind of Signal/ Whatsapp compatibility. I just made the move. There's a site, Dumbphone Finder [1], that has a number of modern dumbphones organized into categories with different levels of functionality, expense etc. Overall I've been very happy with the move and I haven't lost much in my life. I can do almost everything on the computer and whatever does require a mobile device I run on an emulator. For music, I've moved everything over to an MP3 player [2] that's fairly decent, definitely not iPod quality, but it's not too cheaply made. I threw a 256GB SD card in there and moved almost all my music over. It's way nicer to go for a walk with some music knowing your phone isn't going to start buzzing (or feeling like you have to check because it isn't buzzing!). This is the best system for me. [1] https://dumbphones.pory.app/ https://dumbphones.pory.app/ [2] https://www.surfans.net/products/irulu-f20-hifi-mp3-player-lossless-dsd-high-resolution-digital-audio-music-player-with-32gb-memory-card https://www.surfans.net/products/irulu-f20-hifi-mp3-player-l...
kcartlidge 5y ago
I've tried to avoid smartphones. I've failed, so instead I've tried to make smartphones do less (I have a Moto G8 and iPhone SE2 but in both cases install as little as possible and definitely no socials or similar). The reason I failed to avoid smartphones is that dumbphones don't do enough - they are missing a password manager and a 2FA app. On smartphones I use BitWarden and Authy, but I'd consider any non-Android non-Apple non-Microsoft phone that had similar functionality. Until I can get into my online accounts with the help of my phone, that phone is incomplete, even though I want nothing else except 4G (for network compatibility), calls, SMS, and a local music player.
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  I run oathtool on my laptop as "2FA". Arguably not "true" 2FA, but with strong non-reused passwords it's "good enough". There's a bunch of non-Android phones like the PinePhone and whatnot, which should be perfectly fine for what you want. I recently got a Pocketbook HD, which is a small Linux-based eReader. You can run your own "apps" on it with a minimal amount of hackery (I use KOReader[1] for example). I've been thinking of trying to get some passport manager/2FA running on it as well. It's got WiFi as well (which I never use), and bluetooth for music (which is pretty useful when reading in noisy trains etc.) Actually it would be pretty neat if it could do calls and SMS: it's larger than a phone, but I don't need to always carry a phone, and I usually carry my eReader if I'm away from the house for various things (e.g. when I went to IKEA today I carried it with me to have something to read during lunch). [1]: https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader
amathres_info 5y ago
I have never seen the appeal of this "smartphone" fad and have had a dumbphone all along. I think the article misses another reason for recent resurgence, which is that the most recent generation of dumbphones are actually usable. There was a dark period from about 2012-2020 where the phones were simply terrible: bad hardware, bad software etc. My phone from 2005 was better than anything available during that period. (The problem was that the old great models couldn't be adapted to 4G networks, and nobody wanted to write new software for dumbphones.) Now there are some nice ones available again. I like the Sunbeam F1.
eimrine 5y ago
I absolutely love dumbphones and stopped use smartphones since they began to require SIM to be cut, possibly for partly imcompatibility with dumbphones.
- unobatbayar 5y ago
  Which earlier generation of phones do you use/recommend?
  - eimrine 5y ago
    Short answer: buy the cheapest phone you can find, especially if you can buy it from hands to hands without a post. Second rule is: the dumber the phone the simpler to grok its settings and the less likely it will bother you in unexpected situations. Longer answer depends of what features you need: j2me (for reading HN if needed), qwerty keyboard (for writing long comments on same resource), jack 3.5mm (for radio/mp3/lossless depends of smartness), quality of camera if any, longevity of body, maybe something unique like that feeling from opening/closing a 8800. Somebody cares about GSM-900 which works best in deep woods. Today before buying smartphone we are reading about how much RAM and pixels it has and that's all. But 15-20 years ago choosing a phone was really interesting process. Consider having several chargers especially if you are going to use something not common and not famous by longevity like thin Nokia's port. Maybe you want to solder USB-A instead of a socket with an integrated power supply to your proprietary charger socket (if 5V) to let your dumbphone be charged from powerbanks, for my Nokias with thin charger it works perfect. Avoid sh~ like Sony Ericson's FastPort (which is required for charging) and rare memory like MMC and prefer MicroUSB for charging and MicroSD for storage. For example, I love listening podcasts so my memory cards doesn't live for a long time if every week I need to refill all the memory with new files - but MicroSD costs next to nothing. Consider having extra batteries or maybe several phones having similar battery, especially if you love hiking. For example, some old Samsungs can use battery from smaller Samsungs (with spacer made from anything) and Nokia's BL-5C is one of the most popular batteries ever. Nokia 1280 has jack 3.5 for a radio, a lighter (poor but better than nothing), its body is not much weaker from 3310 but replaceble without a screwdriver with several colors from grey to purple. Battery is not BL-5C but its SIM slot works decent even with cut simcards. So let this dumbphone be my go-to answer.
Gollapalli 5y ago
Light phone looks pretty awesome

50 points by elorant 5y ago

I really wish I could go back to using a dumbphone as my daily driver. Most of the things I use my phone for are basically the same as they were 15 years ago, but the implementations has changed (Spotify for music, Signal for texts) and I doubt they'll ever bother to target dumbphones.

_-david-_ 5y ago
Some dumbphones can actually use signal. I am not sure about Spotify, but some could probably use it as well. I am not sure how updated / accurate this list is, but it might be helpful: https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-finder https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-finder
- zppln 5y ago
  Interesting, thanks for the link. I just assumed those apps wouldn't be usable on dumbphones, but I guess I should look into this a bit more.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    Many dumb phones actually use Android so compatibility is less of an issue than you may expect.

nonrandomstring 5y ago

Things I love about my dumb phone: - 10 to 12 day battery life - 2 spare batteries in my drawer - charges off a standard USB like an angry bull (about 4 mins to half full) - can remove the battery, flip it over and replace cover - can hide a folded £10 note in there and double the phone's value - has a standard 3.5mm headphone/mic like proper phones should - If I drop it, nothing happens - I put it through the wash and it still works - It pisses-off people with a £900 iThing - It makes that cute Nokia jibgle when you switch it on - it's pink and has a Hello Kitty sticker, which really pisses of people with "serious" phones

dijksterhuis 5y ago
> can hide a folded £10 note in there and double the phone's value I never thought of this as a feature until now.

pmoriarty 5y ago

The biggest thing I'd miss from a smartphone was integrated GPS.

littlecranky67 5y ago

I also observed that my own smartphone usage is unhealthy - constantly checking it when I am taking a walk, or when I go into a park to lay in the sun, or read a book etc. I never could go long without checking my phone, engaging in Whatsapp or looking up something on the web. Even so when on an activity I specifically picked to be offline/away from my computer. My solution was also getting a dumb Nokia phone as a "leisure phone", which has no WiFi/BT but a headphone jack and music capability (it has an ancient Opera browser that I never use). Luckily my phone provider offers a "dual sim" service where I get a second SIM card with the same number, so in case someone calls me, both my iPhone and my dumb phone ring simultaneously. I only programmed a number of ~10 close friends and family into the phonebook, and now when I leave the house when I want to have some quiet time, I only take the dumb phone. I have the security of being able to call for help in case of emergencies, and am reachable for friends and family in matters of true emergencies (calls, not Whatsapps). Battery lasts 3 weeks in standby, but since I mostly have it turned off and turn it only on when I take it, it becomes mostly irrelevant. Unfortunately the dumb phone selection isn't perfect; I'd really like to have a better camera because I do want to take snapshots now and then (without the urge to immediately upload it to social media) and the music player is very limited in functionality. As for the experience, I can highly recommend this. Ever since I got it and got into occasional "offline mode", I realize how much BS time I spent on the smartphone. Having those "off" times are relaxing and bring a certain peace of mind. And funily when I am out without the smartphone, you realize how much other people are constantly staring into their phones in locations they actively went to refuel (parks, lakes, beaches, at the movies etc.).

xyzzy21 5y ago

Another angle on this: major semiconductor fabs in Asian DO NOT ALLOW smart phones for espionage/IP reasons. So most vendor sales people have only dumb phones because they can bring them inside and take calls on visits. Smart phones have to be left at the guard shack in the parking lot. This is also true for many non-semiconductor manufacturing industries. Bringing in computers??? Forget about it. I would bring in my computer sometimes but only with special 3rd level manager dispensation and I had to have all the ports taped up with security tape, have all "radios" (WiFi/BT) turned off (under threat of vendor "permaban" - imagine explaining to your boss you got the entire company banned), only being allowed CDRs going in for S/W update (no flash drives) and only taking out written paper notes for debugging back to support or R&D via your phone back in the parking lot. Essentially something worse than returning to the pre-internet 1970s or 1980s but with all the product complexity of today. Dumb phones have been a thing for a long while because of this.

jacquesm 5y ago

It never left. Nokia FTW, I really would not have been able to be as productive as I've been in the last couple of years if I had had a smartphone to distract me.

Friday_ 5y ago

I remember when i used dumbphone,and i had to find certain location I just called person to find me location. It worked allright. You need to check traffic? Just call someone at the internet. I also had system with "dumbphone" to receive alerts on SMS. from online machine.

ksec 5y ago

I could do without Social Media, even Internet Browser and Maps. But a dumb phone without Whatsapp isn't going to work for me.

Tijdreiziger 5y ago
KaiOS has WhatsApp.
Friday_ 5y ago
Instant messaging was why I bought smartphone in first place. Could as well used it on laptop. On street? No way, it is distracting.

am_lu 5y ago

I never left too. Still using my Nokia E72 business phone. I send and receive lots of text messages for my work, replying using full qwerty keyboard is a breeze. Plus one function i cant live without - "say caller name" when phone is ringing. You know whos calling you without looking at the device. Device is about 15 years old, made in Finland, I have couple of spare ones in my drawer, swapping parts around normally brings it back to life when any problems (once a display went, once the keyboard, 20 minutes fix on the bench with no special tools needed).

jmrm 5y ago
I had the "say caller name" in Android 2.3.7 CyanogenMod 7, and I don't know why this wasn't widespread until a year or two ago. For me is really useful when I'm using it over Bluetooth.

Friday_ 5y ago

Im thinking how navigation can work on feature phone. Possible solution and an idea for project : you connect Alexa / Cortana / Siri / voice chatbot to phone number and then you just call whenever need internet from feature phone a.k.a. "dumbphone"

elorant 5y ago
My car has navigation. I don't need it on my phone too.
thesuitonym 5y ago
It worked before the iPhone on feature phones, albeit with varying degrees of success.

bobkrusty 5y ago

this prevent infomation overload. also repetitive update tht led to over cap storage i wanna build a dumbphone

Victerius 5y ago

I miss the swag of being able to flip open a phone out of my pocket and flip it shut.

kgwxd 5y ago
Operator, I need an exit, fast.
mynameisash 5y ago
I feel like I may be an outlier here, but I loved the walkie-talkie feature on Nextel. I wish this was a standard feature on phones and across providers.
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superkuh 5y ago

I've used a Nokia 6030 since 2008 or so. It works perfectly as a phone or for texting. The battery, still, lasts an entire week. It is tiny and I barely notice it in my pocket. Phones are good phones. Trying to mix computing with a cell baseband modem you can never have control of for legal reasons is just asking for trouble. Even the simplest laptop far exceeds the computing ability of a phone when it comes to actually doing work. I also use a discrete car GPS for navigation, a discrete camera for photos, etc.

MarkusWandel 5y ago

Every time I see these "back to the basics" phone articles, I think camera. Having an adequate camera built into the phone I take everywhere has been a game changer. Before that it was always a decision, do I take the camera or not? Often take it for nothing, and sometimes a killer photo op and you don't have it. So a hybrid of traditional featurephone and traditional pocket camera. No temptation to immediately share on social media. Just to download later for your collection.

amelius 5y ago
It takes 5 to 10 seconds to open my camera app, so I usually miss those killer photo moments anyway.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  Are you using an old Android phone? I recall having this problem on my Nexus 5 (one if the many reasons I gave up on Android) Latest iPhones are lightning fast and the app is on the lock screen so you don't even have to unlock the phone.
  - asdff 5y ago
    But in natural iOS fashion, anytime I need to rapidly take a photo I find the phone registering my horizontal swipes on the lock screen to open camera as vertical ones for a good 5 seconds and I miss the shot.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      I assume you have one with a home button? On newer ones the lower-right icon can be long-pressed to launch the camera very very fast.
      - asdff 5y ago
        Yeah its a home button model. Really its just a fault of having to rely on touch screen inputs which become naturally less accurate the more hasty you are. Maybe my quick swipes aren't firm enough, or my hands might be too hot or sweaty, or too cold to register input, etc. I wish there was some way to map a physical button assignment to the camera short of having to jailbreak the phone.

eterps 5y ago

Would be nice to be able to receive messages over Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram etc. However that does not seem to be possible with any 'dumbphone' yet. I just don't use SMS messaging anymore.

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SamBam 5y ago
When someone finally makes a "dumbphone" that accepts Signal and Whatsapp messages as text, has Maps, and has a nice camera, that will be a game changer. But of course my list for what it needs is different from someone else's, and at that point we'll have a smart phone.
- kkfx 5y ago
  For messages, except for proprietary platform that lock out such option, around the world it's not hard to setup a gateway at home to send&receive chats and mirror them (with relevant limitations about length, images etc) via SMS. For chart, while not on par with Google Maps classic PND devices are still on-sale, I use a classic TomTom on my car and so far while less comfortable have always bring me where I want. That's to say: so far it's doable, and adapt personal habits to personal choices without being an eremite it's again possible, just not as much comfortable, it's a classic trade-off.

SamBam 5y ago

I plan on getting my kids some kind of flip phone or dumb phone when they turn 10. Will try to hold off on smart phones until 8th grade. The biggest problem right now has been the lack of a good mp3 player for the kids. Years ago we had the iPod. It was a perfect device. But Apple has discontinued that in favor of things that are basically iPhones. There are a bunch of cheap Chinese-made mp3 players on Amazon, but they tend to have terrible navigation, sorting songs alphabetically, making it impossible to create playlists, inability to sort by genre, etc etc. I haven't found a good one (recommendations happily accepted). So I gave the kids my old Android phone without a Sim card, and removed most of the apps, but of course they'll use the camera, and the browser... and I realized that this was just a slippery slope to that full-featured smart phone that I didn't want to get them yet.

falcolas 5y ago
FIIO still makes MP3 players. They're aimed towards higher end listeners, but they're available. The Fiio M5 is one example.
kingcharles 5y ago
Will an iPod not just work still? I seem to remember you could use 3rd party software to just dump MP3s onto them.
- SamBam 5y ago
  iPod classics go for $200 and up for the later versions, and sometimes thousands of dollars for the earlier versions on eBay. iPod nano similarly goes for about $180 used. Hmmm, it looks like I can maybe buy a 5th gen nano for about $60. That may be worth it, if I'm sure I'll always be able to put mp3s on it.
  - kalleboo 5y ago
    Wow I picked up a working nano from the junk bin at a thrift store for $5, didn't realize that was such a deal
- 5y ago

legitster 5y ago

I know a lot of people who would love some sort of middle option. They are never on their phone - they only use it for texting or navigation. I think people often forget this segment was briefly explored before being killed by the carriers. The Microsoft Kin was supposed to launch with a cheaper, data-light Verizon plan. But Verizon at the last minute decided they didn't want to undercut their data plans and the phone required the same $70 a month data plan as any other smartphone. Obviously, consumer demand for phones that do everything was heavily affected by the iPhone. But I would argue Blackberry and Palm (RIP!) would have ultimately faired a bit better if their data-sipping designs weren't treated so hostile by carriers.

ortusdux 5y ago
Verizon has Visible, which offers unlimited talk/text/data for $25/mo. I helped someone setup their basic $100 phone, which is free if you are switching carriers. It's all someone in the middle option you talk about would need.
wvenable 5y ago
I'm reminded of this: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/12/09/simplicity/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/12/09/simplicity/

Meekro 5y ago

Does anyone know a good dumbphone that supports 4G/5G in the US and would work on Verizon? I know an older person who was recently forced to get an iPhone by the lack of dumbphones, and hates it.

ectopod 5y ago
Same problem in the UK. The dumbphones are all 2G, which is going away eventually. All the "dumb" 4G models I can find come with a Facebook app, ffs.
- stuaxo 5y ago
  Things from the Nokia series 60 era will often be 3G, but functionally dumb since most of the apps are not supported any more.
amathres_info 5y ago
I vouch for the Sunbeam F1. It reminds me of the dumbphones of yore and is totally functional. Also check out r/dumbphones, lots of reviews there.

Gunax 5y ago

I think it's increasingly hard to live without a phone or without a smartphone. Many businesses seem to be eschewing web access in favour of using an app. The restaurant I went to yesterday had it's menu only available by QR code. You cannot book an Uber. You cannot date on Tinder. You cannot buy food on too good to go. You cannot even find some podcasts because they stopped running an RSS feed. But maybe this is just the march of technology. I had no complaints when things started moving to the web, but I guess that's because I liked the web. I suppose that's just me being hypocritical.

Beltalowda 5y ago
I'm moving in to a new apartment tomorrow and it comes with this "app" to communicate with your neighbours. Of course, it's just an app and not a site. I installed it on Android emulator just to see what it's like; the entire thing is basically just a web forum, like what we had 20 years ago, except of course it's worse. You can't search (on a page with ^F, or in general), you can't adjust its tiny font size, it only runs on iOS/Android, etc. I must sound like an old man, but I don't see it as anything other than reinventing 20-year old tech except "as an app" and shittier. I think it's very different from the move to the web; in spite of common complaints about it on HN, it really brought cross-platform capabilities to the world. Yes, there's issues with Chrome's dominance, but have you tried running on Linux or NetBSD in 2000? It was all fun and games until someone sent you a .doc file, or until you had to do your taxes, or until you wanted to do a million other things that were "Windows-only". With the web the only thing stopping anyone from creating a new environment that works for a lot of common every-day things is just putting in the work to implement an OS + browser. Yes, this is not easy, but also not undoable (and not as hard as sometimes claimed, IMO), and compared to proprietary protocols and formats of the 90s it's a huge improvement. But with all this mobile stuff now we're back to proprietary protocols and formats that only work on proprietary systems. I don't think it's comparable at all. If anything, it's the reverse, and also worse than the 90s because PCs are "open" platforms where you can install any OS you want, which is not the case with the vast majority of mobile phones, and the "app store" distribution model makes it even worse. I'm not necessarily against smartphones as a concept, but the current implementations are a huge regression in many ways.
5y ago

TheChaplain 5y ago

There's a Swedish company that focuses on dumb and half-dumb phones for seniors, they're pretty easy to use for most elderly. https://www.doro.com/sv-se/produkter/mobiltelefoner/ https://www.doro.com/sv-se/produkter/mobiltelefoner/

josefresco 5y ago

I fantasize about Light Phone a few times a year. Their website has some confusing language: "This is a pre-order for the black model, which we expect to ship in June." June 2022? 2021?

Beltalowda 5y ago
Their Twitter has an announcement from the 2nd of March (this year), so I assume it's June 2022.

sudden_dystopia 5y ago

Too dumb though. Can I just get a phone that calls, texts, plays music, a good camera, and has navigation. Maybe even a web browser. But absolutely no App Store, games, or social media.

animal_spirits 5y ago
That's just a stock smartphone. Don't want any apps on your phone? Don't download any...
- Steltek 5y ago
  I would add, a stock smartphone with LineageOS or some other de-Googled ROM. A stock smartphone is still going to have Google Play Services, Firebase, and a bunch of other things that could phone home.
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  Except that many Android phones come with a bunch of apps you can't remove, including things like Facebook and whatnot. Probably differs per brand, but when I test-drove a Motorola last month there were a whole bunch of apps like that. I guess you could just ignore it, but these kind of unremovable apps just makes me unreasonably angry: it's my goddamn fucking phone and I – and only I – gets to decide which fucking apps are on it!

rajeshp1986 5y ago

I think the best middle ground would be a full touch screen phone with camera loaded with an OS that restrict all the apps and no browsing but allows basic features like calling, texting,clicking pictures, playing music, and using maps.

gandalfff 5y ago

I understand the appeal, but dumbphones aren't as good as they used to be. These days the typical dumbphone has some version of Android or a web-based OS like KaiOS shoehorned onto a poorly spec'd device with no touch screen. Dumbphones used to have real time operating systems that were built with the limitations of the device in mind. Many of them were quite snappy and responsive.

asdff 5y ago
Can you still buy a razor? That's all you really need for a dumb phone unless you wanted a keyboard.
- gandalfff 5y ago
  I imagine you could, but with the 3G shutdowns it won't be very useful.
amathres_info 5y ago
This was a problem, but in the last year or two there are some good ones again. Check out the Sunbeam F1, which is actually reasonably snappy. I have used a dumbphone all along and agree that they were really bad for awhile. The Alcatel Go Flip 2 was a Kai OS device that was one of the worst pieces of a electronics I ever used, and I was stuck on it for 4 years because there were no alternatives on 4G. But now the phones are alright again. The article highlights the Light Phone, but my impression is its battery life is so bad I wouldn't want it. But it's also custom software on a custom device and has some potential.

upofadown 5y ago

Back in the day you could get a dumb phone with 2 week battery life and a screen viewable in any light from total darkness to direct sunlight. That combination of features seems to be a lost technology. A lot of places have or are in the process of shutting down 2G so you can't just keep using an old phone even if you can somehow find a good battery for it.

seba_dos1 5y ago
Even Nokia N900 had a perfectly legible screen in direct sunlight, so it's not like it's being at odds with smartphones. I really miss that.

Nbox9 5y ago

There’s been a steady decrease in my smartphone use from 2016 till today. In the past I used my phone 6+ hours a day. Yesterday I used it to check email once for 3 minutes, I opened safari three times for an average of less than 60 seconds in each use, and used 2FA 5 times. It was a slightly higher than average smartphone use day. As a person that is mostly indifferent about my iPhone I don’t understand who would buy a dumb phone. Is it for the price sensitive? Is it for people that don’t know how to use a smartphone? Is it for security sensitive? Is it for people with cellphone addicted?

igetspam 5y ago

I'd buy a phone that did email and slack (unfortunately) with no camera or anything else beyond making calls and sending SMS. I don't need MMS or RCS either. Plain boring text would be sufficient.

kkfx 5y ago

Personally I do not like much being back to a dumbphone but I do like less to pay for a smartphone and it's connectivity for someone else profit in exchange of crumbs. I've tried the PinePhone, witch is fantastic but not much ready to be a daily driver, so for now I keep my old Nokia (that suffer casual glitches) until GMS network shutdown will impose a 4G phone, hoping that at that time the PinePhone or something else will be ready enough. While I recognize tha Google Maps navigate very well, far better than classic PND devices like my not-so-old but not-that-new TomTom I still being able to travel with the TT... I do not take much photos so a classic cheap wifi-less digital camera (12Mp) with a classic flash memory card accessible via an USB adapter or directly through the camera USB cable on my desktop it's again enough, no good as a phone in my pocket, take more place etc but still enough to have in car. A classic outdoor GPS for trekking it's somewhat better than a smartphone since it's far less prone to fall and breaks while it's UI and cartography are definitively not much etc. It's doable. Uncomfortable but doable. What I fear it the future: I fear that not enough people react so in a soon future we are forced to use some Android or iOS app do do mandatory things like payments, IDs, even just banking third factor auth etc because that's the trend I see everywhere. I fear future cars with mandatory connections and an unknown set of built-in vulnerabilities I can't check nor mitigate much. I fear for my next washing machine if there will be no one on the market without a mandatory connection and automated fw updates... In general I know that if a device is called "smart" that means it's user is considered "dumb" and I do not like that, simply. So I hope enough people will force OEMs to keep some alternatives around.

esnowrackley 5y ago

For those who might be interested in exploring dumb/ feature phones, there are a few out there that offer some kind of Signal/ Whatsapp compatibility. I just made the move. There's a site, Dumbphone Finder [1], that has a number of modern dumbphones organized into categories with different levels of functionality, expense etc. Overall I've been very happy with the move and I haven't lost much in my life. I can do almost everything on the computer and whatever does require a mobile device I run on an emulator. For music, I've moved everything over to an MP3 player [2] that's fairly decent, definitely not iPod quality, but it's not too cheaply made. I threw a 256GB SD card in there and moved almost all my music over. It's way nicer to go for a walk with some music knowing your phone isn't going to start buzzing (or feeling like you have to check because it isn't buzzing!). This is the best system for me. [1] https://dumbphones.pory.app/ https://dumbphones.pory.app/ [2] https://www.surfans.net/products/irulu-f20-hifi-mp3-player-lossless-dsd-high-resolution-digital-audio-music-player-with-32gb-memory-card https://www.surfans.net/products/irulu-f20-hifi-mp3-player-l...

kcartlidge 5y ago

I've tried to avoid smartphones. I've failed, so instead I've tried to make smartphones do less (I have a Moto G8 and iPhone SE2 but in both cases install as little as possible and definitely no socials or similar). The reason I failed to avoid smartphones is that dumbphones don't do enough - they are missing a password manager and a 2FA app. On smartphones I use BitWarden and Authy, but I'd consider any non-Android non-Apple non-Microsoft phone that had similar functionality. Until I can get into my online accounts with the help of my phone, that phone is incomplete, even though I want nothing else except 4G (for network compatibility), calls, SMS, and a local music player.

Beltalowda 5y ago
I run oathtool on my laptop as "2FA". Arguably not "true" 2FA, but with strong non-reused passwords it's "good enough". There's a bunch of non-Android phones like the PinePhone and whatnot, which should be perfectly fine for what you want. I recently got a Pocketbook HD, which is a small Linux-based eReader. You can run your own "apps" on it with a minimal amount of hackery (I use KOReader[1] for example). I've been thinking of trying to get some passport manager/2FA running on it as well. It's got WiFi as well (which I never use), and bluetooth for music (which is pretty useful when reading in noisy trains etc.) Actually it would be pretty neat if it could do calls and SMS: it's larger than a phone, but I don't need to always carry a phone, and I usually carry my eReader if I'm away from the house for various things (e.g. when I went to IKEA today I carried it with me to have something to read during lunch). [1]: https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader

amathres_info 5y ago

I have never seen the appeal of this "smartphone" fad and have had a dumbphone all along. I think the article misses another reason for recent resurgence, which is that the most recent generation of dumbphones are actually usable. There was a dark period from about 2012-2020 where the phones were simply terrible: bad hardware, bad software etc. My phone from 2005 was better than anything available during that period. (The problem was that the old great models couldn't be adapted to 4G networks, and nobody wanted to write new software for dumbphones.) Now there are some nice ones available again. I like the Sunbeam F1.

eimrine 5y ago

I absolutely love dumbphones and stopped use smartphones since they began to require SIM to be cut, possibly for partly imcompatibility with dumbphones.

unobatbayar 5y ago
Which earlier generation of phones do you use/recommend?
- eimrine 5y ago
  Short answer: buy the cheapest phone you can find, especially if you can buy it from hands to hands without a post. Second rule is: the dumber the phone the simpler to grok its settings and the less likely it will bother you in unexpected situations. Longer answer depends of what features you need: j2me (for reading HN if needed), qwerty keyboard (for writing long comments on same resource), jack 3.5mm (for radio/mp3/lossless depends of smartness), quality of camera if any, longevity of body, maybe something unique like that feeling from opening/closing a 8800. Somebody cares about GSM-900 which works best in deep woods. Today before buying smartphone we are reading about how much RAM and pixels it has and that's all. But 15-20 years ago choosing a phone was really interesting process. Consider having several chargers especially if you are going to use something not common and not famous by longevity like thin Nokia's port. Maybe you want to solder USB-A instead of a socket with an integrated power supply to your proprietary charger socket (if 5V) to let your dumbphone be charged from powerbanks, for my Nokias with thin charger it works perfect. Avoid sh~ like Sony Ericson's FastPort (which is required for charging) and rare memory like MMC and prefer MicroUSB for charging and MicroSD for storage. For example, I love listening podcasts so my memory cards doesn't live for a long time if every week I need to refill all the memory with new files - but MicroSD costs next to nothing. Consider having extra batteries or maybe several phones having similar battery, especially if you love hiking. For example, some old Samsungs can use battery from smaller Samsungs (with spacer made from anything) and Nokia's BL-5C is one of the most popular batteries ever. Nokia 1280 has jack 3.5 for a radio, a lighter (poor but better than nothing), its body is not much weaker from 3310 but replaceble without a screwdriver with several colors from grey to purple. Battery is not BL-5C but its SIM slot works decent even with cut simcards. So let this dumbphone be my go-to answer.

Gollapalli 5y ago

Light phone looks pretty awesome