Punkt: A minimalist Android for the paranoid Readers cry out for more diversity in the phone world, but few alternatives are as striking as Punkt's take on Android. Petter Neby, founder and CEO of the Swiss design-led company, told The Register Punkt's second device is coming to market this year with an unusual USP – security hardening by BlackBerry. Just don't call it …
If it can do calls and Email ( preferably integration with an Exchange server), then I want one.
12 days of autonomy, yes please.
Also, will it phone home to Google or not ?
Edit. Just had a quick look at their site, it does do email :-)
https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/
I'm gonna get me one, it's got all that I need for work phone...
"If anyone wants to talk to me, they can give me a call. Other forms of communication, for example email or social media, are available when I choose to use them – and via a linked device that allows me to use them more effectively.”"
I must admit that I might not have fully understood what they mean by "via a linked device".. If it can talk to a 3rd party device to ask for email then why not do it directly to a mail server ??
Not even as just a dumb tether, with VPN thrown in for good measure? How do you use your work device abroad otherwise?"
Well, if JohnFen is anything like me when it comes to separating work and personal connectivity, and I suspect he is, work devices connect via work provided cellphones, not via my own kit, VPN or not.
"Not even as just a dumb tether, with VPN thrown in for good measure?"
Nope.
"How do you use your work device abroad otherwise?"
It's up to my employer to provide all the equipment and services that I need to do my job. If I need a mobile device to provide tethering, that's fine, but it will be a device provided by my employer.
I've adopted this policy from hard experience -- it makes things safer for both myself and my employer, facilitates accountability, and minimizes the possibility of misunderstandings about what I've used my employer's equipment and systems for.
Work phone gets tethered to work devices to test VPN & download software updates that get blocked\won't download via our company network (Relating to laptops connecting to great big combine harvesters & construction equipment If you really want to know).
Personal cellphone gets tethered to a personally owned laptop that I keep at work for (Most) things that I don't want being on the company network.
Not that I get much time to surf in the role, as there's very rarely a dull moment.
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It means you link your tablet to this phone and use it as a wireless access point, and do all the other stuff on your tablet.
I really wanted somehting this simple to give to my kids, without all the social media crap and security issues. Albeit cheaper and with GPS tracking.
>>Yeah, your kids won't thank you for that. Having to hide it from all the other kids... <<
Well, that means they won't be doing stupid stuff on it to impress their mates. They won't be using them at all in fact. Unless it is important. Plus there would be a low risk of it being stolen.
Which is why you gave it to them in the first place - Right?
Read more carefully. It doesn't do email
IMHO that's a careless, probably fatal omission, for business use. I follow the logic that you could use a separate device, but when you're on the hoof and only have your phone that's a fat lot of good.
On the sort of enterprise policy restricted mobile devices I've come across, the camera and storage are made inaccessible, written policy forbids installing unapproved apps, and all the device is for is voice, text, email. With much improved battery life, and better security Punkt should have been on to a winner that cleaned up in the corporate space (although that side view that looks like a 1980s desk calculator seems like a dubious choice).
Good luck to anybody hoping to get directors and senior managers to accept this. It'll start well when you pick on senior managers who lack influence and have to take what they are given, as soon as you try and get any director or influential senior manager they'll simply say "no, not touching that it doesn't meet business needs". And it'll be even worse if these get handed out, people go "OK.....errr HOLD ON! Where's my f***ing email?" and then the IT team have to take them back in.
So near, and yet so far. They must surely have agonised over the email in-or-out decision, and then they went all purist, decided to leave it out, and created a product with a very restricted market.
"Email on a 320x240 pixel display? Not really going to work all that well. Especially with today's tendency towards rich text emails with dozens of corporate logos embedded."
Hey all you marketing muppets: knock that crap off! That may look 'pretty' when you open it in the office, but it's really annoying to the rest of us. I don't care about your latest corporate branding, I'm already doing business with you.
"Especially with today's tendency towards rich text emails with dozens of corporate logos embedded."
Just turn off the ability to render images inline, the ability to interpret HTML, the ability to run Javascript, and the ability to directly follow links in emails. Doing all that dramatically improves emails and security.
"Doing all that dramatically improves emails and security."
AND makes it practically useless. And before you say to tell your correspondents to just sent plain text, try doing that to someone over your head. And before you say to find another job, one may not be forthcoming, and those that are will likely have the same problems: jumping from one sinking ship to another, IOW.
"And before you say to tell your correspondents to just sent plain text, try doing that to someone over your head."
One of the joys of being retired is that there's nobody in that position. I have, in the past had the pleasure of pointing it out to some numpty from the Co-op that his email which consisted entirely of an image of text that it failed some of his employer's core values because it would be useless to a blind person who required a screen reader. I've also stood up in a shareholders' meeting to complain about bad email practice.
"AND makes it practically useless"
Not at all. I've been doing it for years, and email remains the most useful communications tool I have access to.
"before you say to tell your correspondents to just sent plain text"
I would never tell them to do that. It doesn't matter if they send HTML emails -- I just read the unrendered HTML source. Yes, it's more tedious, but it's not that tedious.
@charles 9
Most email CLIENTS send plain text as well as the embroidered crap. Most of the actual content is in the plain text anyway.
The exception to this is automated responders by big companies (ebay/amazon/paypal etc) who often send empty 'text/plain' sections. Which is user hostile.
But personal emails even from a high up mangler, will usually have usable content in the text/plain area
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@Julian Bradfield: "How I used to do email in about 2002"
Ha, me too, but it required a data cable plugged into the bottom of my old Nokia, and a Psion CF modem stuck into the top of a Compaq Ipaq : -) The I got a Nokia 7110 with IrDA but it was a bugger to keep aligned with the Ipaq on the train.
Did they dump the rest of their phones? Because last I checked, those countries in question made an ultimatum: their citizens' data in their country or no sales ever again. And since they're sovereign and hold the keys, that put them in a Hobson's Choice (Take It Or Leave It), and if they left it, odds are someone else would've stepped in and bent over, putting everyone in the same leaky boat.
I like the look of the Gemini and I used to have a Series 3a and a Series 5.
But these days, I probably have 2 appointments in my calendar in a month, so the actual type of app that provides the information is fairly irrelevant. I currently use Outlook for Android with a calendar widget on the home screen, which generally shows a nice hot air balloon with "you have no entries for the next 7 days".
Getting more and more into mine. It's a perfectly good Android* 4G/LTE smartphone, once you get into the habit of flipping it open and sometimes having to hold it up like an open book to do portrait-mode stuff. Once you start a call you can close it up again and look normal, you can also answer calls with it closed. Bit like those flip-up clip-on sunglasses, very practical once you get past the novelty factor. Dropbox plus WPS Office turn it into a productive netbook, with a small keyboard you will either love or hate. Some use it like a laptop, some two-thumbed like a smartphone (awkward for small hands, but if that's you then you can hold it like a book when on the move and bring up the standard Android soft keyboard, save the physical one for the table top), some hold in one hand and type with the other - I often do for quick messages or adding a stumbled-on contact. Integrated productivity apps echo the old Psions and get variable responses. Maybe Planet Computers should have called it the YMMV. I love it.
* The one to watch is the new Sailfish OS build, due out soon. You can dual-boot or just dump Android.
Great write-up!
I've recently seen an (original) Psion Series 5mx (as old as I am), and I liked the form factor, so I'm considering a Gemini.
But on the other hand, there's the equally awesome, but more "computery" GPD Pocket and its copycat One Netbook Yoga. It lacks the coolness of the Psion form factor, but is a "real" computer.
So which one would you recommend?
I have the Gemini and I love it. I have a use for it and a lifestyle which fit together to make it a problem solving bulls-eye for me.
However, I can't talk about the Agenda app (they've also got a reboot of the Psion database app coming) because I've been exclusively sailfish since it become available.
"In the three years since the Priv launched, BlackBerry has yet to see it rooted. BlackBerry wants IoT device manufacturers to adopt this as a quality mark. With so much insecure home tat flying in from China, consumers and industrial buyers need all the help they can get."
While I'd admit that all IoT things needs a hellava lot more security, being unable to root a device is not necessarily an indicator of security for your devices at home - and I wouldn't use this as a measure of how secure - ultimately - that device is (be it IoT, phones, et al).
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Most of the companies I deal with now are banning or planning to ban WhatsApp from company devices.
Either you cannot have any contacts on the phone or you can't use WhatsApp (well, you can use WhatsApp with the link to contacts disabled, but you then only get a list of messages with the senders' phone numbers, no names and you can't add new contacts to WhatsApp, making it effectively useless.
We moved to a mixture of Threema and Signal, because the way they treat contacts falls within the rules of GDPR, whilst WhatsApp has been declared by many DPO, including a couple in Germany, as non-compliant. Probably the biggest company I've heard of banning WhatsApp is Conti/Continental.
I did think there'd be a market for a phone running Wear OS.
I figure it should have decent battery life given a form factor larger than a watch and there's a small app market. Add a hardware "airplane mode" switch, removable battery back a la Nokia 5110 and make sure there's no camera and it could be the ideal business phone.
Exactly. If I wanted a dumbphone - which this _IS_ - I could still have either an old one or a new one, damn nearly for free. Reading the headline I was hoping they came up with something that would enhance my control over my data and privacy on an actual smartphone but no - they just went for the trivial baby + bathwater "solution".
Wow, ad-homs against devices now.
The problem is that when you buy what's supposed to be a "dumb phone" these days it's normally just a fully functioning chipset in a crippled shell. Anyone who understands what an attack surface is realises that that isn't reducing your vulnerability, just your control.
Exactly, if I wanted to have a phone that would only call and text, I'd dig out my old Nokia (or Sony, or whatever will still hold a charge).
These days I want some kind of secure messaging, be that Signal, or Telegram or Whatsapp or whatever.
Sure, they say:
Neby said consumers probably have "four or five devices" that do WhatsApp already.
Which just begs the question, why would I bother carrying their device around as well? It doesn't give me anything I don't get elsewhere.
AOSP. Android Open Source Project. The clue is in the name.
Of course, like more traditional desktop GNU Linux distributions there is the matter of binary blob (closed) drivers (though in this case more reading up might be a good idea - this device has fewer chipsets to require binary blobs), and even nefarious hardware inserted into the supply chain (see recent articles).
And what about some of the older ones already out there? Is there something wrong with Sailfish? Meego? System 60? App assortment isn't a priority, so there goes Android's chief advantage, and the older OS's were built with weaker CPUs and batteries in mind, meaning they'll sip the power better by necessity.
There is the Nokia 8110 4G, which is an HMD Global 'feature phone', with 4G and tethering. It runs a derivative of KaiOS. It is considerably cheaper than the Punkt.
Having got one with the express intention of avoiding Android and iOS, and using tethering to give on-the-go Internet access to other devices, I'll say it is very much a curate's egg.
The derivative of KaiOS ain't open, and it is very restrictive. The UI is very unpolished, and the keyboard is nowhere near as good/ergonomic as the original Nokia 8110. If you can, I would strongly recommend trying one out for a few days before deciding whether to buy one for yourself.
I'm waiting for Sailfish OS 3.0 to be released, hopefully this month, and will likely get a compatible Sony phone, although I'm not over-keen on buying a SONY-branded product ever since the 'CD' rootkit debacle. I console myself with the sophistry that Sony Mobile are a pretty much separate company to Sony BMG - even so, for some people (including me) SONY is a toxic brand.
Assuming Sailfish 3.0 lives up to expectations, the Nokia 8810 4G will become my reserve phone - still useful, but not the daily driver.
"They're obliged to provide source code for all the GPL stuff but not for anything they've added."
Plus ODM drivers are always blobbed because the market there is cutthroat and no one wants to Give Information to the Enemy. And because all 4G-and-up tech and most 3G tech is still under active patent, opening modem chips up (the most important part of the cell phone) ain't gonna happen for any length of time that would be practical.
Interesting comments.
They seem to go along the line.
Great phone, if only it had....
Mapping
any other app i use more than 2 times a day
While i am sure there are niche markets for such a phone, in the end people find while minimalism looks good in the shop window, real life is more complicated than that
I may be just a crazy old man, but I want one.
Maybe ...
But then I'm also crazy (varied friends' opinions), for the moment refuse to consider myself old and would also want one, albeit not for 350.
It's just a f*ck*ng phone FGS.
Just without all the assorted/innecessary crap that cell phones come with these days, which should really make it much cheaper.
That said, I get along just fine with an old BB9320 (when the keyboard is not acting up) or a Samsung E220 as a trusty spare.
I'd rather not carry multiple devices if I can help it. I think that's the case for most people which is why they often have one powerful phone type device which does 90% of their needs.
This is an expensive dumb phone with tethering which means I'd still have to carry multiple devices.
If I'm going to carry multiple devices anyway I would probably choose a sub $50 dumb phone and a $50 4G dongle or a device with built in LTE.
This seems a bit, well, wanky.
Anyone remember the Harry Enfield sketch where he runs a shop called "I saw you coming"?
it's good that it does calls really well. much like its useful when a toilet flushes, or a knife cuts.
cant image what i'd do with a phone that didnt make calls very well. but i guess this is the world in which we live, where products are credited for doing the very thing that predicates their existance.
The Cat B35 is already out, thankfully! £99 direct from Cat, probably slightly more elsewhere.
It has a certain bulky charm to it, plus a scratch resistant screen, which is a big plus over the HMD 8110 4G. Given the pricepoint I'll probably end up getting one, to serve as a backup/featurephone w. hotspot and email. It covers most bases, and everything else is just residual habit from smartphone use (and the kind of thing that I don't mind not having if I, say, run out of juice on the android behemoth that lives in my trousers.
I do have some minor reservations about KaiOS, since I don't know how much information is able to be slurped from it via the inevitable google bloat. Possibly also worth considering that while whatsapp is available on the platform it's currently only available for Jio devices, and neither KaiOS/Whatsapp haven't made a statement of intent re:broader availability which might be an issue for some.
I bought the 8110 4G recently, screen scratched on the day of purchase. Must be all the diamonds (pocket grit, plastic screen) in my pocket?
Wish I'd seen the Cat before I impulse bought.
4G hotspot works abroad without buying extra tethering, so saving me a fiver a day already.
Removable battery on the 8110 might be good if I could find replacements, over the Cat, but that has 600 extra mahs.
Comparable in size to the current Sony compact, which is about the smallest waterproof Android. How far we have come...not always in a good way.
I remember around 2000 on the Underground seeing someone with his brand new Motorola V8088 - a tiny thing - and obviously desperately hoping someone would notice he had the latest, coolest, tiniest...but of course there was no signal so he was reduced to fiddling with and opening and shutting it ostentatiously. Today I am sure that man has the latest, biggest iPhone.
I share your reservations about KaiOS.
That said, the JioPhone 2 looks interesting, with the Qwerty-keyboard, but since it is only available in India, locked to Reliance's network, it's not something I could play with. As it also seems to be locked to Reliance's walled garden (Jio Store), I suspect KaiOS is aimed at network operators wanting to maintain or increase their ARPU and not paranoid FLOSS junkies like me.
“consumers probably have "four or five devices" that do WhatsApp already
Well, no, they probably don’t, because WhatsApp unlike many competitor messaging apps restricts itself to phones only, so it doesn’t run as an app on my tablets, PCs, Macs etc. (I don’t count running it in a browser with convoluted access as a sufficient App).
I read down the first comments incredulously trying to understand why no one was asking that. Who needs this amazing security when there's nowt to secure? Stick a PIN on a burner phone or search the back of the sofa for an old blackberry and surely you're up on what this offers?
Me, I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it did email, maps, photos, WhatsApp, tethering and, ah, well, I'd miss Facbook so I'd want that, and if I've got that I may as well whack Twitter on it. And it's businessy so I'll need LinkedIn. If only I could buy a phone with all that for £350.
The point of six weeks of standby is the three times as long you could do other things, like using the tethering if you have an account that will actually permit tethering for long enough to run the battery down. The benefit would be that, with a massive profit margin already, it could be useful to the user without doing much to the company.
It does have an odd choice of features since it does have GPS/GLONASS as well as accelerometer, gyro, and compass but apparently nothing to use them as I wouldn't call that screenshot a proper mapping app. Once it's tethered, does it send the data (NMEA?) to the device with the mapping software along the tether link or does that need a separate connection?
Either way given they're going for the minimalism vibe I'm surprised they didn't go with an e-paper display.
.....but a few quid for a ten year old "feature phone" (see phone repair shop on your local high street) and a fiver for a Lebara SIM and a few minutes.....all cash.....and you're all set....completely anonymous....a few phone calls.....then repeat as above as often as you like.
*
My math says you can do this at least twenty times before you hit £350.
*
What am I missing here?
PS Just had a Sony Experia (Android) as an experiment with a "smartphone" for three months. HATED IT!!! Going back to recipe described above.
@Waseem Alkurdi
You haven't done any of this, have you? No activation needed if you are using CASH! A Lebara SIM costs £1.....CASH. Five pounds worth of minutes costs...guess....five pounds in CASH. The minutes are identified by a voucher number which you key into the feature phone.
*
All done, all CASH..............NO PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION. Got it?
"Many countries require ID for PAYG."
Like in the US, most phones refuse to activate without a full-on registration process including presenting your full name and so on, and the stuff is double-checked before registration is complete, meaning attempting to fudge the name can get you in trouble with the FCC (who sets the requirements re: emergency communications, police actions, etc.). Most people in the US who use prepaid phones because have bad credit and can't qualify for postpaid plans with a bill.
5/7ths is better than 0/7ths, ignoring the environmental cost of manufacturing both vehicles. It might also be pointed out that particulate pollution is worse on weekdays in urban places. Mayve the Overfinch Range Rover is only driven around our subject's country pad. Still a benefit over driving it in town.
The features available on this phone can be had in any cheap lg/lte/huawei FREE phone out there.
I paid $300 for my Galaxy S8+ used. I understand that Punkt a minimalist phone, but it should cost less than a year old maxed-out Samsung top of the line phone.
I "minimalist" phone ought to have a minimalist price.
Not officially. WhatsApp officially works only on one's primary phone, the account being tied to its phone number. You can synchronise a web app view from a desktop/laptop, but they've made it intentionally awkward to do the same from a tablet. There are of course workarounds for all this, involving number fakers and whatnot, but not for the faint-hearted.
When it comes to cell phones, it can't be helped. It's expected to receive communications: a basic part of its function. Without a unique identifier like an IMEI, there's literally no way for cell phone providers to tell phones apart and address them individually: and before you start with broadcasting, bandwidth is precious over the air due to the Shannon-Hartley Theorem. It's basically a part-and-parcel problem: you either have both or neither.
""four or five devices" that do WhatsApp already"
Quick office survey of the 9 people sat round me. We all have exactly ONE device that can do Whatsapp.
If I wanted to use a basic phone I'd just dig out the 12yr old Nokia 6300 in my drawer. It doesn't get used much these days apart from hammering in nails and removing ice from the car in winter.
“If anyone wants to talk to me, they can give me a call. Other forms of communication, for example email or social media, are available when I choose to use them – and via a linked device that allows me to use them more effectively.”
Petter Neby, founder of Punkt.
Perfect. Thank you. Period...or Punkt!
Nokia 207 though not Android ( it's series 40) nor 4G is still a simple cheap 3G/3.5G phone with Exchange and IMAP support. Replaceable battery good time between charges i.e several days. Fast startup time. Micro SD card storage up to 32Gb. On that basis, ticks many boxes for the minimalist fan I would think. In a robust little candy bar form factor. Colour but non-touchscreen display with physical keypad.
And it can be used for tethering, via USB. Great for environments where WiFi or Bluetooth might not work so well - e.g at trade exhibitions from personal experience - where the radio spectrum is crowded by others trying the same.
The 3/3.5G connectivity is great for the tethering capability as well as for email and the phone's built in web browser. Also better sound quality in calls with 3G calling. 3/3.5G adds future proofing - for countries that are looking at switching off 2G coverage to reuse radio band for higherspeed data. 3/3.5G also means phone works with Three in UK which is a 3G and above mobile network.
With all these features though, one would still wonder why anything more than Series 40 is necessary. Therefore use of Android in the Punkt seems excessive.
The Nokia 207 is what the resurrected 3310 should have been. The original 3310 had no camera and nor does the 207. This is great for several reasons: makes it suitable for those environments where cameras are not permitted like some high security workplaces and some rappers concerts! Secondly encourages you to be in the moment of an experience rather than recording it. Thirdly no camera lens to worry about scratching. Adding a camera in the resurrected 3310 was feature creep.
VERY disappointed that there are two models - a 'European' one and an 'American' one - with different spectrum cover in each model. A premium product like this should have the ability to be used in the widest possible number of places and it doesn't. Was excited when the new model was announced and so let down when the the specs were finally released.
Probably because there's a lot more involved than you think. Not only do you need the right modem chip (and last I checked, only Qualcomm's chips tick all the boxes), but you also need specific antenna design to cover the bases (physics gets in the way there). Also remember, US LTE bands and other LTE bands are mutually exclusive due to prior allocations. The biggest hangup is that 1.8GHz--LTE Band III, the most universal one--was already taken by the US government (the military, I think) long before LTE was ever a thing.
There's a StackExchange discussion about this.
It looks like you can't drop the battery. Honestly I'd say that's the ONLY security feature that matters now days. I had a "friend" who was getting located by the cops in a city and dropping her battery was the ONLY way she could see the cops chasing her quit moving her direction and start scratching their heads. (other than ditching the phone entirely of course).
These things do not turn off. Sure, I'd trust that MAYBE Blackberry can make a phone that reliably turns off. MAYBE. But without the backup of killing the power entirely just forget it. Also, how can you have a hacker friendly phone that DOESN'T allow you to drop the battery.
So silly.
I have 5 kids, ages 7-16. This is the ONLY phone that offers talk and text without an internet browser and all the apps. I know a ton of families that would adopt this platform. The problem is, even most flip phones have web browsers.
People are finally catching onto the issues with social media. It's tearing society apart, keeping us from talking to one another, all while Big Data tracks and records our every move to be sold to the highest bidder. And yet, we hand over these devices to our kids when they turn 3 years old to keep them occupied.
This phone is marketed towards executives, but it's perfect for families looking to keep their kids from turning into another drone staring at their hand. Not to mention the dangers of hardcore you-know-what at their fingertips.
Sincerely,
A Parent Who Cares About Their Kids' Technology Consumption
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