The article author ignores how little those old phones could actually do, and how much of a pain in the ass it reliably was to get them to actually do most of it. I understand why; none of that would go to his point. But I was also there. Boring is good in technology. It means you don't have to think about it much, and that usually means it is doing its job.
> The article author ignores how little those old phones could actually do I wish there was a phone on the market that did as little as those phones did. It appears, however, that if you want a cell phone at all, it has to be a smartphone ("feature phones" are just gimped smartphones).
It would not surprise me to see this change over the next decade or so. On the one hand, 5G will probably remain the dominant radio scheme for at least that long, so that there'll be less pressure on device manufacturers for constant hardware changes to provide basic functionality. And on the other, the mounting backlash against the current iteration of the tech industry and specifically the harms it inflicts on children (1) may well develop into a movement toward ensuring connectivity while structurally limiting the sort of access required for algorithmic exploitation - which seems like very naturally opening a niche for the sort of device you prefer. Such a genre of phone may not partake of the sort of design language you might prefer, and it will of course be overpriced as any luxury good, but in functionality I suspect it'll come quite close to satisfaction.
(1) Haidt et al.; I disagree with almost his every prescription and don't at all trust the company he keeps, but I can't argue with his identification of the problem.