Feature phones all the rage as parents try to shield kids from harm Sales of "dumb" phones are on the rise in the UK, according to telco Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), with parents choosing them instead of smartphones to try and spare their kids from the perils of social media and instant messaging. One of the largest mobile operators in Britain, VMO2 says it has seen sales of non-smartphones double …
We've had 10-15 years of the great experiment and it's obviously been a failure. If tech companies have no inclination to fix the problems they've made then any parent who doesn't want to see their kids end up with chronic brain rot won't be giving them a smartphone.
A feature phone must have WhatsApp and Google Maps to be really useful. It is back to basics with essential apps of the 1st generation smartphones.
Next generation fone will have AI for voice interactions and Search. Which would be great for Accessibility.
Tiny pocket size is a huge plus.
The Nokia Tough 800 fulfilled that brief - Google Maps and Whatsapp, on top of the usual calling/ text/ basic games.
Great battery life, dual sim support, 4G and can act as a hotspot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_800_Tough
Whatsapp has just - last month or so - been deprecated/ can't connect any more. Which is a shame.
I bought one for my kid, and can hand it to them if they want to play further afield. It's great.
Not all of the devices do. For the ones that have more than phone and SMS, it's common to see KaiOS running them, and KaiOS has both of those services available. I don't have such a device myself, so I don't know how well those work, but I think you'll probably find a few of those around. It is a fork of what used to be Firefox's mobile OS attempt. It's mostly closed-source now and when I looked at the internals, I wasn't that impressed, but it can be sold quite cheaply.
Firefox OS was definitely quite a good idea, a lightweight OS running only web apps on modest and relatively affordable smartphone-like hardware in the Goldilocks zone (not too overpowered and expensive, but, just as importantly, not too underpowered either).
But sadly, from all the reviews I have read, it seems that KaiOS have taken the OS but try to squeeze too much out of the cheapiest nastiest most sluggish underspecced RAM-crippled hardware they think they can get away with, with sadly predictable results. Yes, they are mostly trying to reach price points for certain developing world markets, but it really does sound like the proverbial basic old skool Nokia phone would be a far better experience and much better value for money for that market, even if it has slightly fewer features. Ironically, some of Nokia's later lower end Symbian smartphones were still reasonably good in comparison to their bigger brothers (and had a reasonable web browser): if they hadn't invited the pyromaniac in, it would probably have been possible to still churn those out now extremely cheaply for developing markets today (or MeeGo would have got a proper foot in the door, at least).
There are various semi-hobbyist Linux smartphone projects on the go: I keep hoping that eventually (at least) one of them will get to a stage of reasonable utility! It could make an interesting Reg article to do a round up of where things currently are in that area?
"Kids can make calls
Kids can text
All the essential use cases are covered."
You could even delete texting and still be fine. It's good for times when you are in a meeting and talking on your phone would be a big faux pax, but how often is that an issue with kids more than texting in class with the phone under the desk?
We've had 10-15 years of the great experiment and it's obviously been a failure.
I swore that when I no longer needed a smart phone for my job, I was going to go back to carrying a tiny flip phone. Now that I'm there, I no longer see the point to a feature phone. I don't take phone calls any longer from anyone not in my contact list. I can go weeks without needing to make a phone call. And I get 8-10 times more spam calls than legitimate ones. While I could receive texts on a feature phone, there's no way I'm going to send any from one. So now I'm wondering, do I need to carry a phone at all? Maybe if I run across one that provides a decent hotspot that I can use with a tablet. (for maps and web browsing on the road)
"Now that I'm there, I no longer see the point to a feature phone. I don't take phone calls any longer from anyone not in my contact list."
I'm quite similar. I train my customers to call if something is time sensitive and email when they need to send me "bulk" information. I used to have text disabled at the carrier, but they won't do that anymore. Now I tell people not to text if we haven't set something up beforehand. If they need to send me an access code or contact information, fine, let me know first. Don't send me RFQ's via text since I need to be at the computer to prepare those anyway and I have a workflow to capture emails into job "folders".
I don't get a lot of calls (non-spam), but there's no way I could just chuck the phone in the bin altogether. Times have changed and expectations have changed. Customers think I'm weird enough by not texting. I think they are weird to want to spend 20 minutes texting back and forth when all could be discussed via a 3 minute voice call. I can also put on the headset and be making dinner at the same time.
for the wife, but not because her old one was broken, simply because it used 3G and the service provider kept badgering her to replace it as the 3G network is due to shut down. She's now got a 4G Doro phone. I'm sorely tempted to go back to using a feature phone too as I don't use any apps on my Android, just don't trust them, especially doing banking on such devices. Ideally I'd like a dumb phone with a decent forward facing camera but all too often they come with crap cameras.
I hate it when the bank tellers, medical office staff, or other customer reps pressure me to install and use their company's apps.
Me: "I don't install apps on my phone."
Them: "But why not?"
Me: (not having a short explanation of, 'why your apps' security is crap and I don't want my personal data Hoovered', and not wanting to argue with their ignorant/party-line assurances that 'Our apps are secure.' and, 'Your data security is important to us...') "I just don't."
A company I have to deal with had a website... then an app (which as is often the case, is just a badged WebView of the website) but now they've disabled the website - if you go there, your only option is to download the app.
Now, it's probably the app has moved to a different URL, or the website does browser sniffing, so it could be worked around, but I can't be arsed to bother - I'll just phone them instead, and tell them why I'm phoning.
EDIT: I just went to the site to get the URL to post here, and the site now works again online. I bet they had too many complaints!
And it wasn't an accident. It previously actually said [paraphrased] "this function is no longer available on the website as we now have a whizzo flashy app to wow you. Please download that instead"
"And it wasn't an accident. It previously actually said [paraphrased] "this function is no longer available on the website as we now have a whizzo flashy app to wow you. Please download that instead""
If I find that a business requires I install an app, I find another company that wants to sell me something by any means possible. It's the same as a store that doesn't take cash. I'd rather all my customers pay me with cash, but I have to be able to take plastic to make it as easy as possible for them to give me money. Even checks are fine. I can deposit a check and have the full amount credited to my account rather than somebody else in the middle taking 3%+. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I don't seen any banks paying 3% interest so I'm out of pocket to be able to process money. All of my prices are going up Jan 1 and I've already started sending invoices with the new amounts discounted to the old pricing with a note of when there will be no more discount (Jan 1). Everything is nibbling away at my bottom line, bloody parasites.
My 24 year old daughter accompanied me to the "close" of buying a new car. I wanted her to see/experience the sales tactics/pressure as an observer. Apparently a big part of the "upsell" these days is getting buyers to sign up for recurring charges in the form of "connected services"*, the "foot in the door" of which is getting the buyer to install the automative manufacturer's "app" on their smart phone (no obligation, free trial of connected services for months, and certain car features that require the app even without connected services). My daughter said it was very funny to see the look on the salespersons face when I matter of factly rejected the app installation with "I don't install apps on my phone". He was blindsided apparently, and it took the wind out of his sales and ended all discussion for the "connected services".
He didn't even ask "why not?" But if he did, my answer would have been the same - "I just don't." No explanation is needed, anymore than any business spends any amount of time justifying their policies to their customers.
*Only one of the connected services really needs to be mediated through a cellular radio connection and a global data network, but the car manufacturer would really like the owner to be paying the bill for the cellular service over which they will continually monitor the owner's use of the owner's vehicle. They have even built in the ability for the car to automatically adjust the power driver's seat to a specific person but tied it to the presence of a registered smart phone rather than a key fob or (goodness, how low tech) a simple button press.
Me: "I don't install apps on my phone."
Them: "But why not?"
Well, you must be of a certain age, believing there is something ethereal like free choice and all that...
Council of the EU, Press release, 26 March 2024 10:30
European digital identity (eID): Council adopts legal framework on a secure and trustworthy digital wallet for all Europeans
...or...
BENEFITS: Why EU Digital Identity Wallets
And yes, this is the EU. But don't smirk. I'm not so confident that other territories will let this opportunity slip by unused.
I do have a smartphone. I was prescribed a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and need either a smartphone (assuming I still want to call anyone) or two devices - a reader for the CGM and a phone. The reader that came from the NHS is basically a medium sized smartphone but without the phone bits so carrying both would have been awkward.
I bought a Samsung Galaxy X5 as the smallest I could find that would read the CGM and I do have the LibreLink app installed plus the Samsung crap I couldn't get rid of.
You know that at a minimum, LibreLink transmits all your readings to Abbott? I carry two phones, one is an old Pixel 3 with no service. My former doctor looked at me like I had dementia when I told her it didn't have cell service and I forbid them to connect it to WiFi. I'm currently considering their reader, or installing a firewall to block internet access to their app on my primary phone. But note, if you don't allow the app to phone home it will get slower and slower over time. (6 - 12 months) You'll have to reinstall and wipe the data to get performance back.
When I was in uni, I had some business in the chemical engineering building. As I crossed the middle of the Quad(rangle -- sidewalks through a square grassy area in front of the student union building), I saw three large boxes of porn in the middle of the sidewalk.
When I returned from Ch.E. 45 minutes later, all that remained were three empty boxes.
"Interestingly enough, my local convenience store had absolutely no problem with me buying cigarettes when I was 14, as they knew they were for my mother, but buying a Playboy was Right Out."
These days you get the folks signed up for grocery delivery and order smokes and beer that way. The delivery person is just dropping off boxes labeled for that address and can't give a toss about checking ID's, they have a quota to fill and a time per stop to stay under.
When we were kids originally, kids everywhere seem to have been learning to create spam and malware. So nowadays all the kids seeing our crappy social media and malware world will hopefully start creating a much better and safer world, having grown up seeing today's tech and social media stupidity.
When we were kids creating it, we never thought we were bad, we just thought we were smart - now years later we know that so much stuff in our world has turned out to be so bad - we never thought we were bad, we just screwed up our views of what we were doing.
So I'm hopeful that our kids everywhere will eventually create a better tech world than we have ever done.
i've been using a dumb phone since 2010 or so as my main phone. battery life was the main reason tbh. but as i went through a nokia asha 302 and now a nokia 3310 from 2017 they served me very well. i added a few java apps to spare my smartphones battery life. i use the smartphone for media player mostly. now they're turning off 3g and the 4g dumb dumb phones don't run java apps. so i'm just about done with them now sadly. the new dumb phones are just too dumb.
When the kids give their overprotective parents enough grief to toss their offsprings' "feature" phones I hopefully be able to pickup a decent small light 4G VoLTE dumb phone so that I can hang up on the unceasing spam from chappies in Bombay still trying to flog dodgy photovoltaics. (Unsurprisingly no one else phones me.)
I have a lot of sympathy for the parents but I think just eliminating (for everyone) social media in all its ghastly manifestations would be a far more beneficial approach. Banning cameras in phones would help as most social media seems predicated on the ability to near instantaneously post images or video on some daft web page often with ensuing embarrassment and regret.
What about these phones is a "feature?" I thought the total lack of features was the selling point. The "seniors" phones had large actual keys - a feature I suppose) but given most people now don't remember phone numbers (more than seven digits?, ten in AU) the visually challenged have trouble navigating the dreadful contacts app compounded by the small screen.
Perhaps a voice operated "feature" phone makes sense in this context - a few years a young colleague demonstrated how my low end Huawei 3G smart phone could be voice operated and appeared to work reasonably well. As I said then there will be ice skating in Hades long before I start talking to machines (that includes voicemail) or I will be totally bloody dribbling ga-ga. ("Now then! It's wicked to mock the afflicted." (Frankie Howerd.))
Well, if the current trend of getting back to 'feature phones' is representative of the next generation's move, the French have your terminological angst already solved: it's called a 'hygiaphone'. Great device, no fancy keyboard, no camera, no socials of course, can even work without 3G. Just check it!
"Banning cameras in phones would help as most social media seems predicated on the ability to near instantaneously post images or video on some daft web page often with ensuing embarrassment and regret."
The lenses are just plastic. Some 600 grit sandpaper will do that camera enough damage to not be recoverable while at the same time being good enough that anything that's using the camera as a light sensor will probably still work. Isn't it great that you can't get parts or service for you phone due to .... reasons?
Girl without smartphone unable to join in lesson
A mum has said her 11-year-old daughter returned home from school in tears because she did not have a smartphone to use in class.
Celeste Lewis said she felt guilty after her daughter Ava's school, Whitchurch High in Cardiff, encouraged pupils to use their phones in lessons to do things like look up locations on Google Earth.
"do things like look up locations on Google Earth. "
You'd think there could be a much larger screen in the classrooms to be able to see what's being displayed better. Google Earth on a phone? Where did all of that money go that was being allocated to have computers in the classroom?
In my home...
Feature phone gets a signal. Smartphone does not (not even SMS).
Feature phone starts in seconds (useful for banking 2FA). Smartphone - takes long enough to make coffee.
Feature phone sound quality on calls is good enough. Smartphone sound is a constant problem.
Feature phone fits in trouser pocket. Smartphone falls out of pockets (all of them). because it is too big.
Feature phone takes keypresses. Smartphone touch screen almost unusable with adult fingers.
Featurephone purchase £30 at Tesco, sim for 99p.Smartphone - low purchase cost forces a monthly contract at 3x what I want to pay
Feature phone works well with pay-as-you-go. Smartphone requires contract (£20 a month is cheapest I can get)
So I have both because I have to, but the featurephone gets used. The smartypants gets used very rarely, and then as a remote control, not a phone.
I'm not following some of your objections, and some others are easy to understand but I haven't experienced them.
"Feature phone works well with pay-as-you-go. Smartphone requires contract (£20 a month is cheapest I can get)"
Why does it require a contract and why that contract? I've had smartphones on no-contract plans. It worked fine. The restricted data meant that I chose to prevent most applications from using mobile data, leaving only a couple I wanted to keep, but otherwise, it was fine. Is your device locked? Otherwise, why can't you put in whatever SIM you want?
"Feature phone starts in seconds (useful for banking 2FA). Smartphone - takes long enough to make coffee."
I just don't experience that. Smartphones I've had are pretty fast to unlock and cold start in at most thirty seconds. The only way they would take longer is if I've completely discharged them. I wonder if there's something unusual about your phone.
On some other points, especially the size, I definitely agree with you. Manufacturers seem to agree that people want long and wide devices, and while they hire researchers so they probably have some data to back up this idea, I am not in that set. Finding something small enough is a challenge and one I'll have to deal with when mine breaks, which I hope will be years from now.
Whilst I agree with your points, you can have a "smartphnone" on PAYG. I use "1p mobile". You have to top up something like a fiver a month to keep it active, but I have that done on direct debit, so it's effectively a contract for 5 quid a month with 5 quids worth of free calls thrown in.
1p a minute, 1p a text, 1p a MB
Some might think that VMO2 has bought a load of "feature phones" on the cheap and now is looking for a profitable way to get rid of them.
Whip up a scare...that will get the "panicked parents " in a tizwaz and screaming that something MUST be done
Add it to the pile along with:
Dognapping
Hobo marks (aka utility road markings)
Satanic music (but only when played backwards and you *want* to hear something satanic)
Gay panic (oh wait that's comes back again already)
I have two little ones so will need to think about phones at some point in the future, for me the problem isn't smartphones its the internet as a whole, giving a child a smartphone gives them complete access to the internet and everything that comes with it.
If they designed a smartphone that could be managed by a parent, similar to who Amazon Fire Kids tablets are managed then I think it would be the best of both worlds - A feature phone is a safe option but there are features they don't have that I would like to leverage
One of the issue with feature phones is that nowadays you can find it hard to navigate life without a app. Banking is the worst for this. Yes, you can still do telephone banking or even in person banking, if you can wait 40 minutes in a queue or drive 10 miles to the nearest branch that hasnt closed down. Event and airline tickets are almost as bad, mostly now needing a download, which you can print out at home or pay a fee to have printed and sent to you. With a feature phone you have no choice but to put up with the friction this brings to life.
I think the better answer for children may be to give them the smart phone that they desire but functionally limit it. This can certainly be done with both Android and iOS. On iOS, which I am familiar with, you can have total control over what apps are available and usable on the phone and in many cases also control what features of an app can be used. This is all done in in Settings->Accessibility->Assistive Access. Once set up you can limit the user to whatever apps you approve of, eg phone, messages, maps but not (say) social media or the app store.
I have accounts (including CC) with 4 banks. Every one of them has a quite usable web interface. While at least two are constantly asking me to use their app, I won't. (And if they cripple their web interface, I'll take my business elsewhere.)
Stuff like that won't affect giving your kid a feature phone, but it could be a problem for giving one to your parent.
Not a problem for my mom though, she has a smartphone but uses it as a dumbphone only to make or receive calls (and only receive calls when she's expecting them as she keeps it turned off normally, preferring to use her landline) She also doesn't trust computers/internet for anything financial, she'll go in person to her bank and the local office for her retirement account and refuses every time when they offer to set up a login/password for her to access via the web.
I'm glad she's so resistant to that, because we don't really have to worry much about the security of her home computer. If it was ever compromised it wouldn't affect her financially and I'd be able to wipe and reinstall since she doesn't keep anything important stored on it.
"She also doesn't trust computers/internet for anything financial, she'll go in person to her bank and the local office for her retirement account and refuses every time when they offer to set up a login/password for her to access via the web."
My mom is like that, on purpose for security. She has an account for paying bills that's topped up as needed and other accounts for her savings, pension pay-in, etc. I have the card for one of her accounts set up for me to use. She's long past the age where she could go back to work to recover from being cleaned out due to a scam. There's also no point in her having instant and wide-ranging access to all her funds from anywhere in the world. She tells me she'd love to travel except it means being too far from a toilet she could use quickly enough other than when taking a train so we like to go places on the train or meet up where we can both get there by train. So, not great distances and she doesn't need great stacks of money on tap at those times. (It's not like she's going to give it all to me) .
One of the issue with feature phones is that nowadays you can find it hard to navigate life without a app. Banking is the worst for this.
Well, there's your problem! I have never EVER "banked" on a phone. I transact business with a bank on a laptop, on their website, on a secure connection at home, where I am reasonably sure no one else is snaffling my banking details. If a business "needs" me to download an app, they don't need me as a customer. I have said this to several businesses, and their representatives all blink. I might start asking for a key to their house, so I can come sleep there, in case I need to transact business with them, or tell them something. Same difference, innit? (Icon: wrong gender, right age)
"I transact business with a bank on a laptop, on their website, on a secure connection at home, where I am reasonably sure no one else is snaffling my banking details."
With a little forethought and planning, there isn't even much of that that needs doing. Certainly not needing to do it on a phone. I always have a reasonable idea what my balance is so I don't need to log in for that with a phone. I pay bills from home on my computer for things I will pay online and have a process to make sure I'm keeping track. I don't suddenly remember that today is the last day to pay the leccy bill before getting shut off and need to do it from my phone. What I see is a giant risk having a mobile device that can get nicked being tied into all of my savings. If somebody gets your phone while it's unlocked, you're toast.
Back in the days of PDAs and bag phones I broke three PDAs in one year but the phone was good - heavier then hell but good. I swore off the PDAs and shifted to a PAA which work in bright sunlight, had detachable pages to send data to those that needed it. The disadvantage was the pages sometimes turned to mush is exposed to water - but it worked. To this date I use a simple, almost impossible to break flip phone. The only change has been forced by TelCo and the generational cellular system changes. What is fun is get the "I'll show you how to use our app", then see that the person has no idea of private and simple communication.
That children need such remote connectivity and the avoidance of parental control or the lack of face-to-face contact makes me wonder if the polarization of society is related. That a person in Australia would place such a value on a THING and willing endanger oneself for that thing much less others say there is a problem with our value systems.
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