What is the state of non-smartphones these days?

Probably targeted at emerging country markets. Not sure why the OS matters since they only have basic features.

Nokia basically owns that market i think, and i think that's your choice.

Seems kinda like asking what's the state of can openers these days. Pick one that looks good and try it out. Return it if you don't like it. Use it if you do. They don't have enough features and functions to really worry about it too much. They're mostly made to be disposable too so the prices are low and they don't have much ability to be repaired, etc.

Oddly enough, I was recently browsing options for non-smart cellular phones, on behalf of an elderly parent who struggles to use and understand modern "glass slab" UI/UX.

It's slim pickings indeed. Kyocera, Nokia, and TCL were the brands I saw most often. Their products were all completely indistinguishable—tech specs were the same except for the the most minor deviations. it makes me wonder if they're all using the same commodity, off-the-shelf logic boards at this point and just differentiating with case shapes and colors. There were some interesting hardened options, like extreme impact or water resistance. Good for using at the job site if you were, say, an especially clumsy construction worker prone to falling in giant muddy holes.

An of course, there are the senior-oriented options like the JitterBug, which (still) aren't technologically any different, but tend to promote concierge-style customer service, easy to understand service plans, and hyper-simplified custom interfaces.

So yeah, what Paladin said: In my experience, as a resident of the U.S., if that's the kind of phone you want, I see no reason to do anything beyond buying whatever is cheap and looks good. It's likely to work identically to everything else in that forgotten and dying product group. No idea if the situation is different somewhere like Europe or the developing world.

EDIT: Grammar, and also to note that due to my goals, I wasn't considering enthusiast or boutique devices like Punkt, etc.

I wouldn't say Light Phone and Punkt MP-02 are one offs, both are selling the second model at this point. Mudita Pure may be, I'm hoping they come back with better sequel. I feel like even smart phone release cadence is way too fast. I'd much rather have a release every couple years, and longer support. When it comes to a dumb phone, all you really need is an occasional revision to fix hardware bugs, and add bands. Both Punkt and Light Phone are continuing to develop new features for their phones, which to me is what matters. Light Phone recently got calendar sync for example, and I think the Punkt got Signal support just fairly recently with Pigeon 2.0.

Jose Briones is going to be your friend here, both his youtube channel and https://dumbphones.pory.app/

There's also r/dumbphones

Personally, I've been using a Pixel 5 running stripped down Lineage OS. I'm probably going to get a Light Phone in coming months, unless someone releases Spotify support.

cateye said:

it makes me wonder if they're all using the same commodity, off-the-shelf logic boards at this point and just differentiating with case shapes and colors.

Click to expand...

They have more in common than that. It's mostly the same couple of low cost Chinese OEMs with licensed brands.

GeneralFailureDriveA said:

I mostly mean one-off in that they are running entirely their own OS stack - as far as I know, the light phone is not running an OS based on anything else. This can be a feature, certainly, but it means a harder boundary on "It is what it is," vs something that can be extended or modded, or even run whatever limited apps it has (KaiOS has an app store, though nothing complex in it).

Click to expand...

I can see that. But these are products that are inherently simple, so having open extensibility would likely be problematic, leading to a slippery slope as people who miss the point want more functionality. I'd like Spotify, and proper calendar sync, but maybe those things will come eventually. If not, oh well.

Be wary of KaiOS. If you want an app store, you're likely better off with a Pixel running Graphene/Calyx/Lineage and stripped down. Or if you want something small, a Unihertz device stripped down using ADB. There have also been some candybar Xiaomi devices that had US bands hacked in, though last I checked they were no longer available, and new versions didn't have this capability, or it hadn't been discovered yet.

GeneralFailureDriveA said:

A concern I have with the light phone is that it cannot display images at all in text threads, and "send or receive an image of something" is, unfortunately, common enough that it would be difficult to entirely remove that functionality.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's an unfortunate side effect of the e-ink display, I suppose. It would be nice if Light Phone would develop a desktop app for SMS and such, and add that capability there. But my general attitude is still, whatever, folks should get Signal. And eventually I'll jump into Matrix and probably setup an SMS bridge. I'm not sure I even want SMS on my phone, at this point.

I miss the days before I was captive to a connected lifestyle, it has not been good for my mental health.

GeneralFailureDriveA said:

Do you have any specific reasons?

Click to expand...

Pretty much the same as you. It seems to have very disorganized development effort, resulting in a buggy and insecure OS. The lack of Spotify, and otherwise India-centric app landscape, made me discard it from the running early on. I wish Mozilla had kept on with it. Now I'm hoping for some solid mobile Linux distros in the next 5-8 years.

GeneralFailureDriveA said:

I don't know why it would be. My Kobos handle images just fine, in greyscale.

Click to expand...

I guess I kind of assumed they didn't want to deal with complaints about quality, or that the grayscale compromise wasn't worth making in general.

GeneralFailureDriveA said:

It's an improvement over many things, but is still oddly restricted - your root of identity must be a smartphone

Click to expand...

I think you can set an Android tablet as your root identity, so long as you can respond to a text message on the phone number you set. At least I hope you can, I won't have a chance to try until I pick up a Pixel Tablet on the impending deep discount, and install Graphene or Calyx on it. I'm planning on shifting my typical phone usage to that, and just have a dumb phone when I'm out and about.

Not really on topic, but man, I really miss my old Sony Ericsson slide phone. It was teeny, elegant, had fantastic sound, great battery life, and worked as a network adapter if you connected it to a laptop via USB. Best phone I ever had.

I had to import an unlocked one. Was totally worth it. I used that phone until its network bands went away.

GeneralFailureDriveA said:

I think it is; as the older devices tended to be used far longer. They were not artificially obsoleted as computers in the 90s were by the need for more RAM, they did one thing, and did it well.

Click to expand...

What do you call the disappearance of network bands then?

I still have 2 Motorola flip phones (including 1 that was labelled as a "smartphone") which I both used with Dutch prepaid SIMs until not that long ago. A few months ago I had reason to try my French SIM card in them; neither would connect anymore.

Hmmm, here we only know (remember?) 2G, 3G and 4G for network names

GeneralFailureDriveA said:

Voice traditionally ran over 2G and eventually 3G bands. There exists 4G voice support, yet, it is not commonly deployed in the US, as carriers jumped straight to VoLTE technology, which is now present in the current list of phones. It dates back to perhaps the iPhone 6 era? Modern devices use some variants of 5G to drain the battery more effectively, yet I am not clear as to if technologiies to run voice over 5G links have yet been deployed in the field (perhaps VoNR?).

Click to expand...

Yes, the name is VoNR - Voice over New Radio is a 5G high-speed wireless communication standard for mobile phones and data terminals

Updated Nokia 3210 for the modern era.