I don’t want a dumb phone. I want a circa 2014 smart phone that is not expected to replace my laptop and serve as a constant data stream for corporations. I want to be able to visit a website on my phone and not have it try to get me to download an app, be ads on 70% of the screen, or just be unreadable formatting. Let me call, text, do a basic online search, play a stupid flash game, and take my money. Stop being greedy and trying to make everything I do monetizable
Is fair phone (review) that? Its camera and battery are sub-par for the money, but it says that it makes up for it in many ways, like longevity and ability to swap out components that in other phones can mean almost getting a new one. It sounds kinda perfect for my use case but I’ve never owned one so can’t be positive. When my current phone dies, this is something I’ll heavily look into.
Personally I’m very happy with my fairphone. Knowing I can replace parts when they break is nice. And idgaf about camera as long as it can take a halfway decent picture, so a phone that skimps on camera for less cost is a win in my book
I have a Fairphone 5 and it’s… ok. It’s definitely overpriced for its specs but you can’t really expect a cheap phone while cutting down on slave labour at the same time. It’s also quite buggy. Not unusably so, but coming from a Galaxy S9 (yes, Samsung bad, that’s why I switched), it’s a bit jarring. For example, sometimes I’ll pull it out of my pocket and it’s mysteriously off. I turn it back on and there doesn’t appear to be a reason for it and it works fine. A few times I’ve had the battery drain insanely fast for some reason, despite the phone reporting no apps having high battery usage. Some apps also have issues on occasion, Discord for example tends to get stuck in the gallery view after you send a picture and it doesn’t allow you to open the keyboard again. It’s also missing some minor, but neat things, like the ability to snooze alarms by turning over the phone (Edit: tbh that’s probably a stock Android thing and not really fair to hold against the phone, but I still miss it) and the fingerprint reader is nowhere near as reliable as the one in my old phone.
The vast majority of the time it works just fine and if you don’t expect the polish you’ll get out of a Samsung flagship, you’ll probably be ok with it. But you are very much paying a premium for the sustainability and repairability, not the overall experience. I don’t regret supporting Fairphone, vote with your wallet and all that, but I definitely recognise the device itself has issues and when looked at purely on specs and software quality, it isn’t really worth the money.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences - that should definitely help people!:-)
I wonder if they perhaps have some QA issues, so you got a lemon, or maybe the design itself is just that bad. You wouldn’t necessarily know, I’m just musing out loud!:-P
One thing I do want to ask if you don’t mind - b/c I don’t know how to interpret the specs and I no longer trust paid reviewers - is how smooth does it handle? Like, noticeable lags or no? If it is basically a cheapie smartphone for a sub-flagship price, I might even be okay with that but wanted to know before getting into it.
Keep in mind that my basis for comparison is a Galaxy S9. The Fairphone feels smoother and more responsive most of the time, but you do occasionally get freezes and lag spikes, mostly when you try to minimise an app that is currently loading something from my experience. Particularly heavy websites also slow it down sometimes, but pretty rarely.
And I wouldn’t really call the design “that bad”, I was listing off my issues with it, so it might have come across that way, but the majority of the time it works completely fine.
I rather go with something like this:
https://unplugged.com/products/up-phone
At the very least a degoogled phone.
✨Kai os✨
I mostly just want a phone that doesn’t want to sell me on new ways to use my phone that I don’t already do. I don’t want a phone that’s constantly trying to get me to use voice search, or try out some AI feature, or a search engine, etc. I have a newer Samsung tablet, and by default holding the power button turned on voice search instead of the power off menu? I fucking hate that shit, it was thankfully changeable but it was annoying that I had to change it back. I literally never use voice search. I fucking hate talking to computers, I’m not talking to a machine unless it’s actually capable of feeling offended if I don’t
B-but if they don’t get better every year, the price will go down!
I don’t think people really want dumbphones, I think they just want apps that better support their self-control. Digital Wellbeing on Android is a start, but it’s way too easy to bypass.
I don’t want a dumb phone but I would 100% take a phone with a back that isn’t glass, high repairability, and full control over the OS. Make it THICC and put a big battery too.
So a fairphone? Though it doesn’t provide wireless charging I think.
And I just want a small Android phone that fits in one hand.
The last one to be around iPhone 13 mini size is the Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact from 2018. And if you want original iPhone SE size, then the “latest” one is the Samsung Galaxy Y S5360 from 2011.Oh what I would do to magically make my old Samsung S4 Mini usable again…
I just want a small […] phone that fits in one hand.
How bloody small are your hands??
Mine are just average for a man’s, and the iPhone 15 Pro Max is eminently usable with just one hand.
jfc not everyone is a man
People want phones that don’t cost $1000+, lack basic features and constantly prey on their personal data. That’s what they want. Some express that by saying they want “dumb phones”, but the first part is the larger driver here.
I want those things and I want a phone that’s easy to use, doesn’t constantly advertise to me, and is more of a helpful tool than a distraction.
I think that last bit is more of a ‘what you make of it’ situation, regardless of how smart or dumb a phone is.
Unfortunately the manufacturers want the data and advertising revenue, and they’d only be persuaded to offer an alternative if they made the same amount of money.
If each sale of a $900 smart phone gives them $100 of ad revenue over a couple years, I’d bet my bottom dollar they would charge $200 for the ‘dumb’ version.
I think the distractions are partially a user issue and partially a company issue. Companies make their programs noisy with notifications by default that I only change it once I’ve found it annoying. They also make their program so bloated that they are slow to load and execute. By the time the app loads, I’ve lost my flow and now the tool is a nuisance. My mind is already cluttered. I don’t need tech to slow it down.
I want a phone that has an eink display but an ecosystem for apps. I want my battery to last weeks, I want my communications conduits to be dead simple, and I want to be able to run an OTP authenticator on it.
If the thing I’m expected to have becomes highly useful for the things I’m expected to have it for while also interrupting my bad habit tendencies, I think it would be a good fit for me.
Yes. Make the phone look and be as boring as possible. No more doom scrolling.
Dumbphone maybe not. But a Linux phone that is fully functional and eschews the corporate app eco system? Yes please
I admit I would miss tap to pay tho
Stick your credit card under the phone cover and you have tap to pay.
No
Nope
