Smartphone makers will soon face an unlikely competitor. Concerns about the impact of social media are driving demand for old-school Nokia brick-like handsets…
It used to make sense in the early
ArtsOughts as technology in the hardware improved but it’s all software now and purchase it’s not worth itI see a variation of this headline every couple of years, it’s continued existence disproves itself.
Reminds me of an old Paul Graham essay:
https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
“Suits make a corporate comeback,” says the New York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also back in February, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002.
Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to.
What you make of this from what Paul Graham is up to these days is up to you.
We still need some way to fix the endless robocall and fraud spam that we can’t even block because they’re always using a different number
Make phone companies legally responsible for giving thousands of new phone numbers to scammers. They have zero control on who they give phone numbers because that’s cheaper.
The sooner one of their CEOs is put in prison over that they will take immediate measures to only give phone number to legit companies.
I’m alwaus very nice to them, but I also firmly explain that I’ll search for anything I want all by myself.
Last caller asked if I lived in an appointment or a house (selling ev panels or heating or something I guess), I switched around and asked how he lived, after a confused but correct answer (he lived in an apartment) I asked him where he lived, mini hilarity ensued. I wished him a good day and courage because its probably not the funniest job, I think he got a small genuine happy happy, or so his voice sounded.
Have got zero calls since.
You’re lucky to get a human to call you, I only get robocalls, literally zero humans on the other side of the line, either trying to convince me to borrow money or a fraud attempt trying to convince me “a purchase was just made on your account, press 1 to confirm or 2 to talk to our support” - on the latter, a human sometimes answers when you press 2, but they deserve all the shit you can throw at them because they’re fucking fraudsters and they know it.
a small genuine happy happy
What does this mean?
He got a smal happy happy, I could hear it in his voice!
I contacted my phone company about them and they just went " There’s nothing we can do so just block them".
They’re using your fucking system, do something about it!
I block all calls except those I know.
Have we bred self-control out of the populace or something?
I mean, yeah? Where have you been for the past few decades?
I would take an old school Nokia that runs Signal any day over an Android or iOS phone.
I hope for something like the Motorola D lineup. You could take out the original battery and replace it for 4xAA batteries. That’s pretty cool.
A few months ago I was quite happy to finally win one functional handset, Motorola D170, in auction for just around €7 incl. shipping. Unfortunately, I always bring bad luck. The seller unexpectedly ended up in hospital and I got a refund.
The D170 even has a flip-out keypad cover which makes it even cooler. And all of these have extendable antennas.
A picture of D170 for illustration (not the same unit):
Otherwise the most available seems to be D520, but almost all of them are corroded and non-functional because people left batteries in them.
And they won’t work anymore with the retirement of analog years ago, 2G years ago, and now 3G for consumer use (I’m assuming that phone was analog/2G).
If I remember correctly, GSM900. The shutdown of 2G in my country is set at around 2028 - 2030, so I’d be good for a bit.
In other words, just like with my current phone that doesn’t work with VoLTE on my carrier because VoLTE is a total mess. This once again leaves me with 2G for phone calls. (Although I use LTE-only to prioritize data meaning nobody can call me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Hell, my carrier hasn’t even yet implemented USSD over IMS which means no call barring settings, no call forwarding settings, no caller ID settings, no USSD codes and just everything else that uses MMI codes. All depends on GSM.I don’t know why it is accepted that there’s no single mandatory standard for VoLTE that would work everywhere, but I guess people’s ability to put up with BS is just going up over time.
And yes, this impacts emergency services too, with US visitors, for example, even if the devices support VoLTE at home.In my country, they’re planning to phase out 3G, while 2G is very unclear because of just how many things rely on it, not just phones.
Yup, 3G is already dead around here. Well, mostly, O2 is doing the transition very slowly.
That rubber keyboard was awful though
I think flip phones are more likely. I’ve contemplated several times of turning my phone in for the old flip phone. Might just be the nastalgia talking though.
If I could use signal on one, I would swotch in a heartbeat
If your serious, Straight Talk has flip phones that work on Verizon networks. I saw one at Walmart just the other day.
Signal as in the secure messenger Signal. My bad for not being clearer on that :)
Ah. Okay, I understand.
Might just be me, but I see smartphones as one of the most powerful devices on the planet.
It’s in the way that you use it.
Maybe the keitai will finally have its moment globally.
Oh, oh, oh! Can I finally do the Celebi event in Pokemon Crystal. For those who don’t know, the only way you could get a Celebi in the original Pokemon games is if you had a Japanese flip phone (I’m pretty sure that included the Keitai) and went to a Pokemon Mobile phone system thingy, then did some stuff in the Pokemon Center and one of the nerses will give you the GS ball. But this system only worked on Japanese cartridges.
The whole focus of concern about social media is on kids being exposed to material their parents don’t want them to see. I think this misses a much larger point - simply the effect social media overuse has on attention span and encouraging superficial thinking.
Scrolling through the firehose of infinite content trains people to process each item as quickly as possible and make a quick value judgement based on minimal information before moving on to the next item. This is absolutely backasswards of how kids should learn to think. It encourages binary thinking - seeing every issue as two opposite extremes - and spending as little effort as possible acquiring information before making that binary decision about who to idolize or demonize. Degrading people’s intellectual process makes them much more susceptible to suggestion and conditioning, which of course is how oligarchs want us.
I got one just to put my 2FA sim cards in. It cost like $10, the battery lasts a week, I can just mute the ringer cause I only care if its getting a text message I just requested, and if my real phone is ever lost or stolen the keys to my accounts are sitting safely in a drawer at home.
You should never use SMS for 2FA. The network is incredibly insecure, as evidenced by the recent alarms that China has been in the network for a while now. 2FA codes over SMS are rarely stolen from the legitimate device itself. Hackers will just pull off a different scheme, like SIM swapping, and they’ll own all your codes and you won’t have a clue until it’s too late.
If only every service I need gave other options. In any case, the card numbers are not connected to me or the account in any publicly accessible way. Thats part of the whole point of running them off a separate phone. I dont give anyone that number except for the purpose of 2FA, so SIM swapping wont work, the sim card never leaves the house, so scan based exploits wont work, and the phone doesnt have the hardware required to be vulnerable to more sophisticated phone based attacks. If any major government intelligence agency wants in theyll find a way, but using a separate dumb phone should be significantly more secure than using the SIM in my regular phone.
I dont give anyone that number except for the purpose of 2FA, so SIM swapping wont work, the sim card never leaves the house, so scan based exploits wont work, and the phone doesnt have the hardware required to be vulnerable to more sophisticated phone based attacks.
I understand what you’re saying. But the reality is everything you just said doesn’t matter for SIM swapping. The fact that you use the phone number for that service says that the number you use is out in the wild. Typically when SIM swapping is used is when there’s a data breach and your username, email, password, and phone number are leaked. But they still can’t get in because of the extra 2FA step.
So they HAVE that phone number. SIM swapping is done at the carrier level. It’s when the associated number is “swapped” to a different SIM card (one that the hackers own). Which means you can get totally screwed over without lifting a finger and not a single person touching your computer or phone.
Like I said before, the damage to you would be done before you even knew what happened.
Edit: autocorrect
Edit 2: and yes, I understand many services have no other options than SMS, which is why it’s such a huge massive problem.
I use my phone as a mobile computer, I almost never make calls with it. No way am I switching back.
It’s a easy fix with software, exactly like flight mode they can introduce focus mode for school.
Brick is a combination of software and (add-on) hardware and imo a better solution.
That looks like a 3d printed shell over some sort of scannable chip that pairs with an app on a smart phone to require a physical action to unlock the full phone experience.
A printed QR code paired with an similar app would serve the same function.
Good point. Reminded me of this alarm app, where you scan a QR code to disable the alarm:
My company did a similar 3rd party app on their phones for truck drivers, to cut down on driving distractions and within days they had all figured ways around the software and were back to watching videos while driving.
If people (or kids) want a way around they will find it. There have been too many examples that can be found already of them getting around similar software.
Best go with the ‘non smart’ phone to begin with the simply eliminate the issue altogether.
People being able to find a way around isn’t a good rationale for not putting up roadblocks in the first place. It’s basically the same argument that’s used against gun regulations.
Can I just have a modern Motorola Razr so I can pretend to be Captain Kirk again, please?
Yes, Motorola is making products in the Razr line.
The society will break between those who like calling and those who prefer texting.
I heard about the Light Phone recently and I think it’s a decent bridge between the old brick phones and modern smartphones. It has navigation and music functionality that a brick phone wouldn’t, but doesn’t have all the rest of the attention thieving bloat of a smartphone.
It would be nice to have music streaming capability and alternative messaging apps (Signal) and perhaps a web browser, though.
600 dollars
this is a joke, right?
Do have any idea about the engineering required to remove all of the bloat?!
/s
Truthfully 800, but there is an old model that costs “only” 300…
you can get a fairly decent simple android device for like 70 bucks. so the gimmick seems to prey on those that wish to have an “experience” and not a functional device.
Just disable everything on your phone right now down to the essentials. If you’re on Android, there’s a lot of really minimalist 3rd party launchers like Niagara launcher that can improve the minimalist experience as well. You’d basically mimic the light phone at that point while still having every upside and be able to selectively enable and disable what you’re asking.
You don’t need to pay for an overpriced phone to take your choices away. You can find the will power to just disable it on your current phone.
