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Comment by mikegioia | Hacker News Reader

I just want one manufacturer to care about and release a decent feature phone. The current landscape right now is the LG Cosmos III, various shitty Tracfones, and then the Nokia lines that have been ruined by Microsoft.

I think there's a serious market for good feature phones that can make calls, send/receive SMS/MMS/group chats, take high resolution pictures, and send/receive emails all with a qwerty, tactile keyboard.

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Once you get into emails/data you're blurring the line seriously...

(I mean, that means you've got a HTML renderer, so you've gotta push updates every 12 weeks or so)

Not necessarily. You don't need an HTML renderer for emailing, and even if you did, the difference between HTML rendering for emails vs. a full 3rd party, concurrently running application system is pretty big.

Nokia ported the KHTML rendering engine back in 2004-2005 to their feature phone OS. :) A baby WebKit is in some of those feature phone if you want to call it that.

My 2004 Nokia feature phone had a mobile web browser, with some degree of HTML rendering capability, and no way to update the phone OTA. HTML or data support seem like a weird place to draw the line.

A web browser and no software updates sounds like a great way to get your phone hacked to me.

The browsers were so bad on those devices no one used them.

I mostly used it to download ringtones and backgrounds to the phone. It was pretty terrible for any actual web browsing (not to mention the low speeds of the data connection, anyhow).

If you have a specific use case, say, reading hacker news comments, then minimal feature phone browsers tend to be sufficient more often than not. The gap between "something that is important to me" and "everything that is important to me" can be huge.

Not as good of a way as it would be with a modern phone. You'd basically have to find a bug in the HTML or image parsing/rendering. As I remember it, that device didn't support cookies, javascript, plugins, etc. And honestly, hacking into mobile devices over an internet connection wasn't really part of the zeitgeist at the time. That mostly came later, when people stored more than some SMS, MIDI ringtones, and some phone numbers.

> You'd basically have to find a bug in the HTML or image parsing/rendering.

Like this one?

https://www.rapid7.com/db/vulnerabilities/mfsa2010-41-remote...

Opera Mini or a pure-JavaME browser would be safe, but just having an image decoder is too much to expose to whole internet.

Sure, if it was found for whichever library code was used on that device, and if you also found a way to use it to get the OS to expose data that it usually wouldn't.

I'm not saying that someone couldn't work out a way to exploit that phone, I'm saying that it's not going to happen because there's no point (and also wouldn't have been one while I was still using it).

As a practical concern, I'm more worried about my phone now (an up-to-date Android) than I am about any feature phone, including recently-released ones.

The subset of HTML that is actually supported by most email clients is very small (and inconsistent). If you look at the well-formatted emails from AirBnB and Uber, you'll see tables and inline CSS, along with conditionals for the Outlook email client.[1]

[1] http://blog.mailgun.com/transactional-html-email-templates/

> that means you've got a HTML renderer, so you've gotta push updates every 12 weeks or so

Tell that to Android

Android System WebView is updated as an app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

Makes sense, since the system doesn't get updates

"I think there's a serious market for good feature phones"

No, because a really good feature phone would be a premium product. Custom form factor and parts (not manufactured in as large a volume), custom operating system with custom apps, no app store to make money off etc. Cheap Chinese smart phones are the new feature phone.

"Premium Product?" Here you go: Vertu Signature Collection running S40??? Only €29k for the "Red Gold Ultimate Black".

http://www.vertu.com/ca/en/collections/signature/shop-collec...

I'm missing something. Almost $19000 for a phone that has less features than a $600 iPhone? I know Vertu is trying to be a luxury brand, but usually when a company sets themselves up as one, their offerings are at least as good as commodity items. (I'm using luxury cars). If I saw someone using a Vertu, I'd be more inclined to laugh at them then be jealous.

And this is why Vertu isn't doing so well. It is extremely difficult to build a good software stack compared to building a quality casing/hardware. And once you have a great software stack, it is cheap to distribute it to millions of customers, while it is difficult to scale hand-built physical production.

If you are super rich and want to show off, you are probably much better of getting a jeweller to remove your iPhones casing and replace is with diamond encrusted gold or something similar (and I believe there are companies who do this).

But then again, the best way of showing of excess richness is being wasteful (lighting cigars with 100 dollar bills, kind of stuff). So you can argue that you waste features when getting a Vertu. If that makes any sense.

Regardless, Vertu comes with a world wide concierge service, and you can probably have them do all your tweeting and googling for you, so maybe owning a Vertu is a signal that you have people to do your smart phoning.

At least it is sobering to know that even the super rich can't get a better phone than you and me. I believe there is a Warhol quote about how the best softdrink available to the president is the same coke as you and me can buy for a dollar.

I'd love a feature+camera phone that still had an LTE radio and supported tethering. Maybe I'd also want it to be able to read Hacker News if I don't have a tetherable device nearby.

I don't really think so. Who nowadays would want to buy a feature phone when smartphones are so cheap.

An entry-level smartphone can do all the same things a feature phone can and even more. Why would you want to limit yourself in this day and age?

Battery life.

Not only battery life but also durability, which lowers the lifetime cost of ownership. Feature phones last a long time, they're harder to break since they're usually not enclosed in edge-to-edge glass, and basically everything about them both hardware and software-wise is simple and battle-tested.

> I don't really think so. Who nowadays would want to buy a feature phone when smartphones are so cheap.

Less easy to spy upon you. At least for non-state actors.

I can use my Nokia 101 for 5/6 days, without charging it. Also: it's much smaller and lighter compared to any smartphone.

> I don't really think so. Who nowadays would want to buy a feature phone when smartphones are so cheap.

'Smartphones' are a usability nightmare. (Especially Android smartphones, and especially cheap Android smartphones.)

The smartphone form-factor is geared towards buying and playing games -- it's essentially a glorified game console. It's a popular product but by no means universal.

I use a $50 android phone from Alcatel. I seems to do all the Android stuff I need.

I don't know how a feature phone that isn't Android could be worth much.

The one thing one I don't have is a good camera. But I'm pretty sure decent cameras require "real" money to create.

One big advantage of non-smartphones is that they can have a keypad, not touch screen. Touch screens, particularly cheap ones, work poorly in adverse conditions (rain, cold). I'm a happy Android user except in the winter or a pouring rain - in pouring rain I cannot even make phone calls. Nokia 1611 or 6110 had no such worries, they worked in any weather.

Voice interface will solve this soon (might already be better than a tiny display + 0-9 Keys).

That would be awful in many situations, though

All cheap Android phones I've used have been quite slow; the only usable low end model I've found was the Moto G, and that costs $150+. Meanwhile, my $20 Wiko is lightning fast, and its batteries last for days.

I want one with all those features except for email, and anything that requires a data plan. I currently use a Nokia 301 which is great, but I would prefer it have a much more simplified OS with all the non-essentials removed.

I would be fine with maps and E-mails. But I guess it's a slippery slope.

> I would be fine with maps and E-mails

So you'd like a feature phone that's a smart phone?

Depends on what you mean with smart phone. I don't need apps or a big display but yes, the distinction gets blurry.

So no apps (except maps and email) and a tiny display. Got it.

>I would be fine with maps and emails

>I don't need a big display

Yes, you need a big display. Smartphones have completely warped our notion of what a "big display" is. Remember, until the iPhone came along, a 3" screen was considered massive. Smartphones had something like 2" or 2.5" displays, usually running at sub-VGA resolutions. You can't have Google Maps running on something like that.

I have a Garmin eTrex 20 for hiking. Its display would be plenty good for my phone.

I think I would be OK with a display a little smaller than the original iPhone. Even for maps where I just need directions. But it's a moot point anyway since it ain't gonna happen.

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