WhatsHerBucket
Linuxcross-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. $450 or whatever is still too much, but if it covers all the bands and use usable, at least it's an option.
I know some people who would actually kill for a physical T9 keyboard so they could touch-type. It's not my cup of tea, but I can definitely see it being a major draw for people who grew up texting on a real flip phone.
I thought it woud suck, but with the touch typing + consistent dictionary guessing, it's really on par with the random chaos of a touchscreen keyboard.
500$? 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
WhatsApp isn't a social media app?
I wouldn't really class it as such, its just fancy texting for the majority of users
Maybe because it's owned by Meta?
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 $25.
Maybe the same guys who believed in the Purism scam.
Whatsapp preinstalled... hard pass from me. All the other considerations like price, browser block, app emulation implementation; those are all things I could probably get past but preinstalled spyware is unacceptable from the get go.
Edit to add. The app blocking is interesting to me. Instead of thinking about the user being blocked from unstalling and using the app, I'm curious about the technology they will use to block the app (and app maker) from running activity on the device.
Hopefully the solution includes something like DNS blocking rather than a blacklist on the play integrity api and a reliance on Google killing the unstall of apk from other sources.
Not sure if DNS blocking explains the browser exclusion which is otherwise a bit odd.
This phone is probably aimed at countries where Whatsapp is legit mandatory if you want a social life and a job (e.g. much of Europe and South America)
Brazil uses WhatsApp for everything, including doctor appointments, filling prescriptions, banking, take out orders... I mean, really everything...
WhatsApp for jobs? Yeah only dogshit employers do that.
I'm from Spain and don't have Watsapp nor a smartphone. Coincidentally I also lack a social life.
no social media, no browser
marketing material: social media in a glorified browser
there is android flip phones actualy?
The price is unfeasible lmao. You could get an old phone for like 50$ 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".
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.
Browser and email is the bare minimum, though.
Even the cheapest clamshells in the 2000s had those two.
Don't preinstall it by default if you want to look minimal but being forced to sideload (their app store blocks this essential category?????) an Android APK in the emulator instead of using native Linux apps for that, is ridiculous
I understand that for a small company like them (it's being owned by a YouTuber now) creating hardware is extremely expensive and 499 can even considered cheap with all the custom stuff in this device, plastic molds, dedicated assembly lines and so on, but my mind can't accept paying more than 149 for something like this
The main reason I have a smartphone is to have a browser and email. If those are not available I might as well use a dumb phone.
It's a dumb phone with Spotify... I used to do just fine with music loaded on the phone memory.
I didn't even know that the brand Commodore still existed.
Every few years the brand name appears to be sold to some new company
How could this idea come to mind.. Surely that's great, but who in the team said "Give me a price! 500!! Approved!"
Sounds great for kids. The price point can suck a dick tho
Look, I love the idea of a Linux phone.
But $500 and it manages my temptations for me? Fuck no.
The whole point of Linux is freedom.
Enough behavior shaping.
Yeh right, i already don't use social media on my phone, skill issue
Social media is humans being social through media, I am sick and tired of it being categorically villainized especially because the scientific evidence for it being inherently bad is laughable.
To say that social media is just people socializing through media is rather like saying that newspapers are just news on paper.
In both cases it ignores the deliberate, pervasive, and frequently toxic efforts of the platform curators to maximize "engagement" with their audience in pursuit of ad revenue.
When I socialize with people offline, it looks almost nothing like modern social media "services".
In both cases it ignores the deliberate, pervasive, and frequently toxic efforts of the platform curators to maximize "engagement" with their audience in pursuit of ad revenue.
We are on social media right now, this is not inherent to social media it is a choice forced on it by corporations.
No browser is wild. And what does that even mean here? You have to run everything by app now? That sounds like ass.
What is the point of it being linux if it just runs "99% of android apps" but no browser?
499? hahahhaa
My mainphone is currently Nokia C2-01 which I got for free. It's perfectly enough for me. But damn that thing looks good..
While it seems like everyone here hates it, I’ve been looking for a minimal phone for when my current one dies. This seems to hit the exact sweet spot of functionality I want vs what I don’t want. As for the price, well, I’m spending at least that much on my next phone anyway so it seems fine by me.
And I have a huge nostalgia for flip phones and transparent electronics. So yeah, signed up to preorder.
Nice! I'm very tempted... I really like that it's SailfishOS. I bought an Xperia 10 III with SailfishOS and it works pretty decently. I've used the Android compatibility layer, it's pretty good.
I know it's not 100% FOSS, but maybe it's seeming like we could rally around SailfishOS for an alternative to Android and iOS.
how affordable of them [̲̅$̲̅(̲̅ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°̲̅)̲̅$̲̅]
Commodore? C64 and Amiga Commodore? Well, it seems to be a new startup that simply bought and revived the trademark. Instead of a $500 paperweight, they should instead focus on affordable, Linux-based PCs and laptop. Perhaps they could build their own distro using an Amiga-esque filesystem. I would definitely daily-drive a Commodore-branded laptop.
Commodore as a brand has ruined every company that's ever bought it. Cursed brand some say.
Great initiative but at this price it's just a scam srlsy..
My sentiments exactly. They’re charging $499 for $5-100 worth of hardware.
This is the “snakes on a plane” of phones.
Nostalgia sells
Jolla phone and that is with much better specs
That is the price if you ship million of units. Realistically, how many units can ship this? 10k? 20k?
Once you consider the price of the plastic shell molds (custom), the custom keypad, the custom motherboard, the custom assembly line, this price is almost cheap.
I wouldn't even consider a purchase even at a third of the price, but it was a scam if they simply put a sticker on some Alibaba clamshell with stock android, instead here they even partnered with Jolla to have sailfish is as base with the android emulator. That's much more expensive than just slapping android aosp with a minimal launcher and calling it a day
I would expect to pay $50 for a modern flip phone with hardware comparable to one from 20y ago. But this is running Sailfish OS, has a decent SoC, camera, DAC, and up to 64GB of RAM. This ain't your grandma's flip phone.
Not sure if it's me or you misreading this, but I believe when it says 4GB/64GB it's one model, 4GB of RAM and 64GB internal storage. 64GB of RAM at a form factor to fit in a phone that small is currently outwith our technological capacity surely
People pay over $1k for a phone. Now that is a scam.
But those phones are mini computers, some of which people use as an actual desktop.
or you can get an actual desktop -- and even laptops -- for less money and a better experience.
It's like that era of putting pink ribbons on everything for breast cancer that also signaled you were a supporter of women. Commercialized activism. Be real. This will sell very little. We'll get some news articles about how it's trending with Gen z that are rejecting technology and always online culture. It'll actually only be a small amount of Gen z but you know blogspam going to blogspam.
It's a crappy product. We need a Linux phone that would actually be a halo product for people to not feel like they're ripping themselves off to get away from Google and Apple
MediaTek Helio G81 SoC, with 4GB/64GB
Uhhh. For $500? Sorry, no.
I mean its a small company. We have become too used to subsidized costs at the sake of our privacy. Know why TVs are now $200? They are literal spyware in the home. Try buying one without spyware, $999 real fast for the same TV.
Know why phone companies give you a "free" $1000 phone? Youre the product. Constantly tracked and sold. A digital slave.
People don't know this it seems. You actually have to give up something to gain some privacy. Can be money, can be features.
Most people still use Google while there is Kagi for like 10 dollars... Because they want privacy, but they need it to be free. :)
My daily argument with my friends!
Pinephone was a fraction of that price. Can't you run PostmarketOS on a Fair phone too? But that has much better specs.
The pinephone was atrocious (As a daily) though. From what I’ve heard from owners it still struggles to this day to run basic mobile Linux OSes.
Fact. It's amazing that it exists, but it is definitely not a daily driver device. At least for me.
Uhh the pinephone in general sucks for daily use . its a tinker phone
Really? I thought mine was great
Almost nothing works on it. Can make calls, but not receive, can open the camera, but not take a photo, etc.
Who would I be getting calls from? I use Linux.
Buuutt are you someone who travels and uses airline and banking and hotel apps? Or do you stay home and use arch on a thinkpad ?
/joky
I have done all of those things without apps. Why the fuck would I want an airline and hotel app?
Hotel: check in to room immediately without even going to front desk, even if its 3 am.
Airline: instant update of gate changes. When you need to sprint to make your flight because thr gate changed to one a half mile away, this is something you can't live without. TVs are getting less and less in airports now. Also, literally no one uses a paper ticket and I suspect they'll be phased out completely in 5 years. Too easy to fake.
There are people alive today who have never once written a check (I do, often), so you can kiss all of our old analog paper ways goodbye in a few years.
Phone companies dont give you a "free" $1000 phone, you're actually paying more for it via the monthly bill payments.
That's on top of you being the product as well.
True
Opposed to fake fast?
Not free, and on pixels you can install de googled androids like grapheneos and LineageOS
Economies of scale. How many people actually want to buy this?
I think this is the real answer, rather than the other comment about users being monetized. There are plenty of affordable Android phones with decent specs that have no spyware besides Google's, and Google's not subsidizing them.
There are also still dumbphones on the market for under $100. I don't see Android app support as that big a selling point with these specs.
Good luck to them, but I don't think this is a viable niche.
That's easy too expensive for a phone with bad specs that just has blocked access to certain apps
How does it not have social media or browser if so many apps are compatible? Doesn’t that amount of compatibility mean we can still have social media and browsers?
Based on the article, they have a blocklist of certain apps. You can only install apps they allow. Not sure how extensive the list is, but surely the most popular ones are blocked and they will probably update the list.
Lmao
You can only install apps they allow.
Untrue, the article clearly says that you can sideload anything you want.
Do I misunderstand the article? They state following:
Users are still able to sideload apps outside those that are blocked, using APK installer files
Meaning you can only sideload apps, that are not blocked. So you would not be able to install anything they do not allow to.
You misunderstand, the list of apps they block are "inside" the said list, while sideloading apps "outside" of the said list is possible. So you can only find and install whatever apps they've approved within whatever app store they use to serve apps to their customers, but you can install any apk on the phone by sideloading it, given the app supports the phones CPU architecture of course.
"Users are still able to": Means despite the block list in the operating system, users can still do following...
"sideload apps": ... install applications manually outside the app store...
"those that are not blocked": ... applications not in the known block list from the company.
I don't know how one can interpret this differently. Where does your "inside" and "outside" interpretation come from?
You can sideload apps, whether they are on the blocklist or not. That's what the sentence* you quoted says. Well, that's what I interpret anyways. Maybe I'm wrong.
I broke it down for you and explained each part. And that does not align with your interpretation. That's why I asked you where your interpretation comes from. "sideload apps those that are not blocked" means "sideload apps that are not on blocklist". Where does this paragraph states, that it allows to install apps whether they are on the blocklist or not? Could you explain it?
I interpret it as "We do not install bloatware such as Facebook etc. by default".
The fact that Android vendors do this is annoying.
I want to know the opinion of the person who down voted you. I only buy phones with unlockable bootloaders for this reason.
So happy with my 2nd hand Pixel 8. No BS, ecologically acceptable IMHO and yes runs most Android apps thanks to GrapheneOS.
I get the idea of dumb phones, but $500 (or with taxes in Europe at least 600 EUR) for a phone that cannot even run a browser? This is ridiculous.
My first thought was, this might be about just what's installed by default. Reading a bit further the article says:
Apparently, the OS has hard blocks to stop the installation of browsers and social media apps.
"Users are still able to sideload apps outside those that are blocked, using APK installer files..."
So I'm not sure why I would want pay 500 Dollars / Euros, just so they have control over what I can install and not. To me this would be a deal breaker. Also this seems to be "basically a custom version of the Jolla Sailfish OS", so there are probably "better" options using the same OS. And it only has 4GB of RAM? I am not impressed for the price and for the control.
500 dollars!? What's the justification for that price?
read recently a tweet: 'in two years we will be paying to NOT have Internet '
kinda fits this price tag
Trying to imitate apple.
Step 1: turtleneck
Step 2: reality distortion bubble
Step 3: massive profit
They didn't mention battery life once, and it doesn't even have a torch?
A torch would be dangerous. A flashlight would be much safer.
In the FAQs they suggest they don’t know battery life yet because it’s not finished - but indicate “several days” in standby
the "official reveal trailer" is done with ai, it looks like a scam
Looking at the channel, dude bought the Commodore IP and are releasing retro things with this IP for absurd amount of money. The C64 ultimate for the price on their site and the shit ass hardware is a fucking joke.
The C64 Ultimate is actually pretty legit, and the price isn't too outrageous for the base model. It's essentially combining a bunch of really quite polished community projects for the C64 together to create a finished product.
The new owner of Commodore, Peri Fractic of Retro Recipes fame, is truly a super fan of retro computers, and has made content about them on his YouTube for a decade. However, he stubbornly continues to use AI despite some backlash.
This new phone is massively overpriced, but I suspect those who buy one will receive it eventually.
How the C64 ultimate is not overpriced? Okay that is using the legit parts of the original commodore and simulating the original hardware but comparing it with any retro handheld is just too overpriced
It's using an FPGA for hardware accurate emulation which costs more than the ARM chips in retro handheld emulators, and is a bespoke fairly large product made in relatively small batches. For what if is, it's somewhat reasonably priced compared to its manufacturing costs.
I can't argue that for most people the value prospect isn't worth it, since the C64 itself isn't really a compelling platform except to specific retro PC enthusiasts, but for those who want a proper modern C64 for nostalgia sake, it's a fair deal.
It’s using an FPGA for hardware accurate emulation which costs more than the ARM chips in retro handheld emulators, and is a bespoke fairly large product made in relatively small batches. For what if is, it’s somewhat reasonably priced compared to its manufacturing costs.
hmmmm okay that makes sense.
Btw 2 people with Chrono Trigger avatar debating retro stuff is lmao
Tbh I wouldn't have known your avatar was from that if you hadn't said anything, as I only played Chronotrigger for maybe an hour or so at a friend's house when I was a kid and don't really remember much except for the time traveling machine they had from my friend's save game, and the girl at the start of the game at the fair :p
I don't get that "minimalist phone" market I can just get an older phone, remove all social media and use it
You can't remove lot of apps in most Android phones. I have an older phone S7 Edge which I installed an alternative Android OS called "/e/OS". Its way more private by default. Besides all the benefits of privacy, I also do not use the Google Play Store and do not have any social media on it installed.
A custom rom is great and the best path for the techie users. For the general public, you can still disable non needed invasive apps. For minimalist usage aimed at reducing overall phone usage, that's mostly enough. There's also a launcher called baldphone available on fdroid that turns any android phone in a minimalist phone, aimed at the elderly, but still nice for any minimalism enthusiast. It requires some tech skill to install though.
For the longest time I am using a minimalist desktop too (i mean a launcher or default home app), called Unlauncher.
You absolutely can remove every app (including hidden base OS functionality that is packaged as an installed app) through ADB, or through tools like Shizuku that give you effectively "on-device" ADB. There are GUI based apps to do this for both PC and runnable on Android itself.
It's not easily accessible for the average user, but it's literally easier than flashing a custom OS, if you're already looking into that level of things.
As the owner of a relatively new Android phone, who wanted to disable a software update nag, this is no longer always true.
In my research I built a history of instructions for disabling these nag screens/notifications on phones from this manufacturer. At first, there were things you could do on the phone itself. Then you had to change a setting with ADB. Then you had to disable a system app with ADB. Then you had to get root access to uninstall the app with ADB. And now, for my phone and other recent models, there's literally nothing you can do, even with root access in ADB, short of flashing custom firmware.
Oh okay, I was nor aware this was possible for the regular Android. But it make sense if you get root access. So I learned something new today. :-)
The issue. You won't be able to get old phones when theyre gone. Just like cars.
With the billions of devices lying around without use, there will be enough for a looong lime
I have little hope that the feel of the case and buttons will be anywhere close to what the price would demand.
I can get almost two Punkt MP02 for that.
Will make a great match to my T1 device.
I keep repeating this for a decade. Buy a used old iPhone (like SE) and get a no fancy phone which is mostly fine for that use case.
This is a joke or satire, no? Who the F would pay that much for a flip phone. You can get them for free can’t you?
Usually not ones that are still compatible with modern cell tower networks.
*in America
Where I am from, there are still basic 2G MediaTek MAUI phones with no application platform being pooped out to street markets. With more sophisticated models doing J2ME (yes, really) and KaiOS + 3G. Lots of brands tho the most popular is literally called "Sigma Mobile".
They literally don’t make any anymore? Interesting. What about dumb phones that just have the bare necessities?
You can get them for free can’t you?
Running Linux? Where...
Oh no not running Linux. But if your intent is to avoid running sophisticated apps, why do you need Linux on your phone ?
