Just Curious IF :
Anyone is interested in a more basic phone that does not attempt to be a mini-computer ?
Maybe a step in the direction of the 'Pine Time' device.
A modem without a shared GPS, a slightly smaller device and less expensive. Maybe even a physical keyboard, and smaller screen.
Instead of competing against high spec smart phones with a low spec "smart phone"....
A phone that is "Just a Phone" ... ?
Maybe we can kick a few ideas around ? MORE CHOICES ?
LINUX = CHOICES
**BCnAZ**
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I would love a very basic cell phone that is free of Google and Apple. Really that's the way I use the Pinephone, just for calls. I rarely run any of the applications.
short version:
compromises have to be made, i think at this moment it's going to be somewhat cheap phone and one model only.
i don't think pine64 can maintain multiple models at this time. demand is not high enough.
for that even lower spec phone, i don't think is possible. if it has gnu/linux, it still is some kind of mini computer. voice over lte makes things complicated because it is going to be practically mandatory in the future. pinephone is quite low-end already. in theory, i would like updatable basic phone with volte (possibly vonr). practically we need go with touchscreen devices. btw, i do not like touchscreens that much.
probably there is going to be slightly improved pinephone 2.0. how and when, i do not know, but price tag is not going to be high.
Lots of ideas get kicked around in the Forum, * some times they do lead somewhere.
LINUX = CHOICES
**BCnAZ**
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Unfortunately, I do personally need a mini computer that doesn't run down my car battery or require solar panels on the roof. Whether we like it or not, some of us need to evacuate the titanic[1] of x86 processors sooner rather than later. My new Pinephone Beta is affordable, doable, and fun.
However, I'm all for more choices! Most Seniors here would rather just use their phones as phones and parents are quite rightfully concerned about what google/apple are doing to our kids.
[1] https://jxself.org/titanic.shtml
I like this idea, a phone for seniors, just thick enough to take 3x aaa rechargable cells you can buy from any store, with calls, SMS, a music or podcast player only (Rockbox?), a decent sized e-ink screen (black and white) you can easily see out doors and tactile buttons on the front, but no bluetooth, no wifi, no GPS, no video playback or touchscreen.
I would pay around $100 for this since I am a visually impaired senior, but it would be a good privacy phone too.
Have a search for dumb phones - you may not get all the features you're after in one device, but you can probably get most of them. There are manufacturers targeting seniors (Doro, TTfone, Artfone etc.) that generally have large tactile buttons, high contrast displays, loud ringers and intentionally low feature count. Other segments are small/cheap backup phones, retro phones, rugged ones, and others like the Light Phone II, Punkt MP01 and MP02, and Mudita Pure (assuming it gets delivered) that are probably a bit too high end. A lot of the cheap ones are using KaiOS now so perhaps too googley for you.
The old makerphone was essentially an arduino, quectel GSM module, LCD screen and some buttons. An updated version should be doable.
https://makezine.com/2014/01/09/make-you...cellphone/
The problem is that all of the 4G dumb phones just seem to be stripped down smartphones. Most are Android but even the KaiOS models have been infested with Google spyware. My provider AT&T sent me a KaiOS flip phone to replace the LG phone they cut off, but that thing has "Google Assistant" constantly in your face and who knows what going on in the background. So I just used the provided phone to activate the new SIM and installed that in the Pinephone.
(09-22-2021, 06:25 AM)wibble Wrote: Have a search for dumb phones - you may not get all the features you're after in one device, but you can probably get most of them. There are manufacturers targeting seniors (Doro, TTfone, Artfone etc.) that generally have large tactile buttons, high contrast displays, loud ringers and intentionally low feature count. Other segments are small/cheap backup phones, retro phones, rugged ones, and others like the Light Phone II, Punkt MP01 and MP02, and Mudita Pure (assuming it gets delivered) that are probably a bit too high end. A lot of the cheap ones are using KaiOS now so perhaps too googley for you.
The old makerphone was essentially an arduino, quectel GSM module, LCD screen and some buttons. An updated version should be doable.
https://makezine.com/2014/01/09/make-you...cellphone/ when reading stuff around internet and this forum, there is primarily two use cases for basic phones.
technical basic phone: all googoo corporation, worm-eaten-rotten apple, facebook and other's creepyware is removed and features are very limited. usually no data connection at all (volte makes this more complicated).
easy-to-use phone: might be smartphone but have been made easy to use.
most people in this forum do not want the latter. most of us can live with quite complicated devices but we want to control over them and software.
for technical basic phone, relying on gsm (2g) networks is just a bad idea as for the future. even in finland where operators are dismantling umts (3g) networks and gsm networks will have their end as well at some point. practically speaking, voice over lte is mandatory for even technical basic phones. btw, gsm has bad sound quality in most cases.
now, when i know enough about kaios, it has been a little dissappointment. it has good basis for reasonable basic phone with some smartphone feature. it seems that kaios go with facebook and googoo's creepyware first. it might be preinstalled in a way it cannot be uninstalled without rooting.
Whatever happened to John's phone? I really liked the text message pad.
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