Personally, I would love a flip phone with a removable battery and a physical button on the side to turn WiFi hotspot functionality on/off -- with OFF being the default. Having a phone that you only need to charge once a week is a great feature!
* 25 days on standby, 8.5 hours LTE voice calls
* removable battery
* WiFi hotspot functionality
* 4G network connectivity
* KaiOS will have basic apps (Google maps, FB, Google assistant and reportetly WhatsApp in near future)
As a basic phone with features, it still seems exciting (priced at $99USD I think) but after LineageOS, this feels like a step back in terms of openness and control.
[1] https://www.kaiostech.com/faq/#question-14
[2] https://www.kaiostech.com/faq/#question-6 - to me, this means outdated apps or ones that will eventually die (such as the YouTube app on Sony DVD players a couple of years ago.)
Same for root capability; either WiFi hotspot works with your carrier out of the box, or you don't buy the phone. If you have to fight your carrier on that, hacking every device you use on the network is not a solution anyway.
And a closed-source OS doesn't mean it's not hackable. Back in the day, you could mess a lot with Symbian.
I confess as a news junkie I enjoy twitter, youtube, podcasts and reddit etc on my iPod but as it is wifi-only of course there are built in constraints in its use. I also have taken to going out without iPod or phone after work hours... very liberating and almost revolutionary! Nice to have an untracked-feeling if nothing else.
So? You can get a voice-only plan for the dumbphone and a data-only plan for the AP.
> and you always have the phone with you
Given the AP is useless on its own, you can just leave it in your laptop/tablet bag (whichever you're using).