- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
cross-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.
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Great initiative but at this price it’s just a scam srlsy…
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.
Better experience in my pocket tho? Or calling emergency services?
Especially for an LTE device
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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!
Opposed to fake fast?
Not free, and on pixels you can install de googled androids like grapheneos and LineageOS
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?
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
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.
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.
Just found out about the Twiddler 4–a single-handheld bluetooth keyboard. too damn expensive at over $200, but something I’d definitely try otherwise.
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.
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.
$499? No thanks
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.
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
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
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 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.
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So happy with my 2nd hand Pixel 8. No BS, ecologically acceptable IMHO and yes runs most Android apps.
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.
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.
Zero justification for that price tag.
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
