Lately I have been having a lot of fun playing around with mestastic devices, older phones, and so called “dumb phones”. I dont plan on getting rid of my current smart phone (at least any time soon) but I do want to see how it feels to go back to a dumb phone.
Anyone have a preferred dumb-phone setup that still works with 4G?
I want to be able to:
- Make/receive phone calls
- At least be able to see texting
- Replaceable battery
- (optional) some sort of directions (google maps/OSM+ etc…)
Things I have looked at:
- Ive been looking at some of the new Nokia offerings and it looks like they are going full retro which I like. I just dont like how thin the plastic looks. It looks like the phones could die at any point.
- I took a look at https://www.wiphone.io/ and that looked neat, but no GSM (phone calls outside of wifi) so thats a no go.
- https://dumbwireless.com/products/punkt-mp02 looked almst perfect…then I saw you can repair the device or replace the battery.
- https://dumbwireless.com/products/light-phone-2 looks nifty but again cant replace anything.
- Sunbeam F1 Horizon might be a good fit given that you can take out the battery but the price is a bit steap.
What do you all think?
I don’t think you can have a dumb phone that has maps, but you can dumb down a smart phone.
Get yourself the cheapest fairphone and then… install a custom ROM? Like postmarketOS and then customize the DE to function like a dumb phone.
I would love to get a fairphone. Its just 4x the price of everything else. I cant possibly afford it here in the US.