I'm pretty sure the people who have fond memories of growing up with a C64 or watching ToS are of an entirely different generation than those with fond memories of flip phones and cyber/color-puke ads for transparent plastic gadgets.
> BASIC Beige Edition
There's a missed opportunity for a better ToS joke here: "Beige... the final frontier"
To me. I want to have access to whatsapp/browser but with constraints of T9 so that I am not tempted to jump from website to website or write a lot.
And I want a phone that does not look like the most lazy thing a company could possibly do with 0 design effort put into it.
Honestly, that sounds appealing to me at least. Those are the only communication channels I have, so it suits. Maps if I get lost somewhere. And some spotify. I pretty much have that now, but just with constant privacy breaches and issues I need to stay on top of.
> There's a missed opportunity for a better ToS joke here: "Beige... the final frontier"
I don't think this product will actually ever launch, but if it does, it absolutely MUST have a beige model.
Absolutely, same here—but it has to look good. I know that's subjective, but this thing looks atrocious.
I got my youngest child an AOSP flip phone. I'm semi happy with it. You can't install apps on it (so no Signal, but also no Subway Surfers). But on the other hand, it has a web browser, which is a big hole; the web browser is good enough to show postage-stamp-sized YouTube.
The Commodore flip phone would be kind of usable for me as long as it could run Duo Mobile; having Signal is a big plus. Not sure it's a $500 plus. Lacking RCS is a non-trivial minus but not a deal-breaker.
I'm not looking to go back to a flip phone, though. I'd buy one as another fun thing for my display wall if it was cheaper, but it's a bit too expensive for that.