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Ask HN: What is the best “dumb” phone?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the best “dumb” phone?

#141

Post by bargl »

tanzbaer wrote: post #133
brightball wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loneliness is the same way. It can give people determination to come out of their shell, work up the courage to ask someone out, etc.

Or it may just crush you...

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/theodore_roosevelt_103499

Re: Ask HN: What is the best “dumb” phone?

#142

Post by dantiberian »

kpmcc wrote: post #15

Nothing compares to the Punkt MP01 and MP02 IMO. I've had the MP01 for years and it's fantastic, the only issue has been with service and I imagine that would be resolved with the MP02 and 4g. https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/ There's also the Lightphone and forthcoming Lightphone II. That being said, these won't really address privacy concerns per se. They don't support signal or other encrypted…

The MP02 looks like it has a lot of software issues at the moment. Take a read of the threads at https://www.reddit.com/r/Punkt/.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best “dumb” phone?

#143

Post by spricket »

If you care about privacy and have about $100 + 4 hours you can get a Galaxy S5 running LineageOs without GApps (use F-Droid store) .

Almost completely OSS besides a few manufacturer blobs you can't really work around.

I have a "normal" Android phone I use for work but my S5 is my daily driver for everything else. Works great, hardest part is setting up stuff to replace FAANG.

I use ProtonMail, Open Camera, Matrix/Riot for family chat.

Haven't found a good calendar yet but overall way more usable than a dumbphone and privacy concious

There's some "nicer" options like One plus for LineageOs but you will probably find the S5 fairly snappy since its based on Android 8.0 . IMO the last few versions of Android make a much larger performance difference than a few CPU generations

Re: Ask HN: What is the best “dumb” phone?

#145

Post by rwmj »

puranjay wrote: post #117
davzie wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a Punkt MP01 - It feels like a breath of fresh air to use this and to have a phone for simply what a phone does, calls and text messages. I've since purchased a portable music player, a separate camera and an old fashioned A-Z map for my local area. If you can't see why I might want to do this rather than have a small smartphone that does it all then you haven't realised how much of a problem these device…

What do you do for commutes? I find that it's impossible to read anything physical in crowded trains and the only way to not be bored out of my mind for those 45 minutes is to listen to music or a podcast or read something on the phone I really like the idea of doing things intently, but I'm not sure how to manage these practical things

I have a Kaossilator 2S for commutes and long train journeys. It's a great little musical instrument, so it's fun and creative. The only downside is the relatively short battery life.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best “dumb” phone?

#146

Post by crazynick4 »

perlgod wrote: post #139
crazynick4 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tried turning my smartphone into a "dumbphone" and using it less, but I honestly lacked the self-control to put the stupid thing down Did you remove the browsers and app store as well? I got rid of everything except for phone/texting, Slack (for work), and non-bingy convenience apps like Maps/Yelp/etc. On Android, it can be done with the adb shell without rooting, even the 'uninstallable' apps like Google search…

I should try something like that. Honestly just having the device in eyesight triggers some kind of latent mental FOMO. Removing the option entirely has worked well for me so far. I still keep an old iPhone for when I know I'll need an Uber or something, but the smartphone isn't a part of my daily life anymore.

If I could go with a flip phone I gladly would, but I do need to have Slack around for when I'm on call for work. I suppose I could switch to a flip phone for when I'm off call. You're giving me ideas here.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best “dumb” phone?

#147

Post by leesalminen »

crazynick4 wrote: post #146
perlgod wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should try something like that. Honestly just having the device in eyesight triggers some kind of latent mental FOMO. Removing the option entirely has worked well for me so far. I still keep an old iPhone for when I know I'll need an Uber or something, but the smartphone isn't a part of my daily life anymore.

If I could go with a flip phone I gladly would, but I do need to have Slack around for when I'm on call for work. I suppose I could switch to a flip phone for when I'm off call. You're giving me ideas here.

You could also use Slack’s API + Twilio to trigger a SMS to send when a post to #app-outage happens. I’ve been playing with this myself.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best “dumb” phone?

#148

Post by retsibsi »

I'm in Australia, so if you're not then we might have a completely different range to choose from. (Hopefully your dumbphone market is better than ours!) But for what it's worth:

- My previous phone was a Nokia 3310. It was terrible, but that was partly because I (presumably) got a dud unit -- the sound output was intermittently (but frequently) badly garbled. Setting that aside, I would still not recommend it. When it ran out of memory it had the delightful habit of allowing me to obliviously (and laboriously) type out a long text message and hit send, only then notifying me that was too full to do that, and dumping me back to the menu (or a newly-blank message window, I forget) with the message lost. The interface was generally a bit annoying, and the retro styling was just a gimmick -- I don't think it had much in common with the original aside from being a dumbphone. From memory the battery life was pretty good though.

- My current phone is a Nokia 8110, aka the bananaphone. (And no, I really didn't want to get another Nokia, but there were very few alternatives and the ones I wanted to try had too many worrying reviews.) It's been fine so far. It's pretty big, but fits comfortably in my pocket. It's not a flip phone, and the screen is always visible (so you can check the time just by tapping the power button on the side), but it has a cover that slides back to reveal the keypad. I haven't used it for much, just very occasional calls and texts, but I haven't had any serious annoyances yet. It runs KaiOS, which is significantly less annoying than the 3310 firmware (and probably makes using the 8110 as a semi-smart phone feasible -- the 8110 has Wi-Fi, which worked fine when I tested it), though it does take a frustratingly long time to start up. Battery life seems good, though I haven't tested it aside from leaving it on standby for longish periods.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best “dumb” phone?

#150

Post by retsibsi »

bargl wrote: post #141
tanzbaer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it may just crush you...

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/theodore_roosevelt_103499

I was tempted to reply with a link to the wiki article for survivorship bias, but that would come across snarkier than I intend. Seriously though, this is a bit like taking advice on financial risk-taking from a startup billionaire.
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