Comment by throwaway81523 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway81523 | Hacker News Reader

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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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