#featurephones — Public Fediverse posts

@hund For specific recommendations:

• Sonim XP3+ 5G: KaiOS, rugged A.F., 5G, hotspot, Support: 7 yrs HW / 5 yrs OS, hard keys, USB, removable battery, some apps (including voice recorder and notes), bluetooth, physical SIM, MicroSD to 500 GB. Weeks of standby time. My own 1st choice. T-Mobile and AT&T in the US.

• Kyocera DuraXV Extreme+: Sonim's brother from another mother, but no 5G, 16 GB vs. 32 GB storage, 4 GB vs. 8 GB RAM, smaller battery (1700 vs. 3000 mAh). Verizon in the US. I'm pretty sure Kyocera will be updating the device this year (roughly a 2--3 year release cadence), presumably with 5G support and expanded specs, though no annoucements yet.

(Both Sonim and Kyocera make other rugged phones, including candybar / slab Android devices.)

• CAT S22 Flip is similar to both but far cheaper at $70 vs. $250 for the others. Runs true Android rather than KaiOS / AOSP. Much shorter battery life.

• If you're sold on the flip phone form but not the $250 price, there are other offerings from TCL, AGM, Blu Tank, Vortex, Unnecto, and Plum, all under $100, some < $50.

• For premium phone / low distraction, the Light Phone II or III have solid reviews. Both are based on a limited Android rather than AOSP / KaiOS, but seem pretty solid options. Light also makes a flip.

• My gripe on the Punkt MP02 is that it's 3G only, which is on its way to being phased out. Oddly, 2G, relied on by emergency services, might actually have a longer life... Reports of SW issues with the Punkt.

• There are several e-ink devices (Light Phone being one), with Briones listing a couple from Mudita (Pure and Kompact).

• For a full QWERTY physical keyboard: Sidephone, Keyphone, Connecto Snap, and HIT K1.

• Max security: Google Pixel running GrapheneOS.

I believe all these devices have Bluetooth and hotspot, though you might want to verify this.

A lot of the options revolve around:

• OS: Android, KaiOS, System30+ (Nokia), and a few others.

• App support. KaiOS actually does manage quite a few decent utilities (note-takers, voice recorder, podcast, Internet radio, maps, and some texting / VOIP / SIP utilities).

• Spam blocking. Pretty much essential on any comms platform today. The best capabilities are offered by your carrier directly, and most don't come near sufficiency. App-based blocking tools are very OS-dependent, and here AOSP/KaiOS lags badly.

• Physical characteristics: rugged, headphone jack, USB port, physical SIM, microSD, keyboard (touch / T9 / QWERTY), display (OLED, e-ink, LCD), and repairability / maintainability (usually: replaceable battery), external displays, speakers, battery capacity/life, programmable keys.

• Form factor: slab, candybar, flip, and a few sliders.

• Network support: 5G, 4G/LTE, 3G. I'd strongly recommend 5G, and wouldn't go less than 4G presently.

• Hackability / extensibility.

• Vendor support. Both HW and SW/OS.

• Price. Factor in phone lifetime. Some of the rugged devices should last 2--4x longer than other options, though at a cost.

#Dumbphones #Featurephones

@hund Jose Briones's Dumbphone Finder is a pretty good search / winnowing tool:

https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-finder[

Briones also tries and reviews a bunch of phones on YouTube (as do numerous others).

I'd suggest a few additional considerations / search constraints:

• Budget. What do you want to spend?

• What carrier(s) are you considering? What phones work with them?

• Many features of a phone are effectively those of the underlying OS. "Dumbphones" range from custom Android reskinnings (e.g., Light Phone II/III) to AOSP (usually KaiOS), to System30+ (Nokia), to ... a few others.

• Consider a second device for apps. I'm a fan of e-ink tablets, most of which offer handwritten note-taking. Onyx BOOX, Remarkable, Kobo Reader, and others.

• Look at vendor support policies. I pretty much locked in my preferred device when I found that the OS is supported for 5 years from last sale date, and hardware (batteries and a few other items) for fully 7 years.

• Protocol support. There were two very-nearly identical devices, but one offers 5G, the other only 3G. For the phone itself that's not a huge issue, but as a hotspot, 5G wins bigly.

There's more app support than you might think, but it's mostly utilities. My view is to keep the phone as limited as possible and offload other tasks to a small laptop, or dedicated capture devices (audio, camera, etc.).

#Dumbphones #Featurephones

@alcinnz For more substantive comms, including possibly voice comms, I'd look at:

1. A small-form-factor laptop. Framework's 12" is quite appealing, and costs roughly the same as a flagship smartphone with far more capability. Someone pointed out an even smaller device recently though I don't recall what it was. You'd run full-powered chat, email, social, etc., on that, without all the tracking of a smartphone.

2. A SIP phone. Paired with a hotspot (or hotspot-capable device) you could route your voice traffic over that from anywhere. Your hotspot is a low-data / low-risk device, used when necessary (you can leach off any 3rd-party WiFi), and cycled when needed. I'm still looking into how viable this might be.

Question ultimately is: what's your goal / use-case?

3/3

#Dumphones #FeaturePhones #KaiOS

@alcinnz I've got Some Thoughts on this topic:

• Actually keeping a mobile-network-based phone private is probably an impossible task. You're going to be disclosed by location, by others' inclusion of your number in their (of course: shared) contacts, probably by your billing data, and more. The device will have a known ownership.

• Keeping the device secure is also challenging, though more possible if you choose a secure option. Which is probably GrapheneOS (or, possibly, one of the other de-Googled Android forks).

• Treating the device as compromised-by-default, and simply seeking to keep its data value to an attacker minimised may be a better option. This is where a KaiOS / S30+ feature phone might come in. These support some basic apps (general utilities, minimal web browser, music, podcasts, Internet radio, etc.), but generally aren't supported by Social, Commerce, Banking, and related apps.

• I'd really like a "wipe/restore" capability where it's possible to nuke all on-device state and then restore it, when going through a high-risk environment (border crossings, protests, etc.). I don't think that KaiOS supports this, GrapheneOS may.

There's a pretty good Dumphones community, Jose Briones runs a website and YouTube channel, as well as being a mod on /r/dumbphones (one of my very few reasons for reading Reddit at all these days, though I still won't log in).

2/x

#Dumphones #FeaturePhones #KaiOS

@alcinnz Are you familiar with KaiOS by any chance?

That seems to be the leading non-smart OS, it's based on AOSP (Android Open Source Project).

There's also Nokia's S30+ (System30+), and a small set of others (see: https://www.dignited.com/107115/from-nokia-to-samsung-here-are-the-unique-operating-systems-of-feature-phones/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_phone#Platforms).

Otherwise, many of the leading minimal phones (Light Phone, Punkt) actually run Android or AOSP.

You might consider starting from a base such as GrapheneOS.

#Dumphones #FeaturePhones #KaiOS

Wild, my Nokia 105 got a firmware update. :tiktok_laugh:

#Nokia #Nokia105 #HMD #Phones #FeaturePhones #MobilePhones

@neil No, but this is something I've been actively researching for ... an embarrassingly long time (months) ... with low satisfaction. But as this is on my current to-do list, this toot doesn't count as procrastination 😺

I have a perfectly serviceable early-2000s flip phone which I'd love to reactivate ... but it won't talk to any current-generation mobile cellular networks.

I've looked at current low-feature phones, with interest in the Light Phone and Punkt MP02. Both ... have drawbacks, though I'll likely end up with one or the other.

The MP02 lacks comprehensive protocol coverage, and hence is limited to a subset of local mobile providers, unfortunately the ones I'd most prefer not giving my business. (I'd prefer not giving any of them my business, but that seems unlikely).

The MP02 does offer integrated Signal messaging, which is a strong plus.

The Light Phone is spendy but is also compatible with more carriers, which ... will probably win me. There are a couple of revs on the initial design, though I'd favour e-ink (original) over OLED (LPIII).

What both the MP02 and LP offer is tethering, which means your phone becomes your no-WiFi backup for Internet access, enabling you to use a more-featured, non-telco device for comms.

Which suggests another path:

• Dumbphone for critical on-the-road comms, as needed.
• Dumphone as cellular modem.
• Small-form-factor PC/laptop as primary comms device.

Palmtop PCs (e.g., the Psion 3) are no longer of this world, which is a shame. But smaller laptops, e.g., Framework's 12" (8.45 x 287.00 x 213.88mm, 1.3 kg), are effectively a far-more-capable larger tablet (I've been carrying a 13.3" Onyx BOOX for the past four years), without all the handicapping and crappification of Android. With a Bluetooth earpiece that becomes its own vox comms device, and you have full access to any other comms protocol through your Linux distro of choice, with a full keyboard. The Framework 12 is convertible (360° hinge) with stylus support. It doesn't have an e-ink screen module (yet?), but ... I can live with that. For anything other than on-the-run use, it's likely superior to any smartphone or tablet.

The other issue is vox comms management. I'd prefer not being directly on the PSTN network, so what I'd really like is that my "phone" accepts (and mostly makes) calls to only one other point: a VOIP relay which intercepts all incoming calls and redirects outgoing. Incoming traffic is then limited to only those numbers I allow, or which pass some screening mechanism. And my mobile telco provider gets a Very Boring profile of whom it is I'm in contact with. Whether or not this ideal VOIP service / capability exists I'm not sure, but that's what I'm looking into.

And yes, it would be possible to ditch the phone entirely for a pure-play modem, though the ability to make calls directly in an emergency has its arguments.

#Dumbphones #Featurephones #DeathOfTelephony

#Development #Guidelines
Tiny screens, big impact · The forgotten art of developing for feature phones https://ilo.im/165fja

_____
#Mobile #FeaturePhones #Usability #Accessibility #Website #Design #WebDesign #Browser #WebDev #Frontend

HMD 130 Music Now Available In Malaysia At RM139 #130music #featurephone #featurephones #hmd #mobilephones

https://www.lowyat.net/2025/346912/hmd-130-music/

HMD's got two new phones in the Australian market -- and they're both highly affordable, though that does bring some compromises with it. Here's my early thoughts on the HMD Key and HMD 110:

#HMD #Android #Smartphones #FeaturePhones #Australia
https://alexreviewstech.com/hmd-goes-low-priced-with-hmd-key-and-hmd-110-in-australia/

#KaiOS 4.0 expected to be released this year! ✨️

https://kaios.dev/2024/12/whats-coming-in-kaios-4.0/

Expected features include:

:firefox: #Gecko 123 engine (released Feb 2024)
:android: #Android 14 base
📶️ 5G support
🛠️ Same APIs as KaiOS 3.0
🍪️ Better #cookie sandboxing
📋️ Maybe copy-paste functionality!
🌏️ First out in #India and the #USA (a good sign, as KaiOS 3 devices were only available in the USA till recently and hard to develop for at that)

#Dumbphones #FeaturePhones #Mobile

WhatsApp support cancelled by February 2025 for some KaiOS based feature phones #Meta #Whatsapp #KaiOS #FirefoxOS #FeaturePhones #Android #iOS

WhatsApp support cancelled by February 2025 for some KaiOS based feature phones

#Meta #Whatsapp #KaiOS #FirefoxOS #FeaturePhones #Android #iOS

WhatsApp support cancelled by February 2025 for some KaiOS based feature phones #Meta #Whatsapp #KaiOS #FirefoxOS #FeaturePhones #Android #iOS

HMD 105 Now Available In Malaysia For RM109 #105 #featurephone #featurephones #hmd #mobilephones

https://www.lowyat.net/2024/338793/hmd-105/

Nokia 125 4G, 108 4G Quietly Arrive In Malaysia; Starts From RM284.90 #108 #125 #featurephone #featurephones #hmd #mobilephones #nokia #smartphone

https://www.lowyat.net/2024/336282/nokia-125-4g-108-4g/

Fun fact: My first mobile phone (stolen out of my car!) was a Nokia 3210… but that was a LONG time ago.

Today’s review (video and text, take your pick) is of the “reimagined” Nokia 3210 — but is it still a truly desirable phone for those who crave simplicity?

#Nokia #HMDGlobal #FeaturePhones

https://alexreviewstech.com/nokia-3210-review-simple-phone-or-digital-detox-machine/

Nokia 235 4G To Arrive In Malaysia At RM350.90 #235 #featurephone #featurephones #mobilephones #nokia

https://www.lowyat.net/2024/325611/nokia-235-4g/

Nokia 215 4G Launches In Malaysia With A RM306.90 Price Tag #featurephone #featurephones #hmdglobal #mobile #mobilephones #nokia #nokia215 #phones

https://www.lowyat.net/2024/324235/nokia-215-4g-malaysia-rm306-90/

Wow, for the first time EVER, #smartphones have outsold #featurephones in #Africa: https://gadget.co.za/smartphonesinafrica2/?utm_source=MastodonAfrica

I simply cannot fathom how anyone could function without a smartphone today... well, unless you have a computer, but I'm assuming the people who can't afford smartphones don't have computers either. Maybe that's a terrible assumption to make, but it seems logical.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

A year or two I read about how young people were switching to feature phones from smart phones and I thought it was about nostalgia and fashion. As a person who grew up with “feature phones” as they improved and evolved, and as a person who was either trapped at a laptop or desktop I couldn’t fathom why someone would want to disconnect by using a feature phone, rather than a smart phone.

Within the last year or two I do understand that pivot towards feature phones. In the 90s, and then the 2000s when we joined social network they were empty so we connected with people who spoke about things that interested us. Because the community was small, on web forums which I wrote about in the “Weaving the World Wide Web” part of my blog in the 90s, I was part of NoChickTrix and The Flipside. We talked between us. We were just 20-30 people on each site so we “knew” each other.

In parallel we had ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN messenger and other IM platforms to talk with friends, and strangers in chat room like environments, or by DM.

Twitter became a more global extension of this via a website that we could also use by SMS for when we were mobile. At first Twitter was so small that we could look at the global timeline. We actually had to look out for when we were mentioned. We had to invent the “at reply” and we had to wait for the “at reply” to become a tab that would automatically detect when we were mentioned.

In my eyes this was the golden age of social media because we had to be engaged, we had to be devoted to be part of the community.The more we invested, the more we got out. We went to tweetups, we were invited to Alpha social networks, and beta projects, such as Seesmic for example. It was a true network of friends of friends.

Facebook, in the early days required a Uni e-mail, but it also required for us to wait for our university to be added, so that we could become part of the community in turn. As a result of this Facebook was a network of friends we knew in person, that we remained connected with online. It was more convivial. It meant that the events we saw were with friends and friends of friends. It was a tight knit community.

If we slide sideways Twitter became more cold when two things happened. Hashtags, and the lure of having a million followers. The issue with hashtags is that it allowed people who were not invested in a conversation to hijack it, or to give the illusion of engagement when they were spamming the timeline.

With the million follower fantasy we went from a social network of people following a thousand people they knew to strangers following strangers, and not understanding that follows were for friends, and active conversations.

As I said at the time, I will not follow someone that does not have the time to reply to me, for two reasons. The first being that if I at someone that ignores me I make noise, and the second, that if I give my attention I want something back. I found that by being ignored too many times my emotional well being declined.

For other people, who came to twitter later, a tweet or reply was like a “pavé à la mare”. By this I mean that people expected to follow thousands, and to throw a brick in the pond, to see if anyone reacted, with no inkling of tight knit community that was gradually lost.

The paradox is that this community was lost within a year or two. By 2007 the golden age of Social media had passed. Maybe it’s due to me moving away from London, but I think it has more to do with the growth in popularity of social media.

## How Does This Connect to Young People and Feature Phones?

In the early days of social media when you signed up to a service the timeline was empty, until you followed someone, and then followed someone else. It filled up as you saw one person speak with another. It grew organically so that everyone became part of a network of friends of friends.

Today if you use Instagram, or Facebook, or Twitter, or even the Fediverse the timeline is full instantly. With Twitter, Facebook and Instagram it’s filled by the algorithms so in theory you don’t need to “follow” anyone for two reasons. The first reason is that algorithms will not show you the posts by people you follow and secondly because there is so much traffic that it’s hard to create a strong personal connection with any other human being.

I wrote human being but the terms used by corporations and PR firms is “influencers” and “content creators”. Yesterday [a parent from my generation](https://www.theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/article/2024/may/27/australia-social-media-facebook-ban-children-under-16) wrote about how a ban on social media for teenagers would not help. She said that teenagers would find other ways to connect. Back in our day we had paper notes, and then SMS, and then MMS and more.

That’s where the feature phones come in. If children and teenagers from the same generation have the same feature phones then they can SMS, MMS, Whatsapp and more. They don’t need to connect via FB, Twitter, IG or the Fediverse. They can connect as children or teenagers from the same school in whatsapp groups, like hikers, climbers and more people do. For 30 to 90 CHF you can get a feature that connects you with friends, and with a phone that you can drop, and not need to charge for days at a time.

The key point, I feel, is that social media is no longer a community at a human scale. Between algorithms, adverts and more we see content by complete strangers, rather than close friends. We are bombarded and harassed by stuff we have no interest in. I believe that this is one reason for trolling, flame wars and more. In a social network filled with strangers we never get human connections. Without that human connection we have no reward for being on the social network.

## False Notifications

Another issue is that TW, FB and IG give false notifications. They tell you that you have a notification but it’s not because of a like or a comment based on our activity. It’s FB, TW or IG nagging us about groups we’re in, or “chats” we’re following. On IG we can follow “chats” except that the chat is not a conversation. It’s yet another form of “content creators” nagging us.

## Social Media Are Not Social Networks

For a long time I held the ideal that social media were social networks but they are not. They exist to harvest our data, convince us that we want to go somewhere, or buy something, or other. If you use Instagram without pound signs you don’t exist.

If you use FB you will not see the content by friends, you will see the crap that algorithms want everyone to see. As I have said for a while, a decade or two ago viral meant something. Today it means that someone gamed the algorithms. We see things because algorithms show them to us, rather than because friends shared them.

TW, some FB groups, Quora and Reddit are dead, because it’s more likely that you will be trolled, than have a pleasant conversation if you post publicly. In such an environment do you want to be on Social Media? I don’t.

## Of Smart Phones and Social Media

Smart phones and social media are synonymous of each other. iPhones thrived because of twitter, Nokia phones because of Jaiku, and Android because of both. There was a time when people spoke about social media addiction and I always thought it was rubbish, because we don’t say that married people and families are addicted with each other. Social media is about people connecting with each other.

In 2024 people are not connecting with each other via social media, and if we don’t use social media then we don’t need smart phones. We can live with feature phones instead. By dehumanising social media, social media, and phone makers, are negating their raison d’être.

## Convinced

As I skimmed through Guardian articles about mobile phones I did question whether [younger people are interested in feature/dumb phones](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/27/the-boring-phone-stressed-out-gen-z-ditch-smartphones-for-dumbphones) because they have been indoctrinated. Did parents, schools and governments brainwash them into wanting dumb phones because they were encouraged not to want smartphones? I doubt it. I think there is a cultural shift. As social media became less appetising, so the phones that enabled social media use whilst mobile become less interesting.

## And Finally

It seemed, absurd, at first, that people would want to get feature phones, rather than smart phones, but with more thought, and in light of social trends, feature phones might make sense. They’re lighter, less fragile, have better battery life and they’re cheaper. They’re also less likey to be band in certain schools. The other advantage is that feature phones have more character. All iphones look and feel the same, as do most android phones that look like slates, or slabs.

In the end, the appeal of feature/dumb phones could be down to “They’re cheaper, and more resistant”.

https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/anti-social-media-youth-and-feature-phones/

#conviviality #featurePhones #smartphones #socialMedia #trolls

The New Nokia 3210 Is Now Available For RM339 #3210 #featurephone #featurephones #mobilephones #nokia #phone

https://www.lowyat.net/2024/322419/nokia-3210-malaysia/

I was never really a #Nokia person. I had a 3310, of course (didn't absolutely everyone on a planet?), but mostly I was into #Motorola. My first cellphone, back in 2000, was a #Siemens S10, and I still have fond memories of it. And #Erricson wasn't bad either... before they partnered up with Sony (yuck).

What would you say is the most iconic Nokia phone of old?

https://techcentral.co.za/the-most-iconic-nokia-phones-ever-made/243251/?utm_source=MastodonAfrica

#technology #cellphones #FeaturePhones #history #nostalgia

HMD Global's emphasising its own brand rather than "Nokia" for smartphones -- and I reckon that's a smart idea if it wants to attract a wider crowd of phone buyers.

#HMDGlobal #Nokia #Smartphones #FeaturePhones

https://alexreviewstech.com/opinion-hmd-global-really-doesnt-need-nokia-branding-any-more/

I got a Nokia 8110 4G ("banana phone") 🎉

My plan is to run #postmarketOS on it.

#nokia #bananaphone #kaios #mobiledevices #phone #cellphones #featurephone #featurephones