I recently came to a fork in the road of being sick and tired of subconsciously picking up my iPhone for no good reason. I turned my colors to black and white. It has made a world of difference. I find it detestable in the best way. I also bought a CAT S22 flip phone and after I figure out how to remove the TMobile bloatware I’ll swap SIMs and try that. People look at me weird but feeling addicted is my answer for tolerating these changes. FYI S22 has Waze which is a requirement for me or some alternative.
check out r/dumbphones on reddit for examples. Most of the requests are "I want a dumbphone that does spotify, whatsapp, car naivgation, my banking apps, uber, podcasts, and facebook." Sometimes people point out that this is not a dumbphone, but they get shouted down.
In the typewriter days I believe it was brother who made many different models that each had their own case but all had the same hardware inside. The cheaper models simply didn't have the keys.
One could do a "smart" phone that has a predefined set of apps. I could see the advantage of having practical apps but not have the stuff that (depending on who you are) sucks the life out of you. Having [say] porn or gambling wherever you go might not be a good idea for some people.
I only got a smartphone in 2017 when it became impossible to do my job without the latest drama announcements on whatsapp. A few years before I had to get a dumb phone because it was getting to weird for people to not be able to contact me.
I've been doomscrolling nonsense ever since. People (as they should) make fun of me for not starting a conversation the way I use to.
I recently found myself unable to order food without a payment app.
It would be hilarious to purchase a phone providing a list of url's and a list of apps and having to pay for each. Changing the list should be expensive and take at least a month.
What they're really asking for is interoperability and openness with none of the cruft and dark patterns.
E.g., a music service that doesn't exploit artists or users, an interoperable messaging and calling system, a GPS mapping system, a way to spend and check their finances, RSS, and some way of interacting with their friends and family.
An e-ink device with a decent battery life could potentially do a lot of these things, but their processors are seldom great, and most apps aren't made with e-ink in mind, so render like crap. Android has also become quite bloated.
They might want the results of interoperability and openness, but what they ask for is a dumbphone that can run all their favorite apps. If you gave them a linux phone, they'd ask how to install their favorite apps. When they discover that you, essentially, can't, they'll throw it out and post another thread on r/dumbphones asking the same question.
That's why I think there's a market for phones like this 'Minimal Phone' even though to a techie it's just another android gadget. People ask for this device all the time. By the time they find out the walled garden still sucks in monochrome, someone will already have made a profit.
Many people want enough friction that the pleasure of using a smart phone is degraded but the practicality of maps, emails for work, etc remain. It's about resisting the intentionally addictive elements of hardware and software ui/ux and leaving the tool.
IMO, your brain can adapt to "minimal" UI and even with minimal UI it will find its desired source of dopamine distraction.
So either you replace those distractions with other activities or you have to put something more engaging and advanced to protect you from going to rabbit holes.
The second is what I'm experimenting with. I built a quick chat that tries to challenge the necessity or intention of my device usage after I unlock my phone. Unfortunately it's possible on Android only. If you are interested check Intenty app on Google Play.
This device looks very interesting as it's one step closer to Palm/Blackberry style devices with the keyboard. The design is pretty unique, it looks like a more squarish screen than what the e-ink phones usually have. I wonder if they might ever give Unihertz a call about collaborating on a keyboard phone.
I just bought the Onyx Boox Palma which is a phone-size backlit e-ink tablet (no keyboard, no SIM).
I think people would be surprised at how good the web browsing experience is on e-ink these days. The only thing that suffers a bit are dark color images. I've had many e-readers in the past and the slow refresh used to make general browsing impossible. Now, screens have multiple refresh rate settings, so using a higher one for the web browser app makes it much more usable.
This is a very attractive product for me, but my problem is that android is as close to a mainstream operating system as I currently get. My personal devices all use some weird form of linux, so when I need to interact with the world, well I'm not sure I can afford to be too weird in every aspect of my technology choices.
Like my job (which is very friendly to my weird tech choices) had to go with a strange ISP since we're in a historic properties building, and the only way to interact with that ISP's router is through either a windows machine or an android/ios device.
I suppose the answer is to use VMs or something, but still, that's what's keeping me from using strange android devices like this.
It would be nice if it had a scroll wheel, like the Rabbit R1. To me, the scroll wheel seems like a more useful innovation, however, the physical keyboard makes sense for e-ink device because it reduces the screen refreshes necessary for typing (i.e., not having to show a keyboard with an animation per character input).
OMG I think this is EXACTLY the phone I want. Modern mobile OS; small; hardware keyboard; lasts forever. Put a decent enough camera in it (I don't need to see the photos on my device) and it's an instant buy.
I hate touchscreen keyboards, and Apple will absolutely not relent on this.
This is a tablet. There is no microphone. They used 'phone' 36 times without actually checking if it makes phone calls. Perhaps paired with a Bluetooth headset it makes sense, but not as a standalone device.
