> wepmaster says:

I've been looking for more and less "dumb" phones, baisically phones which are minimalistic to design, kind of like old phones which are practically bricks or flip phones. It's taken me very much effort and I still haven't been able to find anything suitable.

My main smart phone has been breaking more and more and while it is a very good practice to repair it, I've also started longing for something different.

The modern phone is in my opinion way too overdesigned with every feature supposed to be almost addictively made and executed. Just like with this website, there is a charm in old and simple technology, it just does what it's supposed to without all the flashy stuff which is just there to make it sell better.

While this is the major reason I'd like to get an old school phone, the simplicity also has a big chance of bringing privacy and less bloatware which is a huge plus.

I've been looking for really minimalistic phones preferably even without touchscreen, as this seems like a nice level to aim for and I'd like to hit hard when going for it and gutting a "downgraded" phone.

When looking at such simpler phones, I've found two markets: really old phones and new ones inspired by old school phones. The old ones unfortunately never seem to support LTE bandwidth and since I live in Europe, other bandwidths will be useless soon as they are being shut down.

The newer phones seem to have four major markets:

• Phones for eldery. These seem overly dumb and worthless, not what I want or need.


• Phones made to be trendy, nice and look as much as old phones as possible. These include modern Nokia variants. The problem I find with these is that they mostly seem to be made for quick consumption - they are often quite bad hardware wise and limited software wise and seem pretty much boring.


• Phones for small kids as "a first phone"...


• Phones made for workers. These are very powerful hardware wise and could be used as hammers, though it seems to be a relatively small market.

I started looking more into "construction worker phones" as these seem quite cool. They're durable, have good specs, and sometimes cool features.

The major issue I find with these phones is that their software is very heavily controlled. I'd like to be able to run custom code relatively freely on my own device and amazing phones like Hammer unfortunately are very locked down software wise as well as being very rare.

I found one phone called Sonim which had almost everything I wanted: it is durable, simple and light while holding a quite good standard. It even runs android, which means you can practically mod it however you want AND it runs Swedish bank/security apps and I found a few people who had made some hacking and tampering with it. However, this phone is very rare and isn't available at the European market at all unless you dare buy from sketchy Chinese ali express sites, which I don't want to risk and probably comes with heavy tariffs.

I've had a hard time finding any phones which actually seem nice. Perhaps you know any?

I've even started thinking about building my own phone, though getting data modules to work as well as assembling everything seems like huge amounts of work which I've barely got any experience with, though I know a few people who do. Do you have any experience with constructing devices?

What do you think about phones? What phones do you use and do you have any advice?

stay silly

Lineage OS or CalyxOS handys

https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
https://calyxos.org/docs/guide/device-support/

> wepmaster says:

@I-i thanks for your input on the Sonar phones! I want them even more badly now!!! Sad thing they're super expensive and rare in the EU, the latest model I'm able to get my hands on is the Sonar XP5 for 5-6k euro which is a huge bit out of my price range. Will be keeping an eye at second hand markets, currently found an XP3 for 50 euro but they seem extremely old...

@guestgeist I've looked at lineage before and it seems really nice! Perhaps I could build a custom phone with one of its supported devices as foundation, though most of the phones it support seem to be way too much "smart phones" for me.

Haven't seen calyxos before, will definitely be looking at that though it seems like a smaller project.

Thank you!

stay silly

Honestly, I’ve been thinking about this exact thing for a while now. It’s like modern smartphones aren’t even phones anymore, just mini ad delivery platforms with tracking sensors that also happen to make calls sometimes.

I miss the idea of a phone just being... a phone. Call. Text. Alarm. Done. Maybe Snake if you're lucky.

The Sonim XP8 honestly sounds like a dream. Never heard of it until this thread, but now I’m kinda obsessed. The physical buttons alone got me hooked tbh. I don’t even care if it can’t run 4K YouTube garbage. If it can survive a drop and doesn’t try to sync my biometrics to some server in California, that’s already better than 90% of what’s out there.

But yeah, I’m with you on the LTE problem in Europe. Most of the good "dumb-smart" phones are either:

Locked into the US ecosystem,



Weirdly expensive or impossible to find over here,



Or just aesthetic bait — like the fake minimalist phones you mentioned that are secretly just Android under a skin and lag after a week.

The XP3 could be a good catch if you're just looking for basics. 50€ sounds like a steal even if it's not gonna run Lineage or anything fun. Honestly I wouldn’t even mind one of those QWERTY slider phones if I could find one that still supports modern bands and doesn’t explode when I turn it on.

I’ve also been looking at the Punkt MP02, but it’s stupidly overpriced and limited. Looks cool, though. Probably good if you want something that screams "I read offline philosophy zines and don't have notifications enabled."

The idea of building your own phone? Mad respect. I’ve thought about it but I barely have the patience to solder, let alone deal with antenna tuning and sourcing LTE-compatible modems. There's that ZeroPhone project too but I think it's mostly dead now? Like most good things. :/

All that said, I think there is a market for this kind of stuff, but it’s just buried under TikTok gadgets and startup fluff. If someone actually made a modular, durable, privacy-focused dumbphone that didn’t cost 1000€, I feel like they’d have a niche army of weirdos (myself included) ready to jump on it.

Until then… I guess it’s secondhand markets, modded old phones, or just learning to live without.

maybe I’ll just tape an FM radio to a pager and call it a day lol