A year has passed since Commodore, the computer brand many of you know and love, came back from the dead under new ownership. The comeback is picking up pace too, with a lineup that already includes multiple Commodore 64 Ultimate editions, a C64X PC, and a licensing program that invites outside builders to use the name. Now, they have announced a return to the phone market, and not in the doomscrolling glass-slab avatar we are all used to, but in a retro, very equippable flip phone format…
This phone should cost $150 max. What’s with dumb phones charging smart phone levels of money?
For real. You can grab a cheap used phone for 80 bucks, put lineage on it, and never install any apps except for the very basic preinstalled ones. Boom, dumb phone
I agree it’s too much money. But for the record it’s not a dumb phone, it is a smartphone running sailfish which can run android apps in a sandbox
However for less money, the Sony Xperia 10 III with Sailfish OS (Xperia 10 mk3) is a better buy.
They are definitely charging way too much, the price and the browser block are the only reasons I am not buying one. I think they could reasonably price it at $250 based on the hardware and that it will certainly be a low production run which massively increases the price. Also, that Sony with SailfishOS is both old (it was released over five years ago) and refurbished, not exactly a fair comparison.
I think I just found my next phone. Do you have any experience with the phone?
I own one but I haven’t put a sim card in it to test the actuall phone aspect yet.
My initial criticisms are:
Very good to know, thanks for the write-up!
I love how people throw around “it’s too expensive”. But did you ever try developing a relatively small batch gadget for the market? Plus as others said, it’s not a dumb
pphone at all.Being too expensive doesn’t mean they are necessarily gouging. My wife crochets blankets as a hobby, but she’d have to charge a stupid amount to sell them at a profit if she used decent yarn and valued her time at even minimum wage. Said blanket would be “too expensive” without a doubt.
Isn’t there a whole lot of small volume ‘phone’ companies that are charging far less? Nothing Phone, or the plethora of Chinese companies like Unihertz come to mind.
Sidephone, key phone, ikko one with the optional keyboard, upcoming clicks communicator, and dumber mini are all modern semi-smart keyboard phones at or below their discounted introductory price for the base model, with similar enough specs in most areas. Most of these are on some sort of privacy AOSP rom too.
And that’s not including all the unihertz, blue fox, and other Chinese phones that would compete
The cheapest Nothing phone is $500.
Unihertz is also $499.
???
Unihertz literally sells a dozen more powerful phones for less than $500. Their cheapest phone currently which still is a better offer is $100. And Nothing’s cheapest phone currently is $419, still cheaper than this vaporware phone.
Huh? https://www.unihertz.com/collections/jelly-series
Agree, was thinking the same thing. I would have considered it at that price…
This “dumbphone” runs 99% of Android apps.
Higher end camera and a HD DAC (maybe high power audio output?)
Those sorta things are expensive
Also it runs 99% of android apps
Probably also a low volume product which increases price
I’m certain that the number is inflated by the massive amount of slop and shovelware that is in the play store. The missing 1% is the apps that you actually need, like banking and such
They actively hardcoded all web browsers and most social media (except WhatsApp) to be blocked from installing, hence the 99%.
The social media I understand, but the web browser block is going to severely limit market appeal.
No, the 99% is the android compatibility.
Because sailfishos is not a Google certified platform, every app that uses root detection or play integrity check, won’t run.
And which apps use those checks? Not the freemium games. Those are designed to maximize ad viewing, so they want to block uncertified devices
Also: an average freemium game can adapt the UI on a 480*640 screen (big buttons), while almost no developer tests normal UI in such a low resolution. And nobody tests movement of input focus with keypad. Chances of a broken UI that can’t be interacted with the t9 keypad are very high.
This is why they showed WhatsApp, Spotify (two commercial apps that are tested and working on the lowest end devices with tiny screens like the qin phones) and AntennaPod (which being open source they can send a PR to fix UI issues) and dismissed the rest as “we block all the useless stuff”
So what I mean is, the phone can run 99% of android apps on the play store using aurora, but, because the play store has million of useless/slip/shovelware games, if you really need to run a specific app for work or for banking, chances is the app is in the 1% incompatible range and not the 99%
You’re quite right, though I’m being a bit more uncharitable personally, and assuming they are only marketing it as 99% since they are explicitly blocking very popular utilities as a selling point. Were they not doing that, I get the feeling they would’ve just said it is fully Android compatible despite it not being true for the reasons you outlined.
its an initial offer model and it does look to have lots of modern tech components in it
the price seems reasonable to me, especially if its got a designer edge to it