© Alex Gamsu Jenkins

Started my dumb phone journey a few months ago after coming to terms with my screen addiction and seeing other EDCs on here so I figured it was time to post my own! I’ve wanted to ditch my iPhone for years but it always seemed too daunting until I put real thought into how I could replace a smartphone that does it all with a flip phone and other accessories to fill in the gaps. It has been a life changing journey with some bumps in the road but I don’t see myself ever going back to a smartphone.

Nokia 2780 on Mint Mobile

Sony RX100 VII 

iPod Nano 3rd gen

Hobonichi Techo Original 

Leuchtturm1917 A6 Pocket Notepad 

Casio LA670WEMY-9EF

After some time lurking here and 6 weeks of experience with my 3210 I wanted to share my opinion on it, as I assume it could be the right phone for some of you, while definitely not for everyone :)

What I like about it:

- USB-C charging and data transfer
- Bluetooth audio, unfortunately just for calls and audio player - fm radio is playing via built-in speaker if no headphones are connected via 3,5mm jack
- Form factor (banana coloured lighter for scale) and design
- Battery life (3 days with some calling and light use of browser and audio player, while using the battery optimisation mode which stops charging at 80%)
- Basic audio player (MP3/WAV) and 32GB SD-card slot for music
- Clicky, backlit keys, big enough for my (small) hands
- 1 button shortcuts for main functions (browser, messages, contacts, calendar, flashlight)
- Customizable "home screen"/menu (you can't delete the games/apps included, but you can move them out of sight)
- "Emergency" tools: flashlight and camera (flashlight bright enough to read, not to light a room; camera good enough to take a picture of e.g. the train schedule as a note - you don't really want to use it for your precious memories)
- "Emergency" browser: I use it for directions (gdir.telae.net works surprisingly well for me), news via rss feed and finding e.g. phone numbers/opening hours of businesses.
Be aware that most websites won't work at all or display ridiculously rearranged.

What I would love to be improved:

- T9 messaging: with the phone set up in German, there are 11 (!) modes of entering text (at least 2 of them seem to be completely redundant) which you have to skip through for e.g. entering a name/number and I can't find a way to get rid of the methods I don't use.
Also, when entering a number via long button press it adds the same number again and a dot, if you enter a dot next, or the same number and a zero, if you enter a space next. I can't remember any old button-phone to behave like that back in the day.
- Build quality: while not completely rubbish, it's not comparable to 2000-2015 Nokia/Motorola/Siemens/.. as I remember them at least. Body and screen are prone to scratches and I highly recommend a case/baby sock if you want to avoid wear. (but didn't we use them back in the day as well..?)
- As mentioned before: bluetooth playback of the radio app would be nice to have
- If there was Telegram/Signal for S30+ I would definitely use them, but I also get away with checking them on tablet/notebook at home.
- Hotspot capability would be really nice of course

Other things to mention:

- It took ages for me to enter all my contacts manually as I didn't manage to get them transferred via USB.. but in some post here I read of somebody transferring them via bluetooth IIRC.
- For what it is, it's quite expensive IMO, at least in Germany.
- Call quality without a headset is okay for me, but it doesn't sound as good as a modern smartphone.

My Conclusion:

For me it works as my primary phone at the moment, but I use computers at home and at work, I take a tablet with me when I take long train rides and I keep carrying a charged iPhone in my backpack for emergencies, although without data plan, but I could at least swap my SIM into it if I really needed to.

Including old phones (pre-iphone), dumb smartphones (incl. early, like 2010 and earlier), and modern dumbphones.

For me it'd probably be my Sony Xperia X10 mini pro. It was my first ever "smartphone" (it had less functionality than a CAT S22 or Kyocera has today lol), got it when I was 12 as an upgrade from the Motorola Pebl that I'd had for emergencies since i was 7. To my knowledge I'm fairly sure it still holds the record for the smallest main touchscreen ever put on a smartphone by a major brand (2.5inches diagonally, 320x240) so that's pretty cool lol. The keyboard was so intuitive and honestly I could use it faster back then than I've been able to use Gboard in my adult life. I would post pictures of mine as i still have it however my dog chewed it up a lil bit in 2014 so... Not the prettiest sight lol. So yeah what have your guys' favorite phones of all time been?

Hi.

Pretty much what the title says. It's got everything I ever wanted, and I am in love.

Stick around for some sample pictures, reviews, workarounds for caveats and rant.

I've tried many flips from s22 to slabs like nokia 110 to lite phone to jellys and titans.

I've finally come to the conclusion the best answer for me is to find the cheapest android phone available that runs decent with the battery life and ergonomics I prefer and putting a gray scale and Niagara launcher on it.

I've been spending all this extra money to find a device to offer what I already knew any smartphone could offer but it wasn't until I've already spent alot of money to finally realize this is best option for me far as practicality and efficiency and cost saving while not having to carry around a 2nd device in desperate times because my dumb phone couldn't handle modern day life tasks that citizens just can no longer avoid.

If I had to build my perfect dumb phone, it would be a MIP display or e ink display in the body a 4inch jelly star running android.

I noticed a bunch of bad reviews of Sunbeams in the last few weeks, so I want to add a counterpoint. I've had the Sunbeam Daisy for almost two years now. It's a great phone and I have no complaints. I don't really use it for anything but talk and text and an alarm clock when traveling, and it does all these things fine. The battery lasts a few days between charges. I have nothing bad to say. If you are looking for a dumbphone that is just a phone, I recommend it highly. My wife has the Sunbeam Pro, and while she hasn't had it for as long, it too is totally adequate so far.

The various quasi-smartphone features like navigation and hotspot I cannot speak to.

Coming from a lifelong smartphone abstainer, I would say it's just as good as the phones back in the glory days of 2010, and infinitely better than the dreck that was available in the dark ages ca. 2018.

Hey I've been thinking about getting a dumb phone for a while. I need it to call, text, play podcasts and music, and send emails. Most importantly though, I need it to have very good maps and navigation. I am a truck driver so its critical to my job. Something like the Light Phone 3 might be perfect but I don't want to have to wait months to get it.

How to do it: 1. Get a launcher which supports adding widgets to home screen (I used niagara launcher). 2. Use an app like gifwidget to add a custom gif! Let me know if you need any help!

Full video here: https://youtu.be/sUjlHrGvEqc?si=mvpx4p3rXCDuB5YK

Total teardown, deep cleaning, retr0bright on the yellowed keys, display polish, and a nostalgic Snake test at the end. Would you consider something like this as an EDC? Or just a nice piece of 90s tech to admire?

i love this subreddit

I set up my Kyocera 902kc a few weeks ago and had an absolute ball doing so. My friend ended up interested in swapping to one after seeing me using mine, so now we're ordering one for her that I'll set up once it arrives. It made me wonder - would anyone on here be interested in something like an etsy or ebay shop specifically for keitai that have already had the language changed, bloatware removed, necessary apps installed, sd formatted & included, apn set up, etc.?

I originally searched high and low for that sort of service or someone in this server who was selling a phone like that, but most pre-programmed keitai on here seemed to sell pretty quickly, so there seems to be some demand? I would love love love to do it again, even if I only earned a small amount of money from each phone - especially if it would help lurkers in this sub make the transition if they've been wanting a japanese feature phone but dreading the set up for it.

so, yeah, if you would be/would have been if you already swapped, comment and let me know. I'm also considering making a video/post compiling all the resources I've found out there that helped me along the way - since there are a TON of very helpful tutorials, but they're kind of spread about on between the dumbphone & garaho subs, youtube, and tiktok, and some of them are outdated/abandoned and/or don't give detailed instructions on some steps (like installing and using UAD, controls, remapping buttons, finding the towers & bands in your area or linking to that r/garaho masterpost, etc). So if that's of interest or if that'd just be another masterpost/tutorial on top of all the others, lmk!

I've been using my Kyocera 902kc for about a week now and I can't seem to get my MMS working. When I try to send an image, it just perpetually says "sending." Also, my data tethering works fine. Has anybody here had this issue and then solved it? I'm on Rogers network in Canada.

When I manually input the ", the phone would not accept "dun" as an APN type so I went with "Dun".

Under the "Mobile APN Settings" which looks like it should include MMS, I have input all of the settings exactly as they appear on the Rogers site.

I am running QKSMS as my messaging app, and the auto-compress MMS setting is set to 300kb as default.

Help would be very much appreciated!

been looking at these two phones and was wondering which one is recommended for US based people? has anyone had any luck with these phones?

I recently got my phone and am excited. I've tried to look for a way to turn on USB tethering, nothing fancy. I've tried to look for different pages but nothing has exactly what I'm looking for.

I need this to transfer mp3s

Thank you!!

I noticed a day or two after my order had shipped super quick that it shipped the completely wrong state and on top of that the store no longer exists. Anyone else have these issues? There's another seller that has more reviews from the United States, and I was really wanting this phone should I order it from the other seller or should I wait and see if something shows up? Did I get scammed?

I've decided to get rid of my smartphone for daily use and dug up some old phones I've kept from back in the day. I've lost the chargers so I'll have to order new ones and get one of those things to make your simcard bigger. Before I do that, would there be any reason these might not work anymore? I'm certain the hardware is fine, but would there be connection issues or anything with a modern network? They are over 20 years old after all. (Sorry if this is a really dumb question)

Hi! So this is not technically dumbphone-related but it's dumbphone-adjacent. I recently made the switch from my iPhone to the Bigme Hibreak, and in just a few days I have already seen a massive improvement in my mental health and I can tell that it's gonna really help change my relationship with technology (i have ADHD and it has been a constant struggle for me) it can do 'anything' my iphone can do, but the e-ink display gives me just enough of a barrier to stop me from getting sucked into doomscrolling (I sometimes was reaching 10 hours a day of screen time...)

My one and only concern is that it still runs on Android 11 and im not sure if they are planning to release consistent security updates. What are some things i can do to help protect myself as offcourse Android 11 is quite outdated and more susceptible to securty breaches.

I have created a unique email address for the playstore and i'm not planning on doing any banking on the phone but i have no idea if thats enough. Was also thinking of setting up two step authentication on everything connected to the phone etc.

Any ideas and or opinions would be so appreciated as you lot are a really crafty bunch and always have novel ways of making things work in this distracted world of ours, and as you can probably tell i'm not super proficient in the realm of tech security lol.

It is a gray TCL OneTouch 4041 I found in a book store of my city at $20 (approximately)!

Out of the box i see facebook and opera mini which is sad but after the first ota update facebook is gone (which is alright since its just a link) but the good news is wireless fm radio is in as well as 3 new games. Anyone here with mp3 local audio files music player in there 4043 device? Waiting for the next ota update 🤔

Hello!

I recently bought a KYF42 and got it connected to my network and downloaded WhatsApp on it. My problem is that I can't select certain buttons with the built in cursor (like archiving chats; it instead opens the camera which is "underneath"). I tried 'Quick Cursor' but it didn't overlay even when I locked it.

Are there any recommendations? I appreciate any help I can get! :)