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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

This is a very good idea executed poorly. SMS has become a way of life and you'll be receiving messages that you can not read, also a paper phonebook requires that you carry a pen with you.

Play it again, John, this time with a pager sized (text) display and I'll buy one.

edit: added the (text), it does have a display but can't display text messages.

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It's also very expensive.

Basic Nokia phones that don't do much more than calls and SMS and that are very simple to operate and very sturdy, can be found (new) for around EUR 20.

SMS-lifestyle or not, I'd take the Nokia (at 2/3 the price or less) for the 10+ years of industrial design that went into it.

To be honest, this doesn't seem to be a phone for children or the elderly (neither of which have some sort of cognitive short circuit that keeps them from grasping a simple Nokia while allowing them to embrace the idioms of this particular phone) -- but rather a phone for hipsters who need to very loudly announce that they don't have an iPhone.

What I found strange though is to see that it's from an Amsterdam-based company. Maybe it's different Out There In The West but in most of the Netherlands, iPhones aren't a big deal, and we don't have US-style hipsters at all.

Uh, in which part of the Netherlands do you live?

Dirty South Maastricht, so maybe these peasants here just aren't hip to what's hip ;)

(disclaimer: I'm culturally close enough to the people here to get to say that ;) )

You guys wear straight-leg pants, listen to obscure European bands, ride utilitarian bicycles and drive small cars. You're all US-style hipsters.

Haha yeah I guess so, hadn't looked at it that way :)

I like the hipster angle. It affords a better tagline:

"John's Phone: It's not an iPhone or anything. You've probably never heard of it."

Pshhh... I was using John's Phone while it was "still" underground.

John's Phone: matches your fixie bike.

I also would take a Nokia, but they are not water proof!

I've showered at the beach with my nokia in the pocket of my bathing suit. It was fine. My nokia has fallen out of a moving vehicle. I drop it several times a day. It's been run over by a bicycle.

The thing is a rock.

Same experience here. Nokia phones (esp. basic ones -- the less buttons the better) are virtually indestructible.

:-) Then, I'll buy a Nokia to go to the beach.

I think you vastly overestimate the level of technology people can pick up.

My grandmother couldn't figure out how to work the new radio we got her - which just had two giant large dials. We got her a dead-simple cell phone and it was never used.

One thing she does know how to do is use the 12 button landline phone thats mounted on her wall, and this looks exactly like that and works nearly exactly like that. This would be perfect for her.

> and this looks exactly like that and works nearly exactly like that

Except for the two small switches on the side, having to charge it, and having to push pick-up and hang-up instead of lifting and replacing the receiver.

A friend of mine bought one for his grandma, and she absolutely loves it. The big feature for her was that the buttons were big enough for her to see and push accurately. Works great for that use case.

Well, my grandmother can operate a wireless home phone, so the pick-up and hang-up are OK. And she can probably just ignore the switches on the side. So the only hurdle for her would be to remember to charge it.

Maybe we could get her to drop it in her keychain bowl when she comes home, and outfit it with one of the charging pads.

Where do you find them for that money?

Here is a nokia for 30:

http://azerty.nl/producten/product_detail/1058/302405/nokia-...

and here a samsung:

http://www.pixmania.nl/nl/nl/3598464/art/samsung/e1080.html?...

for a little less

Oh wow, didn't realize phones had really gotten that cheap. I did do a quick vergelijk.nl search before posting but I guess they got buried under the bundles that I got.

tweakers pricewatch ftw.

that site has been ftw for a long, long time :)

never thought tweakers would be mentioned on HN.

It's a shame that Nokia doesn't make CDMA versions of simple phones like that for the US market. I'd buy one in an instant. Though I do admit I'll probably finally break down and get an iPhone this year now that they are available from Verizon.

I have actually been using a Nokia very similar to that one for over two years... I just went to the T-Mobile store and said "I need to replace my phone, what is the cheapest thing you have?"

I only have to charge it every week or so, and it has lasted longer than any other phone I have had.

Pixmania and Amazon.de, for example, have a Samsung E1080 for 25 euros and a nokia 1616 for for 30. However I've seen big box electronic retailers selling off old stock for less than that.

Here's a Motorola for $20 US: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16875209...

The "Motofone" is simpler and would cost less if they sold it in the US. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2143197

I pop the SIM out of my iPhone and put it into one of these whenever I go biking or camping. Mine cost $15 as a GoPhone (not unlocked). Couldn't be happier.

I've got a friend visiting me in the UK from the US, where she's on Verizon, which is incompatible with the GSM/UMTS networks we use here. I've got her one of these to use while she's over here - http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/mobile-phones/ALCAT... - and mailed it to her in America so she can call me as soon as she steps off the plane.

It was £0.99 when I bought it, and has been as low as £0.01 recently - with the only catch being that you have to buy £10 worth of prepaid airtime when you buy the phone. Ideal for a couple of weeks' travel in a foreign country. (It's SIM-unlocked too.)

This is a great recent roundup of cheap mobile phones, if you are looking to buy simple cheap (GSM) phones:

http://www.reghardware.com/2010/12/03/ten_essential_cheap_vo...

does anyone know of cheap mobile phones that are easy to connect to via USB or rs-232 (or whatever) from Linux? I want to have some remote sensors be able to send SMS...

3g modems are quite cheap and can send sms.

most of them? what software do you recommend?

All of them AFAIK. Huawei is one of the most popular ones: http://www.3gmodem.com.hk/Huawei.html Just double check on the forums that your linux knows how to talk to them. Some models have integrated storage which includes windows drivers and need a special application to send them "start acting normally, I don't need that crap" message.

> SMS has become a way of life

Not for everyone. For example, I send one text message every two or three months. I could easily live without the ability to send or receive texts.

The thing I don’t like about this phone is the silly pen-and-paper address book. Are there any phones out there that just make phone calls, and nothing else?

Check out the ZTE S306. Although I'm not sure if it's South African only. http://www.techcentral.co.za/zte-s306-review-a-phone-for-gra...

I was keen and had a google. Couldn't find any UK sellers.

Check out doro.co.uk. Not the same company but Doro make phones that look just like that phone.

Hmm. They actually look so similar I'm wondering if ZTE make doro phones, or something along those lines.

They're probably both made by FoxConn or some other SEA OEM.

Check out the Motorola F3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE_F3. It has an e-Ink display, so you can read the clock without having to push a button and the battery life is awesome.

Any way to use one of those on Verizon? Googling around, people claim that (a) the F3c (CDMA version) isn’t available in the US, and (b) non-Verizon-branded phones can’t be made to work on their network.

I have never sent a text message. Ever.

Email and Skype on my phone, however, I could not do without.

Plus, it's on the back of the phone. So if you need to make a call to someone on your address book, you need to flip the phone back and forth (and then up and down to verify the number on the display) to make sure you typed it in right.

Agreed. Anyone who texts shouldn't buy this phone. However, I would say that it's not aimed at SMS'ers and as such is not executed poorly.

Strikes me to have two major markets: (1) people who only want to talk to people via phones (e.g. some of the elderly) and (2) as a fashionable item. The gold one would be a head-turner and topic of conversation.

Some people want to get rid of SMS from their way of life (or never adopted it in the first place), and hark back for simpler times. This phone appeals to that.

> hark back for simpler times.

When it comes to phones I go through alternating phases of high-tech and as simple as it gets, mostly because I get frustrated at how bad high tech phones usually work as phones (they're great little computers, but I mostly use my phone to call).

SMS is no longer optional, even if you want to get rid of it, typically service messages are only sent using SMS, not voice and people will simply assume that even if you didn't respond that you still read their SMS message saying they'll be an hour late.

It's like with businesses and FAX, you may never send one but people pretty much used to assume that you were at least capable of receiving them.

>SMS is no longer optional.

False! Perhaps for your way of life, but there's the age-old 'you != everyone'. Once your friends know you don't text, they stop texting you. They may think you're a Luddite, but that's another issue.

Even though you (and me for that matter) may want SMS on phones, I don't think it was a poor design choice to skip SMS on this phone.

> Once your friends know you don't text, they stop texting you.

I really really tried, but apparently your friends respect you better than mine do me :)

I don't mind being known as a Luddite ;)

On UK landlines now you can receive texts, they have a service that does text-to-speech and reads the text to you. With this then you would only lack a way to send texts, people wanting a simple phone probably don't want that.

In Canada it's the same thing. Text a landline and they get a call with a TTS of the text and a message indicating what phone number it came from.

Well, but like the above poster said it's not all about your friends texting you - verizon, for instance, sends password reset notices through SMS, and other service messages.

> SMS is no longer optional, even if you want to get rid of it, typically service messages are only sent using SMS, not voice and people will simply assume that even if you didn't respond that you still read their SMS message saying they'll be an hour late.

And they'll be wrong.

And an hour late.

I would argue that politeness requires the sender to contact the receiver in a manner of the receiver's choosing, not the sender's, while the receiver should not go to extremes to avoid the sender.

Lack of SMS is the normal, passive state and since there is no legal or social requirement to have it, I wouldn't consider not having it impolite at all.

Odd, perhaps, if one takes the receiver's demographic into account, but not impolite.

For people that insist on SMSing me junk, I give them my Google Voice number instead and tell them don't expect me to respond in a timely fashion.

I would love it if it would print out the SMS on small slips of paper.

Maybe it could have a scanner, too, so that you could write SMS on paper and feed it to the phone.

I know you're joking but someone actually took out a patent on something pretty close to that:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Mobile-Phone-with-a-Built...

Wasn't there a James Bond movie where a strip of paper came out of the side of a wristwatch?

An SMS fax machine ...

I think that would be pretty bad, you'd have to get paper refills approx every 5 seconds (and there'd need to be room for that paper to be stored somewhere), and the text recognition would have to either be perfect or extremely cumbersome.

It has an integrated pen, like the integrated stylus on a Palm:

The back of each John’s Phone features a flap with an address book behind it. The left of the flap contains an opening with a small pen: these two unique accessories allow you to update your address file at any time, even when your phone is switched off.

http://www.johnsphones.com/about/specifications/item49

But in that case (if SMS is necessary), why is this phone a good idea at all? There are good old-fashioned simple and cheap phones on the market. For example:

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Nokia_1100__Review_5583589

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_1100

If it had SMS capability and a small display how would this John's phone be better than for example Nokia 1100?

Maybe you can start the loudspeaker on a call without staring at the screen while it's dialing :-)

>If it had SMS capability and a small display how would this John's phone be better than for example Nokia 1100

The nokia wont make other pitchfork readers jealous down at the coffeeshop.

If you want simple SMS, albeit with a retarded UI, check out Motorola F3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE_F3

That is a fricking awesome phone. Dirt cheap, indestructible, and a battery that lasts for 2 weeks between charges. Unfortunately, it has the worst UI ever, and is completely unsuitable for Grandma duty.

It does have an excuse for being so bad -- it's designed to be used by people who cannot read.

This is the first thing I thought of when I saw the headline "minimalist phone". The wikipedia page confirms it's not available from Motorola in the US. I'm curious if anyone has had luck using an unlocked one?

They can be eBayed for very reasonable prices. They do function fine with US GSM voice networks. Data is out, obviously.

They were available from TigerDirect. I used to own one, and it was pretty good. I quickly got annoyed with the screen though, so when I had the money I purchased a Nokia phone.

However I found something just about as cheap from NewEgg, this one has a colour display:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16875209...

Isn't this phone pretty terrible for SMS, since it basically uses a calculator style display?

You can read about 8 characters at a time, but since most SMS's are pretty short if you have good fingers and get used to the buttons it's not as bad as you might think (kind of like a pager). I know a guy that uses this phone as his primary. For composing, there's no T9, btw.

There is a pen, the phony body includes a "silo" for the pen and a flap that folds out to reveal a pocket that holds the address book. Both pen and address book are included with the phone.

Typically such items get lost pretty quickly, so you'll end up carrying one along.

Maybe you're more careful than I am, but when I used PDAs I ended up buying several replacement styluses because I kept dropping them in weird spots and losing them in spite of being careful not to.

If it's not attached to the device permanently it tends to get lost over time.

I really think that a paper phonebook is cute but impractical, and this phone strikes me as aimed at practical people, not people looking for 'hello kitty' like cute little phonebooks.

Also, my handwriting is atrocious :)

"Typically such items get lost pretty quickly, so you'll end up carrying one along."

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I have at least 5 spare styluses somewhere that I bought with various devices because I was afraid I'd lose the original ones, yet never did once in 10+ years of use.

I think this is a good idea and has been executed pretty well, I don't think this is necessarily aimed at the HN crowd, but possibly at the HN crowd's grandparents.

I'm sure there are some pretty switched on grand parents out there, but I don't fancy the idea of sending my grandmother an SMS. I'd need to call her and no doubt visit her to explain the whole SMS thing.

I have a friend with a parent who is getting on in years, she described a device very similar to this "If only something like this existed" - I've just sent her the link, I imagine a purchase will follow soon after.

I can see it would have appeal for someone that would not use SMS but since the other side can't see that your mobile phone is not SMS capable you will be having a lot of confusion.

For older folks, larger buttons and some visual signaling would help. Also, greater amplification (that said, I don't know how loud the ringer or speaker on this thing is).

My grandparents wouldn't get this; too expensive.

Ugh, I'm always surprised when I meet people who still SMS text. It's weird. I think I know two people who do it. Everybody else just emails each other.

(in 2010, I received and sent 6 txt messages, 3 people texting me, and 3 responses from me telling them to email me instead)

i hardly ever used sms in america. in asia (japan and china), i use sms obsessively.

Yeah. I think what you (and I) really want is a phone with a two-color LCD screen from seven years ago.

Actually, I think those are called tracfones, but they have a stigma of being used by only elderly people. Dang it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16875209...

I don't use SMS at all. I do use email a lot, so for me what would be ideal is an e-ink Android device. Right now I'm getting about 3 hrs of battery when I use the phone non-stop for data-related things. Very annoying.

It also requires instructions in order to figure out the quickdial function... which is more than I've ever needed for my iPhone. (BTW my toddlers can work iOS devices just fine.)

I don't know about that; I've pestered my carrier into turning SMS off for me, and I haven't missed it a bit.

The display is pager-sized.

But it does not do a phone book or text messages as far as I understand, just caller ID. Or is there more than meets the eye here?

According to the specs it's just callerid / outgoing call

http://www.johnsphones.com/about/specifications/item49

How about Google Voice for SMS?

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