Lately I have been having a lot of fun playing around with mestastic devices, older phones, and so called “dumb phones”. I dont plan on getting rid of my current smart phone (at least any time soon) but I do want to see how it feels to go back to a dumb phone.

Anyone have a preferred dumb-phone setup that still works with 4G?

I want to be able to:

  1. Make/receive phone calls
  2. At least be able to see texting
  3. Replaceable battery
  4. (optional) some sort of directions (google maps/OSM+ etc…)

Things I have looked at:

  • Ive been looking at some of the new Nokia offerings and it looks like they are going full retro which I like. I just dont like how thin the plastic looks. It looks like the phones could die at any point.
  • I took a look at https://www.wiphone.io/ and that looked neat, but no GSM (phone calls outside of wifi) so thats a no go.
  • https://dumbwireless.com/products/punkt-mp02 looked almst perfect…then I saw you can repair the device or replace the battery.
  • https://dumbwireless.com/products/light-phone-2 looks nifty but again cant replace anything.
  • Sunbeam F1 Horizon might be a good fit given that you can take out the battery but the price is a bit steap.

What do you all think?

  • CorrodedEnglish
    3·
    22 hours ago

    I looked for this and it sort of doesn’t exist. I need it for a technologically challenged family member who gets hopelessly confused by smart phones. I have had the idea of writing an Android dumbify app that runs in kiosk mode (i.e. there is no way to exit it) that just disables everything except phone calls, and keeps the phone keypad permanently on the screen, like an old fashioned phone with physical buttons. It’s on my infinite todo list.

    A minimalist launcher is probably the easiest possible solution to that. Aster for example is available on F-Droid. The only issue I could see is it not having a lock function that would prevent them from accidentally entering some sort of edit mode.