Comment by throwaway81523 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway81523 | Hacker News Reader

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I've been trying to find a dumb phone for a technologically challenged family member, and it seems like they don't exist any more. Remember that 2g and 3g phones are now bricked by carriers shutting down those networks, so don't suggest one of those. Ultra expensive baubles like the Light phone are basically jewelry rather than tools. There are a few basic phones like the Nokia 225 that support 4g, but they have extra crap like rudimentary facebook, they have limited frequency bands (the 225 only supports T-mobile around here), and their battery runtime is much worse than advertised. I'd be happy with the equivalent of an old school Motorola flip or brick phone (i.e. 1+ pound weight is fine, I don't need tiny, I need simple). But it doesn't exist.

I decided that the best bet is to get a cheap Android phone and reprogram it to be a dumb phone, constantly running the phone app in kiosk mode with everything else disabled. I'm not an Android programmer but maybe this is something I'd like to try implementing.

They make smart phones that only present a dialer and messaging app. And maybe brickbreaker. The fact that it's on 4g & will be using rcs or ip-based messaging is really irrelevant.

afaik, there are specialized low-tech (ish) launchers for android available, maybe that will suffice

I would recommend "Unlauncher" from F-Droid.

Thanks! I'll look for it.

Edit: found it, but unfortunately it still looks too complicated. I want something where it is impossible to get the dialing keypad off the screen, the equivalent of a dumb phone with physical buttons.

you can also simply buy a second-hand flip phone off of any online marketplace. there are lots of resellers in this space.

If you mean an old school flip phone, they don't work because of the 2g/3g shutdown. If you mean a current one, they have similar issues to the Nokia 225 plus are expensive. Oh well.

I have a Kyocera DuraXE 4G LTE. It cost me $250 Canadian, bought it off of Ebay. There are more phones like this.

Thanks, and wow that is expensive. I'll look around for phones like that though. A Moto G Play is a pretty good phone from what I can tell (Android 12), and it is 100 USD new. So paying 2x that for a used dumbphone is painful.

You get what you pay for. Any of the "rugged" phones like my Kyocera should last a lifetime.

I used this website to find it https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-finder

Thanks, I'll see what I can find, but plenty of 2g and 3g rugged phones are unusable now because of network shutdowns even though the phone hardware is still perfectly good. I have several non-rugged phones in similar straits. I'm told that 4g is now gradually getting displaced by 5g, though I expect it will keep working for a while. That and replacement battery availability seem like limiting factors. Also, from sad experience, the micro USB charge port has finite lifetime so I wonder what it will take to repair it.

The DuraXE does look like a good phone though it has imho non-dumbphone features like wifi. I guess I better check its network coverage and will look into it. According to PC Mag it runs Android 5.1 under the covers, which is a little bit scary to me.

A Baofeng ham walkie talkie is about as rugged as a typical "rugged" phone and costs around $25 so I don't see why there's no phone in roughly the same format. Until the 2g shutdown you could buy 2g phone modules for a few USD, that had some analog audio wires and some control lines and a power wire, so you could make your own phone around it pretty simply. Sparkfun had a product that was one of those built into a vintage rotary phone. I don't think they have those modules for 4g or 5g but I should look again, I guess.

Added: aha re 4g modules, this is $60+ but looks interesting, and makerfabs has some other neat stuff:

https://www.makerfabs.com/maduino-zero-4g-lte-sim7600.html

you are right that it is not a true dumb phone. I never use the Wi-Fi and it has no data so I often forget it even exists. that's a good point about the operating system I hadn't checked into that. I was just happy to get something that worked and didn't break easily and had no 24/7 internet access.

I do think that more and more people are starting to want less intrusion by the devices in their life so I wouldn't be surprised if a true affordable dumb phone enters the market in the next few years.

I guess the most important feature from my perspective is a physical keyboard. My most common "support request" is that the person wants to use the phone dialing app and can't figure out how to return to it or launch it. So I want a dumb phone or UI, where the dial pad is always there and always works. The only other feature I want is a clock, that should also always be on screen, that shows the time and date.

Everything else, such as camera, messaging, calendar, contacts (except maybe a few predefined contact buttons that are always there), etc., should all be absent or inaccessible. And, I have gotten the person a digital wristwatch for xmas, so that might relieve the clock requirement.

there are quite a lot of senior phones with large buttons and dumb phone type numpads. I don't know if any of them are true dumb phones however.

AFAICT they are all carrier locked and they want you to buy overpriced subscriptions from them. That seems in poor taste.

Added: that people are willing to pay premium subscription fees for a sufficiently dumb phone really shows that it's a desirable product and regular vendors should be selling unlocked ones.

never had a problem with any of the carriers here in Canada using phones from Europe and Asia for seniors. subscriptions were the same price as any other flip phone.

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