cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/hardware/p/2144337/commodore-announces-linux-based-flip-phone-with-no-social-media-no-browser-the-callback
Linux-based phone still ‘runs 99% of Android apps’ so you can do more with it, if you wish.
Zero justification for that price tag.
$499? No thanks
They lost me at $499. A phone that is just a phone should be about a hundred bucks max. I didn’t read the article though. Maybe it’s still very computery.
Small production run + half-decent internals probably accounts for a lot of the price.
Having experimented with $100 underpowered flip phone on KaiOS, lack of apps was a real problem. What (some) people want is the slight inconvenience of a T9 keyboard and an annoyingly small screen to help them limit their screen time, but they still want full functionality of all their apps.
as someone who has been using t9 phones for the last 3-4 years, the tough part is will the software and keys even be good on this. you just don’t know till you use it. It’s true, having an underpowered phone sucks ( I’m using the Sonim X320 now which I believe has 4GB of ram, and it’s soooo nice compared to the Cat S22 Flip ). But a lot of issues on my previous phones (prev mentioned Cat, then the Qin F25) was mostly the software not working well with buttons or the screen size. The sonim I have now works well because the stock apps a designed for the hard ware. $450 or whatever is still too much, but if it covers all the bands and use usable, at least it’s an option.
I know some people who would actually kill for a physical T9 keyboard so they could touch-type. It’s not my cup of tea, but I can definitely see it being a major draw for people who grew up texting on a real flip phone.
Just found out about the Twiddler 4–a single-handheld bluetooth keyboard. too damn expensive at over $200, but something I’d definitely try otherwise.
I thought it woud suck, but with the touch typing + consistent dictionary guessing, it’s really on par with the random chaos of a touchscreen keyboard.
That’s a stupid price, one of the main things of brick/flip phones is their low price, HMD feature phones range from about £20 to £70, some new google pixels can go for about this price, so getting something with the price of a smartphone with a fraction of the features sounds scummy.
Whatsapp preinstalled… hard pass from me. All the other considerations like price, browser block, app emulation implementation; those are all things I could probably get past but preinstalled spyware is unacceptable from the get go.
Edit to add. The app blocking is interesting to me. Instead of thinking about the user being blocked from unstalling and using the app, I’m curious about the technology they will use to block the app (and app maker) from running activity on the device.
Hopefully the solution includes something like DNS blocking rather than a blacklist on the play integrity api and a reliance on Google killing the unstall of apk from other sources.
Not sure if DNS blocking explains the browser exclusion which is otherwise a bit odd.
This phone is probably aimed at countried where Whatsapp is legitimately mandatory if you want a social life and a job (e.g. much of Europe and South America)
I’m from Spain and don’t have Watsapp nor a smartphone. Coincidentally I also lack a social life.
Im fortunate enough to want neither of those things haha
sadly i do actually need to work still :(
Brazil uses WhatsApp for everything, including doctor appointments, filling prescriptions, banking, take out orders… I mean, really everything…
WhatsApp for jobs? Yeah only dogshit employers do that.
Who is going to pay $500 for a retro flip phone, when you can get a second-hand iPhone for half that? Or you know, an actual flip phone for $25.
Maybe the same guys who believed in the Purism scam.
Well, looks like someone made a Jack Tramiel based LLM and let it hallucinate.
500$? and they used to make one of the cheapest computers on the market
I’d be surprised if that’s the same company in anything but name after all these years.
There’s no relationship to the original company.
Not entirely true there are members of the original team
Look, I love the idea of a Linux phone.
But $500 and it manages my temptations for me? Fuck no.
The whole point of Linux is freedom.
Enough behavior shaping.
Yeh right, i already don’t use social media on my phone, skill issue
Social media is humans being social through media, I am sick and tired of it being categorically villainized especially because the scientific evidence for it being inherently bad is laughable.
To say that social media is just people socializing through media is rather like saying that newspapers are just news on paper.
In both cases it ignores the deliberate, pervasive, and frequently toxic efforts of the platform curators to maximize “engagement” with their audience in pursuit of ad revenue.
When I socialize with people offline, it looks almost nothing like modern social media “services”.
In both cases it ignores the deliberate, pervasive, and frequently toxic efforts of the platform curators to maximize “engagement” with their audience in pursuit of ad revenue.
We are on social media right now, this is not inherent to social media it is a choice forced on it by corporations.
No browser is wild. And what does that even mean here? You have to run everything by app now? That sounds like ass.
What is the point of it being linux if it just runs “99% of android apps” but no browser?
no social media, no browser
marketing material: social media in a glorified browserGreat initiative but at this price it’s just a scam srlsy…
Especially for an LTE device
deleted by creator
Jolla phone and that is with much better specs
I would expect to pay $50 for a modern flip phone with hardware comparable to one from 20y ago. But this is running Sailfish OS, has a decent SoC, camera, DAC, and up to 64GB of RAM. This ain’t your grandma’s flip phone.
Not sure if it’s me or you misreading this, but I believe when it says 4GB/64GB it’s one model, 4GB of RAM and 64GB internal storage. 64GB of RAM at a form factor to fit in a phone that small is currently outwith our technological capacity surely
Ah yeah, I misread that. I agree $500 is high for what it is, but it’s also kind of a novelty device that they’ll surely only make a relatively small number of to guage interest. The industry has shifted all of its manufacturing away from making flip phones cheap.
That is the price if you ship million of units. Realistically, how many units can ship this? 10k? 20k?
Once you consider the price of the plastic shell molds (custom), the custom keypad, the custom motherboard, the custom assembly line, this price is almost cheap.
I wouldn’t even consider a purchase even at a third of the price, but it was a scam if they simply put a sticker on some Alibaba clamshell with stock android, instead here they even partnered with Jolla to have sailfish is as base with the android emulator. That’s much more expensive than just slapping android aosp with a minimal launcher and calling it a day
Nostalgia sells
People pay over $1k for a phone. Now that is a scam.
But those phones are mini computers, some of which people use as an actual desktop.
or you can get an actual desktop – and even laptops – for less money and a better experience.
Better experience in my pocket tho? Or calling emergency services?
Browser and email is the bare minimum, though.
Even the cheapest clamshells in the 2000s had those two.
Don’t preinstall it by default if you want to look minimal but being forced to sideload (their app store blocks this essential category???) an Android APK in the emulator instead of using native Linux apps for that, is ridiculous
I understand that for a small company like them (it’s being owned by a YouTuber now) creating hardware is extremely expensive and 499 can even considered cheap with all the custom stuff in this device, plastic molds, dedicated assembly lines and so on, but my mind can’t accept paying more than 149 for something like this
The main reason I have a smartphone is to have a browser and email. If those are not available I might as well use a dumb phone.
It’s a dumb phone with Spotify… I used to do just fine with music loaded on the phone memory.
I didn’t even know that the brand Commodore still existed.
Every few years the brand name appears to be sold to some new company
At $200… Maybe.
AI slop video, no faith in what will (or likely won’t) be delivered.
I can get a new modern smartphone which works without major problems at $80. I see no reason to spend double that on a flip phone.
Is that phone truly Linux based, have expandable memory, a temeable battery, etc… and does it have a team actively supporting it to maintain and expand those features? I’m saying I’d pay $200 for what they were describing IF real people were building a movement away from the same black apple/samsung rectangles, locked into deep Google surveillance fed back to palantir.
WhatsApp isn’t a social media app?
I wouldn’t really class it as such, its just fancy texting for the majority of users
Yeah I use it for that, I don’t use channels or stories etc. Would be nice if I could convince more people to signal.
As a non user, fair enough.
It’s a messaging/chat app, closer to social networking than social media.
Maybe because it’s owned by Meta?
MediaTek Helio G81 SoC, with 4GB/64GB
Uhhh. For $500? Sorry, no.
I mean its a small company. We have become too used to subsidized costs at the sake of our privacy. Know why TVs are now $200? They are literal spyware in the home. Try buying one without spyware, $999 real fast for the same TV.
Know why phone companies give you a “free” $1000 phone? Youre the product. Constantly tracked and sold. A digital slave.
Pinephone was a fraction of that price. Can’t you run PostmarketOS on a Fair phone too? But that has much better specs.
The pinephone was atrocious (As a daily) though. From what I’ve heard from owners it still struggles to this day to run basic mobile Linux OSes.
Fact. It’s amazing that it exists, but it is definitely not a daily driver device. At least for me.
Uhh the pinephone in general sucks for daily use . its a tinker phone
Really? I thought mine was great
Buuutt are you someone who travels and uses airline and banking and hotel apps? Or do you stay home and use arch on a thinkpad ?
/joky
I have done all of those things without apps. Why the fuck would I want an airline and hotel app?
Hotel: check in to room immediately without even going to front desk, even if its 3 am.
Airline: instant update of gate changes. When you need to sprint to make your flight because thr gate changed to one a half mile away, this is something you can’t live without. TVs are getting less and less in airports now. Also, literally no one uses a paper ticket and I suspect they’ll be phased out completely in 5 years. Too easy to fake.
There are people alive today who have never once written a check (I do, often), so you can kiss all of our old analog paper ways goodbye in a few years.
Almost nothing works on it. Can make calls, but not receive, can open the camera, but not take a photo, etc.
Who would I be getting calls from? I use Linux.
People don’t know this it seems. You actually have to give up something to gain some privacy. Can be money, can be features.
Most people still use Google while there is Kagi for like 10 dollars… Because they want privacy, but they need it to be free. :)
My daily argument with my friends!
Phone companies dont give you a “free” $1000 phone, you’re actually paying more for it via the monthly bill payments.
That’s on top of you being the product as well.
True
Opposed to fake fast?
Not free, and on pixels you can install de googled androids like grapheneos and LineageOS
Economies of scale. How many people actually want to buy this?
I think this is the real answer, rather than the other comment about users being monetized. There are plenty of affordable Android phones with decent specs that have no spyware besides Google’s, and Google’s not subsidizing them.
There are also still dumbphones on the market for under $100. I don’t see Android app support as that big a selling point with these specs.
Good luck to them, but I don’t think this is a viable niche.
