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An App Platform for Dumb Phones

dumbsto.re

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Re: An App Platform for Dumb Phones

#11

Post by nedwin »

nedwin wrote: post #10
bryogenic wrote: post #4

Slightly off topic, are there actually any good (i.e. recommendable) dumb phones? It has been an interesting market to try to navigate and research.

I lived for the last 2 years with a Nokia 1610. Highly recommend but they discontinued in January and a new model came out with a camera (which was against my minimalist ethos at the time). I ended up breaking the chain and switching back to an iPhone 5 but this app store has got me pining for the simpler days of pure sms and voice based comms.

I'm also pretty frothy on this $12 phone.

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040

Re: An App Platform for Dumb Phones

#12

Post by nsmartt »

rapind wrote: post #9
bryogenic wrote: post #4

Slightly off topic, are there actually any good (i.e. recommendable) dumb phones? It has been an interesting market to try to navigate and research.

I actually spent some time looking into dumb phones a couple years ago. My favorite would be the motofone. It's got an e-ink display, which is great for battery and sunlight, and 2 antennas which is also great if you heaven forbid make actual calls with it. Also, pretty sturdy, small, and light. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone Beware though, if you txt a lot, you won't like it. Not enough real estate for t…

Do you happen to have a recommendation for an e-ink phone that is favorable for SMS?

Re: An App Platform for Dumb Phones

#13

Post by kevinconroy »

rapind wrote: post #9
bryogenic wrote: post #4

Slightly off topic, are there actually any good (i.e. recommendable) dumb phones? It has been an interesting market to try to navigate and research.

I actually spent some time looking into dumb phones a couple years ago. My favorite would be the motofone. It's got an e-ink display, which is great for battery and sunlight, and 2 antennas which is also great if you heaven forbid make actual calls with it. Also, pretty sturdy, small, and light. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone Beware though, if you txt a lot, you won't like it. Not enough real estate for t…

I had a Motofone (also called F3) for the last 7 years. It started with a two week working battery life. It's a pain to text message on since it only shows 4 or 5 characters on, but it just worked as a reliable phone. Finally switched to an iPhone 5 after it became vital for me to have full Internet access 24/7 for work. If it weren't for that, I'd still have my F3. I love it as much as I love my iPhone 5.

You can still find some of them on eBay. I'd offer mine, but I'm keeping it as an emergency (911) phone for my car.

Re: An App Platform for Dumb Phones

#14

Post by JimJames »

rapind wrote: post #9
bryogenic wrote: post #4

Slightly off topic, are there actually any good (i.e. recommendable) dumb phones? It has been an interesting market to try to navigate and research.

I actually spent some time looking into dumb phones a couple years ago. My favorite would be the motofone. It's got an e-ink display, which is great for battery and sunlight, and 2 antennas which is also great if you heaven forbid make actual calls with it. Also, pretty sturdy, small, and light. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone Beware though, if you txt a lot, you won't like it. Not enough real estate for t…

I used this phone for about 6 months. The screen made it hard to navigate the menus and got in the way of even simple things like adding someone to your address book. The battery life was good but it was not significantly longer than the battery life of other dumb phones (since the screen is mostly off it doesn't make a huge difference).

Eventually I traded it in for a cheap nokia with an lcd.

Re: An App Platform for Dumb Phones

#16

Post by shadowmatter »

I like the idea.

Note that if there is a lot of text traffic on a given number, carriers like AT&T, Verizon, et al will block texts to and from that number until the traffic subsides. What's worse is that if you send a message to that number from the Twilio dashboard, its status will be "sent," but you will not actually receive it. Apparently in the world of SMS, "sent" simply means the message has been delivered to the destination carrier, and it is not a delivery receipt like with iMessage or BBM.

Twilio suggests that, to reduce this risk, you load balance across a collection of such numbers, or purchase a short code, which isn't cheap: http://www.twilio.com/sms/shortcodes

Re: An App Platform for Dumb Phones

#17

Post by cheese1756 »

I like the idea, it might be a nice replacement in the wake of the Google SMS shutdown. One quick thing: You might want to make app names case insensitive. My phone automatically capitalized Ltrain, resulting in a message stating the app was not found, however when I manually changed it to ltrain it worked. Maybe simple spelling correcting for app names (e.g. off by a letter or a letter is missing) could be added too?

Re: An App Platform for Dumb Phones

#18

Post by SCdF »

bryogenic wrote: post #4

Slightly off topic, are there actually any good (i.e. recommendable) dumb phones? It has been an interesting market to try to navigate and research.

I have a Nokia 1202 that I keep in my emergency drawer, that I take with me hiking and so on. It's very reminiscent of the 3315 in build quality. It talks, it txts, it has snake. What more do you need!

Re: An App Platform for Dumb Phones

#19

Post by jakemcgraw »

If you want to see what this would look like if it was a real business, checkout http://www.dotgo.com and http://dotgo.com/Support/Documentation/.

DOTGO solves the problem of service discoverability by mapping domain names to shortcodes representing TLDs. Want wikipedia.org? Text "wikipedia" to DOTORG (368674). Want to checkin to Foursquare? Text "foursquare" to DOTCOM (368266).

DOTGO also provides a language of reusable components, known as CMRL (Concise Message Routing Language), it allows you to create hierarchical menus, links and URL callbacks.

They're available in the United States and select countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Previously, I was a web application developer for them, I still think it's a great idea and recommend you guys give it a go.

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