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Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

I don't need a dumbphone, I need a smartphone from ~2016.

I don't need a 50MP camera, or a high-res display, but I do want to be able to use maps, TOTP, NewPipe, a browser, my personal email, and a few Android apps that I've written for my own consumption.

Most importantly, I want a 48hr battery life, and I want it in a form that actually fits in my hand. I had that in 2016, but there aren't any phones like that being made any more.

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Absolutely this. I've been phoneless for about 2.5 years now. It's been glorious in many ways, but as my business connection network grows it's becoming a lot more cumbersome to interact with people.

2016-ish feels like the year phones peaked for me. After that it feels like things went in a direction I’m no longer interested in. I’m still using my original iPhone SE from 2016 and it’s still great. I replaced the battery recently and I can go two days on one charge. I love how small it is. I’ve never really wished for a larger phone (just better eyes). I also don’t need a faster phone because I only use my phone for basic phone things. For anything more demanding, I have a laptop.

Get a smartphone from 2016 then. They are available, used, for cheap. Take a model that runs LineageOS, and maybe a new battery (some of them are user-removable).

I have the original Pixel as my daily driver. Everything works flawlessly including banking apps.

Don't recommend anything older than Nexus 5x, they're way slower than I remember, and also I can tolerate a really slow device but not a really high touch latency.

All these phones I bought used has a decent battery life, lasts around 2 days without charging.

I had an old Moto G until I finally decided it was too dangerous running without the security upgrades. I thought about trying a custom ROM but community support for that device is weak.

Just get an iPhone SE. They're small, still functional, and inexpensive.

I need a smartphone, but I am the master (not apple/google/etc)

GrapheneOS.

You're basically describing modern day smartwatches

Do you have one you'd recommend? Last I looked the Apple Watch was the only one people were reliably satisfied with, but I'm far enough outside the Apple ecosystem that I'd be missing a lot of the value people get out of them.

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