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.
$499? No thanks
Well, looks like someone made a Jack Tramiel based LLM and let it hallucinate.
It looks comically huge in all the pictures on the Commodore website… Is it really that big?
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.
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. $450 or whatever is still too much, but if it covers all the bands and use usable, at least it’s an option.
I know some people who would actually kill for a physical T9 keyboard so they could touch-type. It’s not my cup of tea, but I can definitely see it being a major draw for people who grew up texting on a real flip phone.
I thought it woud suck, but with the touch typing + consistent dictionary guessing, it’s really on par with the random chaos of a touchscreen keyboard.
WhatsApp isn’t a social media app?
It’s a messaging/chat app, closer to social networking than socual media.
I wouldn’t really class it as such, its just fancy texting for the majority of users
Yeah I use it for that, I don’t use channels or stories etc. Would be nice if I could convince more people to signal.
Maybe because it’s owned by Meta?
500$? 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
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 $25.
Maybe the same guys who believed in the Purism scam.
Whatsapp preinstalled… hard pass from me. All the other considerations like price, browser block, app emulation implementation; those are all things I could probably get past but preinstalled spyware is unacceptable from the get go.
Edit to add. The app blocking is interesting to me. Instead of thinking about the user being blocked from unstalling and using the app, I’m curious about the technology they will use to block the app (and app maker) from running activity on the device.
Hopefully the solution includes something like DNS blocking rather than a blacklist on the play integrity api and a reliance on Google killing the unstall of apk from other sources.
Not sure if DNS blocking explains the browser exclusion which is otherwise a bit odd.
This phone is probably aimed at countries where Whatsapp is legit mandatory if you want a social life and a job (e.g. much of Europe and South America)
Im fortunate enough to want neither of those things haha
sadly i do actually need to work still :(
Brazil uses WhatsApp for everything, including doctor appointments, filling prescriptions, banking, take out orders… I mean, really everything…
WhatsApp for jobs? Yeah only dogshit employers do that.
I’m from Spain and don’t have Watsapp nor a smartphone. Coincidentally I also lack a social life.
no social media, no browser
marketing material: social media in a glorified browserthere is android flip phones actualy?
The price is unfeasible lmao. You could get an old phone for like 50$ used, put lineage on it, don’t install any app or store and be done with it
Ah yes, another company trying to squeeze ridiculous amounts of money out of people just because “it has linux”.
The first flip phone with WhatsApp since the unfortunate demise of KaiOS devices. Sailfish probably has much higher system requirements, hence the price. Great to have an alternative though!
Android flip phones have existed for years. E.g. Saiet Link 4, as well as Cat phones (yes, it’s the same company that makes Caterpillars)
So do they make the larva of other things as well? /j
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.
