If your "dumbphone" doesn't support VoLTE you'll be frustrated with dropped calls and spotty service everywhere. I know this from experience.
I settled on T-Mobile's only "dumbphone" - the Alcatel GoFlip [1]. It supports LTE, the battery lasts for days and it even has a rudimentary IMAP and CalDAV client.
I tried turning my smartphone into a "dumbphone" and using it less, but I honestly lacked the self-control to put the stupid thing down. Having a kid made me realize how many moments I was pissing away just scrolling.
These things are designed to be addictive, and some people (like myself) can't compete with the entire teams of "engagement engineers" many tech companies employ to exploit your dopamine-reward cycles.
I had forgotten what it was like to be alone with my thoughts. I feel as though I am rediscovering a part of my brain that was suppressed by having a boredom-prevention device at my fingertips all these years. Also other humans now look like phone-zombies everywhere I look. It's kind of dystopian honestly.
I use a HiBy R3 [1] with a 512gb SD card to listen to my collection of ripped FLACs on the go. It's a great device, highly recommend!
Does more engagement equal app usefulness and adoption? I don't know. I have a lot of apps on my phone I don't touch as often but when I go and clean out apps I don't use anymore I still keep some because I still find them useful to have even if I don't engage with that much
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/08/meet-the-tech-company-that...
Obviously no. I think it is fairly obvious that there are many apps that are highly engaging that are a huge waste of time for many people.
No, but it equals more ad impressions.
Just this morning I saw someone take a brief pause while crossing the street to look at her phone unaware that a car was coming. She stopped in the middle! of the street. The car screeched to a halt and missed hitting her by nothing.
The thing is, most of these people are (most likely) not even looking at something important, just their social media or messaging apps.
I noticed a girl who was talking to someone on the phone. She hanged and put the phone in her pocket. Not 10 seconds later she took it out and just started scrolling while walking past me.
Obviously, it's a very bad thing when someone decides not to leave her mental cave while strolling through traffic (worse still if she's behind the wheel). I just think it's a more humanistic view than the zombie angle.
Interestingly, they are also no longer activating 4G devices unless they support HD Voice, so the iPhone 5s and 5c are out even though they support LTE.
[1] https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/knowledge-base-21881...
Got a wife/husband/best friend that you trust? Use iOS or Android's built in systems for restricting what you can do on your phone, from what websites you can visit to being able to install apps, and lock them in place with a pin... that your trusted partner sets. Now you have no choice.
Worked for me.
I would blame app designers, but I uninstalled all of them and ended up pissing away most of the day on HackerNews, so I think they're mostly blameless in my case.
All of us HN commenters are also engagement designers. If not in our day jobs, then at least in an amateur capacity in text.
You never know what you'll get when you reload (after some time has passed) (Random reinforcement.) Also, if you comment, you get random reinforcement in the form of (hopefully nice) replies and upvote points.
Ranking stories on the front page based on voting also is intended to draw an audience with similar interests.
Right. Necessity is the mother of all invention. Boredom can be a powerful necessity. If it weren't for the crushing boredom of the suburbs in the 80's, I would never have learned to code at the age of 11.
Keeping with the analogy of hurdles. It's like, successful startup is a 20 ft wall. Deciding to workout 3x a week is a 3ft hurdle. Getting a fitbit and targeting more walking is like a 2ft hurdle (my scales not everyone's). Getting over loneliness due to not having a cell phone is a 5 ft hurdle. It'd require getting out of the house a lot more and that anxiety can be crippling. If that was a goal of mine I'd train for it just like a marathon. You don't start by running the whole thing in the first week, you start with increasingly large goals.
I totally agree that blindly saying adversity is good, is a crazy over simplification. I also think we (if you are in top 60% of tax brackets just to really bound that statement) have it exceptionally easy in the USA and that we are all capable of much more than we think we are.
Not everyone can do a startup, but many of us have lost the concept of setting a goal and pushing ourselves (myself included).
Thanks for calling me out. A quote from T. R. could be seen as snarky as well. This really is a personal thing. I should have really put a caveat that this applies to me. Just me. I think more people would benefit from the mentality, but I also don't believe in a society that pushes artificial adversity to "make people better" that'd be bad.
Loneliness can be forced on you. I personally moved and since some girls at the new school decided (in the locker room) that I was lesbian, folks stopped talking to me. I found a very small group of friends the next year at high school.
These girls were half correct in their assessment, but that was no reason for the entirety of a school to decide I wasn't worth talking to.
Seriously, loneliness is awful. I should mention that I had no issues asking folks out later in life (when I became interested in such things).
This sort of thing might have been more common pre-internet times. The internet made me less lonely because I found folks I liked to talk to.
One claim made was that poverty and loneliness are two of the most difficult scarcity traps to be in. Even more so than hunger (especially in the developed world). Because poverty and loneliness push you into behaviors that only perpetuate more poverty and loneliness. You can see this with the rise of toxic misogynistic groups on the Internet, and I personally see this with my more awkward, lonely friends and acquaintances who put off new company with desperate, weird, or standoffish behavior.
Loneliness is curable, but requires effort.
I'm happy you solved yours. I'm happy I solved mine. But I know not everyone can have the stroke of luck to change things like I have. Lots of folks have little choice, in part because of financial woes, mental illness, age, and so on.
NOt everyone is like you. Loneliness has never been a great motivator for me, and though I don't suffer from it like I did 10 years ago, the entire thing has left me with a negative view of people and their willingness to accept folks that are different - especially when they "should know better".
That last bit has been key to my own "cure", as I'm an immigrant and folks don't assume the same things.
Note that I'm paying more to have this experience, but it's been totally worth it. So far I've been quite happy with it. It's amazing how, in the odd times where I've needed to carry my phone with me, how I instantly reverted to my former (bad) habits.
It's a form of commitment device and it's been very effective for me.
What I've done is started putting the phone in do not disturb and airplane modes when I'm not expecting a call.
Anecdote: I used to have an LG dumbphone with AT&T (I'd purchased it with prepaid time at the airport). A few years ago they sent me a message to come to their store and have it replaced for free because it would stop working with their planned "network updates".
I did that and got an Alcatel dumb phone. Not sure if it's using LTE or whatever G, but it works well and I'm reasonably happy with it. I do wish it was a flip-phone like the LG, because I've butt-dialed 911 a few times with it.
(They did initially give me what must've been a used phone, since it had over 50 personal contacts from someone else on it, but that's a different story...)
Did you remove the browsers and app store as well? I got rid of everything except for phone/texting, Slack (for work), and non-bingy convenience apps like Maps/Yelp/etc. On Android, it can be done with the adb shell without rooting, even the 'uninstallable' apps like Google search and the Samsung browser. Not sure about Apple.
I tried this before without getting rid of the Play Store and found that I would just cheat and download FF Focus when I felt like binging and then deleting it again when I was done. Now if I think I need a new app, I actually have to go on my laptop, download the apk, and move it to my phone to install it. It's not foolproof but it's enough extra steps to where I don't act on it on impulse.
It's worked really well and I don't binge like I used to . I still have some compulsive phone-checking habits but it's way less time consuming than compulsive-random-article-reading/scrolling. And I also get to keep the nicer benefits like the good camera and the large screen for when I need a GPS.
I still keep an old iPhone for when I know I'll need an Uber or something, but the smartphone isn't a part of my daily life anymore.
It's possible with adb or root, but buy a $500-$800 device for removing basic apps? Failed logic IMHO.
> Not sure about Apple.
You can't.
There's also the Lightphone and forthcoming Lightphone II.
That being said, these won't really address privacy concerns per se. They don't support signal or other encrypted messaging (the lightphone II may in the future???). So the only way they would be more 'private' would be due to the fact that you'll use your phone for less and in so doing, share less data. Your texts and calls will still be pretty visible if that's a concern.
I love the look of that phone, except for the huge logo on the front. I wonder if there is a way to strip that off without damaging the plastic.
Punkt patched many critical bugs in the month after initial release of the MP02 in December. https://www.punkt.ch/en/inspiration/news/s/mp02-software-upd...
I've since purchased a portable music player, a separate camera and an old fashioned A-Z map for my local area. If you can't see why I might want to do this rather than have a small smartphone that does it all then you haven't realised how much of a problem these devices can be for some people like myself who find themselves unable to control their own willpower.
What I find now is that I have a device specifically for the intention that I want to use it for. I want to read? I pick up a book, I'm not distracted and my attention span has increased. I want to listen to music? I go to HDTracks and buy a super high quality version of the album and listen intently. Want to take pictures? Really actually take pictures that you'll use and value rather than a phone full of photos that will likely never get viewed again.
Punkt's philosophy is similar and I really really respect them as a company taking this line because it's very niche but I feel it's very necessary in today's world. Love that company <3
I really like the idea of doing things intently, but I'm not sure how to manage these practical things
I personally use a double-sim 2G nokia 216 i got for ~50e. Has a flashlight, can hold some music, has radio, low-def photo, timers. edge is painfully slow and no hotspot ability so i actually disconnect from internet when i'm not in some kind of office: no email, no chat, concise sms, i'm forced to call people and i'm rediscovering how talking actually works well for efficient communication.
This is really interesting...
Is it just that you can use a dumb phone on friday night without violating the sabbath (can you?)?
Is there a religious doctrine that explicitly prohibits general purpose computing devices in the home?
More information here: https://www.quora.com/What-are-Kosher-cell-phones
No idea how they justify using a dumb phone doesn't trigger the work clause.
Seems to me if you're looking for loopholes and workarounds just so you can do what you need to do on certain days of the week, then the rules might be silly.
Anything with LTE (aside from iDevices) seems to run a Linux kernel with a stripped down Android or FirefoxOS on top. They have simplified UIs if that's what you're looking for, but they also have security holes out the wazoo (you can frequently get a root adb shell via usb with a stock config), and will never see updates.
To top that off, the available "dumb" phones with LTE often don't support US LTE bands. (glares at useless nokis 8810 4g)
You might get away with a pre-LTE device that's a legit dumbphone, but those networks are rapidly dying. :-(
This has been a concern of mine, and why instead I've moved to simply turning off my wifi and cell service when not using them.
I installed "HereWeGO", a GPS app with great support for offline maps. Between that, podcasts, and music I can go quite long without using any data.
(Or as a middle ground I drop down to wifi with DND on, and check for incoming messages every once in a while)
This makes your smartphone a de facto land line for all practical intents, and you get to keep the potential to make exceptions and use it for e.g. GPS and maps or a restaurant lookup when you need to.
Much more liberating is, to have a smartphone where you can put out the batterie ... then it is off. And since putting it back together takes time, the temptation to just check something is way less.
My favorites have been:
- Fidget Spinner Phone [0] | It's a fidget spinner and basically a classic Nokia clone with video, mp3, and bluetooth. It is comfy to carry in the pocket, has dual SIMs and SD card storage. Also an FM radio (that doesn't use hadphones as an antenna). The best part is that is has "HORSE RACE LIGHTS" that run to the beat so you can fidget spin to the radio.
- Super Tiny Phone [2] | Can be a bluetooth earpiece, is super tiny, and has a voice changer option that is just hilarious. Call with autotune! Also it's clearly made for crime, but I like to call my mom as a robot.
- Pen Phone [3] | It's a pen!
[0] https://www.banggood.com/Servo-S08-1-3-300mAh-Christmas-Gift...
[1] https://www.banggood.com/V2-0_66-OLED-260mAh-Smallest-Blueto...
[2] https://www.banggood.com/SERVO-K07-0_96inch-300mAh-bluetooth...
Punkt MP02 https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/
Light Phone https://www.thelightphone.com
Light Phone 2 https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/light-phone-2
If you want both smartphones and don't want to get distracted during office hours or private time.
There is literally no phone on the market (that I can find) that is acceptable to me anymore.
Can you elaborate? This sounds pretty interesting.
It's really nothing more than a small Linux computer with a cell phone module attached. That was one of my design goals -- I wanted a real OS rather than something like Android. The only thing that I'm not entirely happy with at the moment is power draw, but I can greatly reduce that with a bit more work.
Will it do voice/SMS? I haven't found any indicators either way.
> Will it do voice/SMS?
Yes, it does.
If you get to a point where you've learned some interesting things and generated documentation/video/etc send me a note on Twitter (@ borgel). Might make a good Hackaday writeup!
Aside from the issue of limited options, traditional dumb phones contain junk like seriously insecure baseband processors, shadow SMS commands, carrier bloatware that does god knows what, BREW, and J2ME. They're often slow and cheaply-made.
If you're concerned about time management, then you have a few options:
- Improve your self-discipline and impulse control, eliminate FOMO. This will pay dividends in your life.
- Uninstall any app you absolutely do not require. In the latest versions of iOS you can uninstall many of the apps the device comes with.
- Configure Screen Time(tm) and Downtime(tm) under Settings->Screen Time.
- Configure Restrictions under the Settings app. Make them as draconian as you want and set up a complicated passcode.
The problem isn't the phone, it's you.
I disagree though when you say the problem isn't the phone and to improve self-discipline. If you have a cocaine addiction, and bag of cocaine in your pocket, the problem isn't your self-discipline. It's that you have a bag of cocaine in your pocket.
This might count as a dumb phone for your intended purposes, given how it separates the baseband from the CPU and has killswitches.
Personally, I was eyeing Nokia 3310 (relaunched version)[2].
I ended up never using it because there wasn't any way of of getting my contacts from my iPhone to it and I'm not spending several hours keying in my contacts.
I was expecting a UI/UX building on the decades of patterns used in most "feature phones" but this seems to be some from-scratch reinvention which did not hit the mark for me.
* Terrible MMS/group chat support (and bugs, e.g. messages showing up in previews but not in the actual channel)
* Inconsistent notifications
* Un-removable built in apps (that auto-install on first open)
I still use it but based on this thread I'm going to be following the Punkt MP02 (although $350 seems ridiculous). Or maybe at some point I'll get around to building that custom dumb phone I've always wanted...
I previously used the samsung A727 which I actually thought was great but is hard to find any more.
The first problem was that it would keep the display on as long as a key was pressed. That would kill the battery quickly.
The second problem was that the phone would happily dial 911 without unlocking the keypad. My city has asked that phones be configured to not be able to do that. As a result I had to return the phone.
Currently using an ancient Samsung A157. Flip phones solve the keypad lock problem entirely. Dunno what I will do for a phone if it breaks.
They hit the "just enough" functionality for me: phone calls, access to smart-ish messaging, a music player, and the ability to act as a hotspot for a more dedicated device.
I haven't got one myself (there's a particular model I was waiting on 6 months ago when I last sniffed around), but I intend to this year.
I had one that I used until it was really dying a couple years ago (growing blob of dead pixels in the middle of the screen, declining battery life), which I commented on during a visit home, to which my mom replied, "wait! i have the exact same phone in a drawer somewhere" ... so now i'm still using it, just, the one that she held onto for some reason.
The comments about dropped calls are true -- my phone has gotten progressively worse at being a phone in the last couple years. I wasn't sure whether it was hardware degradation or what, but I trust folks on this thread are more knowledgeable than I am and are correct that it's due to networks being phased out. To be honest I have no idea which 'G' my phone uses.
Pros: - battery lasts for most of a week between charges - is not distracting at all - I don't feel bad when I drop it - the alarm-clock feature works - most people are very kind about giving me directions if i get lost and ask them for help, after they hesitate and say "... can't you look it up on your phone?"
Cons: - not all text messages reach me - I have to manually delete texts as the phone only wants to store 30 texts at a time. - some phone conversations include redialing a few times - I don't have a camera in my pocket - I don't have a GPS in my pocket - My current employer had to buy me a cheap (no sim card / no linked google account) smartphone anyhow for 2FA apps! - distraction is more of a general habit -- i still waste plenty of my own time browsing the internet on a laptop.
It's a dual screen from 2015 made in Russia: it has an e-ink screen on the back that can display both dedicated widgets and the android OS, like the normal screen.
The OS (Android 4 up to 6) has been adapted for the screen and special care has been taken to make the system consume as few energy as possible if configured so. Think of it as the phone you dumb down when you go on a week-long trek in the Siberian Taiga.
I love it because of the extreme readability of the screen under full sunlight. I don't need to find a shadow or make some with my hands in order to select a song in a playlist, check my position on a map or reply to a text while walking.
There are also some cool features, like mirroring the camera's view on the back screen so that people who are photographed can have a preview of the final result.
The phone can also flash your contact info on the e-ink screen before shutting down (since it's e-ink, the image gets persisted even though the battery is flat), just in case some good samaritan finds your phone.
And now that the YotaPhone 3 is out, you can find it for 150$.
The great thing about this form factor is that browsing and extended typing are very difficult, so you end up using your phone to get notified and for utilities like navigation, music playing.
Privacy-wise it does not solve your concern because it runs Android and it does not track the latest security updates as well as the Google branded phones.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Unihertz-Smallest-Smartphone-Android-...
Almost completely OSS besides a few manufacturer blobs you can't really work around.
I have a "normal" Android phone I use for work but my S5 is my daily driver for everything else. Works great, hardest part is setting up stuff to replace FAANG.
I use ProtonMail, Open Camera, Matrix/Riot for family chat.
Haven't found a good calendar yet but overall way more usable than a dumbphone and privacy concious
There's some "nicer" options like One plus for LineageOs but you will probably find the S5 fairly snappy since its based on Android 8.0 . IMO the last few versions of Android make a much larger performance difference than a few CPU generations
Lineage has built on top of Android permission system to prevent most apps from stealing data (Android location permission is probably the most notorious). If you have a rooted device with lineage you can also run XPeivacyLua which fakes out any data that apps "require" to install
RE privacy, phones aren't private, not even dumb phones, use a dumb phone for privacy in terms of doing less on it (i.e internet), cell networks voice calls are wide open of course. My main reason is lack of distraction though.
RE network compat: I've taken this phone to China, Thailand, Laos, Mexico, France, Germany - it always worked - Never been to US though.
It's a SwissOne (don't know which model exactly) for about 30€. The battery life is great (runs more than a week) and it even has dual SIM support.
Interestingly, I could not find (in that shop) any phone without a color screen and camera. Really, I just want a phone for calls and SMS.
The one downside of that phone is that the audio volume on calls is really low, even when set to the maximum. That makes it difficult to have conversations on busy streets. In the future, I would pick one of those phones targeting senior citizens (with the huge buttons).
Do you use maps or whatsapp on it? How is the experience?
There's a maps app though, but personally I always have my laptop with me anyway, which has considerably more pixels.
Yeah, I might just have to pick one of those up. :) What do you object to about the keyboard? And is it squishy rubber like the original 8110 or something harder?
Maybe I have a manufacturing one-off, but for me, the keys tend to trigger multiple times when I press them. I can hardly enter an entire phone number without accidentally double-hitting at least one of the numbers.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/light-phone-2
It's not as cheap as most "dumb" phones (~$300), but I for me its exactly what I wanted to reclaim my attention.
It was often noisy, sound was crummy, it was unwieldy, and it cost a small fortune to run, but it was without perceptible delay, it was fully duplex, and it far better approximated real face to face conversation than the weird false starts and constant stuttering interrupts we have learned to take for granted these days.
Also, you could walk out the door and ignore it.
Oterwise, agreed.
Maybe. But to my ears, the sounds quality from the old POTS phones was orders of magnitude better than what we get with cellphones even today.
The perspective it will give you on modern life will likely make you want to stay phoneless.
Remember when everyone smoked? I mean everyone. The experience of being phoneless today reminds me of what it was like to be a non smoker 25 years ago. Nauseating.
· It has some size limit (I'm not sure what) on the attachments it can feasibly receive from other phones, and the default photo size for iPhones is larger than that, which means if a family member texts me a photo, I often can't download it. This isn't a big problem for me, because I tell them to email me instead, but it's still present.
· It lacks many newer emoji characters, which is only a problem if I'm texting people who use a lot of emoji, in which case their messages will have a bunch of mysterious blank boxes at the end.
· It has some kind of problem validating newer SSL certs, so the handful of services that do talk to the internet are at this point broken. I don't use any of them, so it's not a problem for me, but if I did, I'd have been out of luck.
I should also add that dumbphones are a real mixed bag when it comes to security. If I wanted to communicate with someone without eavesdropping, then I'm out of luck with a dumbphone: everything is just not-particularly-secure texting and calling. In my own case, I simply don't think of my phone as being a trusted device: that's what my laptop is for. However, if you really want to be security-conscious with your phone, I think the right thing might be to get an Android phone, install LineageOS on it, don't install any of the Google services, and be very limited in what apps you add.
It's intended to be hackable. The base phone is pure WiFi, but there will probably be an LTE add-on.
So far it looks like most people want 4G, even though it's quite expensive to add. I think too many marketing dollars have been spent convincing consumers that's what they need, so we may end up doing 4G before others. But you're right, 2G (or 3G) would both be cheaper and probably all you need for a dumb phone.
The nice thing, though, is unlike most phones it should be pretty easy for anyone with electronics skills to make a daughterboard that expands the phone hardware capabilities.
Of the blogpost on how to make a dumber phone https://nomasters.io/posts/dumber-phone/
- My previous phone was a Nokia 3310. It was terrible, but that was partly because I (presumably) got a dud unit -- the sound output was intermittently (but frequently) badly garbled. Setting that aside, I would still not recommend it. When it ran out of memory it had the delightful habit of allowing me to obliviously (and laboriously) type out a long text message and hit send, only then notifying me that was too full to do that, and dumping me back to the menu (or a newly-blank message window, I forget) with the message lost. The interface was generally a bit annoying, and the retro styling was just a gimmick -- I don't think it had much in common with the original aside from being a dumbphone. From memory the battery life was pretty good though.
- My current phone is a Nokia 8110, aka the bananaphone. (And no, I really didn't want to get another Nokia, but there were very few alternatives and the ones I wanted to try had too many worrying reviews.) It's been fine so far. It's pretty big, but fits comfortably in my pocket. It's not a flip phone, and the screen is always visible (so you can check the time just by tapping the power button on the side), but it has a cover that slides back to reveal the keypad. I haven't used it for much, just very occasional calls and texts, but I haven't had any serious annoyances yet. It runs KaiOS, which is significantly less annoying than the 3310 firmware (and probably makes using the 8110 as a semi-smart phone feasible -- the 8110 has Wi-Fi, which worked fine when I tested it), though it does take a frustratingly long time to start up. Battery life seems good, though I haven't tested it aside from leaving it on standby for longish periods.
Mom, on the phone: "I can't HEAR you again! Go and GET yourself a DECENT phone! I am going to BUY you one myself! ..." After this, my phone almost always died.
An excellent phone, though. Saved me from smartphones (I've never owned one). It also served well as a bottle opener when I was a student.
https://metro.co.uk/2015/04/18/this-is-how-you-use-your-old-...
I suppose I should say "timeless Finnish design" now. :)
If the WiPhone (http://a.wiphone.io/) manages to see market, I may move in that direction as I am almost never outside of wifi (plus the promise of writing apps in either MicroPython or Wiring or the like sounds great).
https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Advance-Unlocked-Smartphone-Black...
I like it a lot. It's cheap, simple, and has great battery life; I charge it perhaps once during the week or so I'm using it. I paid £18 for mine unlocked.
My favourite antifeature is that it has no camera. Most dumbphones have a camera in them that's so poor it's not worth having. This one doesn't bother with one at all, which means there's no camera option cluttering up the menus.
https://www.amazon.com/BLU-GSM-Unlocked-Dual-Black/dp/B07MZD...
The 3310 is the new one.
I have used the Exalt and the Kyocera DuraXV. Both are great phones and even allow you to create hot spots with them.
For what it's worth, your location metadata probably uniquely identifies you (nearest cell tower to work + home), and Target probably knows who you are just from their security cameras, so this still isn't paranoid enough if "state actors are interested in me personally" is in your threat model. The "correct" thing to do in this case is to leave your phone at home and/or at work.
I was recently looking for a new phone for my father... he currently uses a Gingerbread-era LG slider phone with keyboard. He's never connected it to data or wifi, only uses it for calls and texting. Doesn't look like there's much available to serve his uses anymore. Maybe a (significantly more expensive than his slider) BlackBerry KeyOne or Key2 which he can also leave disconnected from data.
I used this phone until the end of 2017, at which point the outdated browser and dead app store (free apps only) started to seriously limit its functionality, but if you don't need those it would work just fine. I use a KeyOne now, but I miss the Classic's smaller form factor.
But I'm not really sure what's out there now to compare it to. I never used anything else. This one deals with calls and texts fairly well and I charge it about twice a week with a low amount of texting and very few calls. I don't use it for anything else.
I also dropped it once from chest height and nothing bad came from it. It's built like a tank.
Calling/texting with a dumbphone might actually be worse, from a privacy perspective, than using something like Whatsapp (until Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook).
Though to be fair to smartphones, my Samsung galaxy has an "ultra power saving" mode that puts the display into grayscale, uses a special app launcher and only allows access to a handful of applications. In that mode I can get about two weeks of battery life.
Doesn't deliver until July 2019 though...
Looks like they are trying to make a dumb phone that has better UX like a smart phone.
Pick a few, and try. Some are like 50 bucks only.