There is no market for this, which is why you can't find it. The vast majority of people who want a phone/text device but don't want browsers, emails, MySpace, or app stores simply ignore those features.
Or they try to not use those features but get sucked back into it, like I did the many times I tried exactly that. I wonder how many people there are who wanted to live a life like this but because such a phone doesn't exist, they keep getting pulled back in and have to abandon having a phone altogether.
That looks over engineered and still not as simple as it could be. Think of those cell phones in the 90s that had a single line (or two) of spaces for text, and they had no features but calling and texting. That's perfect, it has literally already been invented, it just needs to be resold, and perhaps put in a pretty package again, but not like this. Not like this.
> That's perfect Is it? I'm a LP2 backer, and agree with you that I want a phone that does not have a browser, or an App Store, or anything like that; however, I do believe that the small set of tools LP2 is planning on coming with (simple directions, ride sharing, alarm, in particular) are pretty much no-downside. What bothers you about features like these? Or is it the pricetag?
It's self sufficiency I want for our family, and those features discourage that. My kids' schools don't teach them many things anymore, including reading an analog clock. I'd rather my children know how to buy a map at a gas station and read it to get where they want to go, or do most simple math in their head instead of using a calculator. Alarms are built into most clocks made today, even (perfectly good) ones you can buy for $3 at a thrift store, and most microwaves have timer features. Using an app for ride sharing discourages phone (or text) conversations that are naturally able to lead to many unexpected places.
At the end of the day, I look at it this way: I'm able to live a full and happy life without a smart phone, the only thing I'm missing is the ability to call someone. That's where a phone comes in handy.
I'm at my local public library which has wifi. It's also how I download new NPM modules, email my client, deliver my work to him, etc. But I do 90% of my work offline at home.
Are you a dev? If yes, how do you refer to documentation without internet??!!
You'd be surprised how much documentation you can download. And the ones that are hosted on sites, those sites are often just git repos that you can clone. A few of them (like webpack.org) are trickier because you have to build the static site while online, but then you can run it offline (via python -m SimpleHTTPServer). There's tons of little tricks like this you can use to get documentation for pretty much anything you need. Not to mention Zeal (open source Dash clone) for tons of other things, Win32 API has a CHM file, and actual books at the library work great like for Python or C++, which often have the whole standard library in them, or at least most of it. And it's always a pleasant surprise when an NPM module bundled its thorough README.md file right into the package file (and often even more docs than that), and sometimes even the original source code, so that all I have to do is run `code node_modules/webpack-dev-server` and press Cmd-Shift-V (to preview .md file as Markdown in VS Code) and then it's as if I'm right there on their GitHub page. Also Safari has an amazingly useful feature of saving a page exactly as-is into a single file that can be opened in Safari, instead of saving all the external files into a sibling folder like Chrome does.
Buy any android phone and uninstall the browser/everything else. Put custom software on it without GAPPS. Moto e⁴ plus has a 2 day battery life, probably longer if you're not using a browser. LG still makes flip feature phones but they have a primitive browser which you don't have to use by not signing up to any data plan.
No internet is too extreme though, library genesis and sci-hub I'd be lost without them as I can't afford $100+ texts or journal subscriptions. Youtube videos by mathematicians I also wish I had when I was in highschool.
Are you sure this isn't a lifestyle you're forcing on your kids? I've known a few kids from low-tech families and in my experience, it's rarely something they'd choose for themselves, were they given the choice. Kids use the internet to chat with friends after school and to arrange events. They also tend to bond over videos and TV shows they've all watched, and in general, they don't like to be different from their p…
Every lifestyle choice is forced on kids. That's the whole point of parenting. It's why we make our kids eat vegetables, go to the doctor, get to bed at a decent time, etc. Also, TV shows and videos are a shallow interest to bond over. It doesn't need to be that way - my kids have some really great friends and TV and other media are not really a factor there. We've spent a lot of time and effort to cultivate such relationships though.
> That's perfect Is it? I'm a LP2 backer, and agree with you that I want a phone that does not have a browser, or an App Store, or anything like that; however, I do believe that the small set of tools LP2 is planning on coming with (simple directions, ride sharing, alarm, in particular) are pretty much no-downside. What bothers you about features like these? Or is it the pricetag?
It's self sufficiency I want for our family, and those features discourage that. My kids' schools don't teach them many things anymore, including reading an analog clock. I'd rather my children know how to buy a map at a gas station and read it to get where they want to go, or do most simple math in their head instead of using a calculator. Alarms are built into most clocks made today, even (perfectly good) ones you…
People will hate when you try to go against the flow, but it's a good path. We've recently cut pretty much all video games and television, and our family is better for it.
Protip: Some people will feel judged by you simply because you don't do certain things. If you want to avoid awkward conversations, you might not want to bring up that you don't have a TV. It's stupid but some people get seriously weird over it.