201–210 of 291 posts
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Be careful with this. AT&T shut down its GSM network 3 years ago. The ~only unlocked LTE feature phone I could find a year or two ago for my grandma (who wouldn't be able to learn how to use a smartphone) was an Alcatel Flip 2.
There's a 3G variant of the Nokia.
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You can, but, IMO, smartphones are starting to feel like a money pit, too, not just a time pit. You spend $500 - $1500 on a device that can't be expected to last more than 4 years (presumably a fair bit less if you cut too close to the $500 end of the range), and will have an annoyingly short battery life in 2 years. You have to constantly be careful with it, because if you drop it or it gets scratched by a key or so…
My current device, the moto e5 play, retailed for $120. It still works just fine for me for use cases like web browsing, 720p video, remote desktop, etc. Prior to that I had the e4 which worked great until I dropped it down 5 flights of stairs. Regarding the battery health issue, I have found the biggest factor to be not recharging soon enough. Don't let your battery drop too low and you will have substantially bette…
Updates? No.
Unlocked bootloader? No,it's Lenovo.
Security in chinese phone? LOL, I even not started talking about company who sold laptops with crapware in BIOS.
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You're confusing "people who want to get rich" with "people who want useful products". "People who want to get rich" are a significant subset of the HN population, and they are downvoting you because they remember Dropbox. You'll recall that Dropbox was met by "people who want useful products" saying "oh, I can do 90% of that with rsync". Your solution is probably excellent for someone who knows what they are doing,…
I get the mindset, but this is round 2 for the "light phone", round 1 having flopped. I could see a low-end product which shares the phone number of the bigger phone. Something carriers could offer as a promotional item and a backup. "What do you do when your iPhone is in the shop for a broken screen?" The amazing thing is that you can get 4 processors, a screen, 8GB, and a camera for $49.
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You’re glossing away a lot of important details here with “phone that doesn’t do things”. So, I’m very much in the market for what the Light Phone 2 is going for: not a phone that doesn’t do anything but make calls and text, but a phone with “the essentials”. The problem is that not everyone who wants such a phone has the same set of essentials. The single biggest issue that I have with feature phones is that they la…
> I live in NYC, and I’m not going to memorize all the different subway lines and stops and schedules. How long have you lived in the city? I lived there before smartphones and this is basically what people did.
Then I had a look at the subway map and I can see why one might refrain from memorising the various lines and relevant stops: There are few significant features for distinguishing the lines, even the colours are very similar in some cases, and the stops often have cryptic or very similar names.
The London Underground map on the other hand is incredibly well-designed: The colours for the different lines are optimised for recognisability to the point they're almost iconic. On seeing a pink colour on the underground for example you can immediately tell "Hammersmith & City".
The lines and stops usually have easily memorable, often quirky names, too. This of course is in part due to London's long history, rather than a deliberate design decision.
However, usability still seems to have played a role when individual stops were named. For example, "Elephant & Castle" could've been easily named a far less memorable "London Rd." as well.
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That looks good! It's an interesting way around the problem, just put an Alexa/G Assistant terminal in and you can interact via voice and avoid the phone all together. But that thing runs YouTube too?? Dual SIM is nice. If it could tether I'd buy that next time I go on a long holiday (edit - it does!). Non removable battery is a pity too, but I've never actually needed that. I've been tempted by the CAT S60/61 though…
There are cheaper CAT (smart|dumb)phones which get less attention and fame, and have less functionality than the S60/S61 but which are also a lot cheaper. The interesting conceptual design of the Light Phone is that it is a dedicated dumbphone with e-ink, like a Kobo reader is a dedicated e-reader with e-ink. E-ink works if the page stays static, as you read a book. A smartphone, and dumbphone to lesser extend, have…
The light phone looks good, but I do actually want some of the smartphone features. I was very unhappy when Amazon nerfed 3G on Kindle, I used to use it for paper like maps when traveling in foreign cities. Google Maps worked very well.
If I want a phone that allows me to make phone calls and send texts and otherwise not distract me, there are a billion £30 feature phones that will do that, and have a week+ battery life.
If I want a phone that does anything "smart" but doesn't distract me, what I consider "smart" but not "distracting" is going to be different to everyone else, to the point where you need an app store to manage all that difference. Which is why the only real option is to just manage what apps you install, manage how it interacts with you (eg notification and noise settings), regulate how you interact with it (ie stop picking it up, leave it in a different room etc), and do all that with a normal smart phone.
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I get the mindset, but this is round 2 for the "light phone", round 1 having flopped. I could see a low-end product which shares the phone number of the bigger phone. Something carriers could offer as a promotional item and a backup. "What do you do when your iPhone is in the shop for a broken screen?" The amazing thing is that you can get 4 processors, a screen, 8GB, and a camera for $49.
The non-amazing things: no updates and tons of spying services inside - why this phone is so cheap.
Do the makers think that there's a sizeable portion of people that hate their iPhones or Galaxies and want to spend $350 on a phone that doesn't do things? Doesn't do social media, doesn't do email, doesn't do news. Most consumers would at this point ask "What's the fucking point?" Smartphones are popular because people want to do the things that they enable. You probably need to live in some sort of a niche social c…