Announced a short time ago, the Callback 8020 is seen as a means of combating the addictive lure of the modern-day smartphone. While it supports Android apps via its SailfishOS, it disables features like web browsing and social media by default.
However, despite the noble quest for a ‘digital detox’, the phone met with a somewhat frosty reception online (no pun intended), with many comparing it to an elderly relative’s flip phone. In our poll, 70 percent of you said you wouldn’t be buying one.
$500 USD -> $400 USD for those of you that don’t want to click.
Ok just $350 more to reduce
🙏
“Consumers can now choose whether to add Commodore’s custom-designed Hi-Def IEM earphones during checkout, rather than needing to pay for them when they may already own a pair they love. Premium memory will be available as an option, with Callback defaulting to rigorously stress-tested “post-consumer” high-speed memory chips, backed by Commodore’s identical, comprehensive 1-Year warranty.”
so… to lower the retail by $100… earbuds not included, and reclaimed ewaste memory chips (hopefully that does not also include the main storage) now the default configuration.
Phones cheaper than USD$400 tend to have 4 year old chipsets*, so imo if they’ve beaten that, they’ve probably done well against the current market. By my standards a posture dumbphone should be cheaper, but it’s obviously marketing to a different demographic than e.g. Oneplus Nord and the now-dead iPhone SE. At the very least it might be a cool museum piece
*modified for accuracy
Phones cheaper than USD$400 tend to have 6-8year old chipsets
What area of the world are you from? Just curious where there is such a state of affairs.
This is definitely not true for Asia and Europe. It been a while since I was living in North America, but this didn’t seem true back then. Although I lived in a city and didn’t buy through carriers and never dealt with carrier blocking independently bought phones.
Perhaps North American carrier requirements have changed since then.
Ah yeah, I’m west Europe. I used the Samsung A series as a baseline for this claim, as their A04 and cheaper have 4+ year old chips, but overall it seems I was exaggerating. You know what, maybe I was getting confused with iPhones always being released with 8 year old specs
What the heck‽ Is it gold-plated‽
Phone? No. But the CEO’s yacht is.
As far as I remember comodore is owned by youtuber
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/commodores-been-bought-by-a-youtuber-whos-re-assembling-key-execs-and-already-teasing-new-hardware/Amusingly, Commodore’s statement says the [high prices were] triggered by an “explosion of new technologies” but stops short of specifying exactly what those technologies were. That perhaps shouldn’t be surprising given Simpson’s love of GenAI and its use in Commodore’s promotional material thus far, but it’s somewhat ironic that one of the reasons for the high price is, in Commodore’s case, self-inflicted to a degree.)
I’m starting to dislike this CEO
The other big question, even though Simpson goes into some detail on this, is how the deal is going to be financed. A share purchase agreement is in place for those “low seven figures,” Simpson says he’s re-mortgaged to get this far, and adds that “household names who don’t want to be named” are interested before name-dropping Elon Musk (whose computing career began on a Commodore). They’re looking for angel investors, but there’s no indication of the timeframe on any deal.
So it’s basically owned by musk, got it
He wouldn’t be the first person begging Elon Musk for attention, though. Anybody remember Elon Goat Token?
Even if he doesn’t secure Elon as an investor, the simping does not look good.
“oh no, leopards ate my face!”
Turns out that maybe a YouTuber gathering a bunch of old failed Commodore executives who don’t give two shits probably isn’t the best way to bring a failed company back online who’s sole purpose is to cash in on nostalgia from GenX’ers who is general give zero fucks about it.
Doing the Lord’s work sir
I work in product management, this was not a marketing ploy.
Supplies are expensive now. They are cutting into their margin considerably and probably did find some slightly cheaper components. Maybe they cut a better deal with the suppliers.
Either way, they are playing smart by listening to the market on an untested product in a new product category of “semi-smart” phones. This could signal a comeback of this type of product but only if they pave the way with affordability and usability.
I hope this does succeed for them because we need more companies taking risks in today’s market. Everything is so bland right now.
We don’t need companies taking risks for the sake of risks though. We need companies that actually have good ideas and can produce products. This isn’t much better than a Kickstarter. And you probably know incredibly well, no one is changing or going to succeed in the very bloated cell phone market.
You may be correct but that just makes them look dumb for trying to do this in the first place. Why? Make some mechanical keyboards, retro looking monitors or other peripherals, whatever might actually make sense for the Commodore brand and style. Not a phone.
Translation: We couldn’t really sell it for that price, now we try it with this price.
(Edit: This is no mockery, only of the marketing. The phone is nice)
That’s more like it!
And I completely disagree with the people saying it should be much cheaper.
It’s a LTE Linux computer. In 2026. With multiple screens, a 48MP camera, good DAC, enough power to run real Android apps and tons of bells and whistles; what do you expect?
Electronics are expensive, unless it’s cheap garbage, heavily subsidized, or both. That has a huge externalized cost, and avoiding that is the whole point of this phone. R&D, customer service, and continued software support for the translation layer and OS, must crazy expensive too.
I know wages haven’t gone up with inflation, which makes $400 hard to afford, but that’s not in Commodore’s control.
If one wants a cheaper AliExpress Android fliphone, that’s reasonable.
But it’s not the same product. And you’re going to pay for it in other ways.
This, I think the price is decent. Most dumbphones are low cost but you notice it - terrible buttons, slow camera, lackluster audio. On top of that they have no coolness factor. This is a phone that ticks all boxes and is privacy friendly. On top of that, it is from a company I like to support.
the cheap flip phones are truly dollar-store build quality and cameras. mine has a crappy radio, it seems, too… nearly always roaming on another carrier’s nearby tower because it can’t pick up the vzn one just a couple miles outside of town.
the ‘rugged’ ones are built better and can take a literal beating and still work, but they cost as much as a recent model 128gb smart phone… and still have squat for storage and lousy cameras.
Android fliphone
Not interested. Want SailfishOS.
1st-party supported SailfishOS, to be specific.
That’s huge, to me.
Yeah! I have a Sony Xperia 10 III, but the SailfishOS support is kinda… not officially supported in the US?
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Saying “lte Linux that can run Android” means nothing. All Android phones run Linux and support LTE. It’s an Android phone with restrictions on what Android apps it will run. That’s it. The screen is tiny and two small screens are cheaper than a larger one.
You can buy all of that for $100 on Aliexpress.
This is trash dressed up in a fun skin to sell to Commodore fans who don’t know how to delete an app from their phone.
It’s not Android. It’s SailfishOS. With first party support.
And even that aside, I don’t see anything comparable on Aliexpress, hardware wise.
Was $500 now $400 still lol.
It’s $400, there’s no choice of carrier, the battery won’t hold a charge, and the reception isn’t very-
Shut up and take my money!
Lol I forgot that $400 was considered excessive.
Now people buy $1200 phones yearly.
Well when Futurama made that joke about the iPhone, the line was “It’s $500” and everyhing was basically true.
Didn’t Nokia still make dumbphone and only cost double digits? With $400 i can just get a decent smartphone and then install app locker and lock all irrelevant app in it.
Or get something that run on non-bloatware OS and don’t download
They still do, HMD Global, a Finish company that started with ex Nokia employees and made the Nokia smartphones for Microsoft, also lives across from the Nokia headquarters in Finland and still makes dumb phones to this day:
How about a phone for people who aren’t addicted to them, but want the basics without being spied on?
Things I want in a phone:
- GPS with maps and directions.
- A browser for the rare occasions I want to look something up when I’m away from home. The last time I used it was to find which aisle something was on at Lowe’s.
- Texting.
- Phone calls.
- Notes.
- A decent camera.
- No bigger than an iPhone 12 mini, which is what I have now, and it’s plenty big enough.
I don’t do anything else. Mostly my phone sits on my desk, ignored unless it makes a noise at me. I take it with me sometimes when I leave the house, but sometimes I don’t bother--not addicted.
This can easily be achieved with most any Android phone.
- Switch to a degoogled OS like GrapheneOS or LineageOS
- Install a minimalist launcher (there are dozens)
- install CoMaps for private gps and navigation
- use whatever chromium browser comes on the phone or install a privacy browser like Firefox (again, there are dozens)
- add a notes app (there are dozens)
doing this with a used pixel 8 pro bought off ebay.
This can easily be achieved with most any Android phone.
lots of phones are not supported even by lineage. it does not help that manufacturers are continuously farting out the same mediocre models just with slightly different hardware, so that drivers need to be figured out again
Yes, by “most any” of course I mean that you can find a device with almost any spec or form factor you choose. If you like pixel, you can choose lineage or graphene. If you have an old phone lying around - with hundreds supported by lineage - there’s a good chance it works.
right. what I wanted to say, is most people can’t just convert a phone they already have. though tbh, that might not be a great idea either, in case there’s a fuckup or some unexpected regression.
this may very well be the phone for you. I think it does all of this
Yup.
Although I’d expand texting to “messenger apps” specifically Signal for me.
Fuck SMS.
lol, it’s worth $100
There’ll probably be several to choose from on AliExpress at that price point.
Really? I am in.
Holy shit you weren’t kidding
Edit. fixed
holy mother of tracker URLs! lol
we fit all yer favorites in this sum bitch
That is concerning amount of query parameters.
Well now we know exactly where this person lives.
What year do you think it is?
Alibaba has this shit for $100. Commodore brand name is worth nothing.
Atari should make a pager. It also runs on Android software. It will cost $800. It comes with belt clip.
$399, what? This is tech from over a decade ago, there are smart phones that sell for under $100. Seems like a stupid gimmick only wealthy parents will buy for their kids.
Yes, mass production feature phones. This won’t be a mass production product. You’d be surprised how much that increases costs. The question is of course, if one can make a product under those circumstances that people are still ready to buy. In other words, it has to offer something (can also be non-material) that differentiates it from those mass production feature phones.
In this case it’s linux. I am prepared to pay gobs for proper linux devices. However, I’d rather something like a liberux Nexx if that thing ever comes to fruition.
Liberux Nexx sounds cool but also a bit like vapourware. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
Personally, I am giving Sailfish OS a chance. After all, that isn’t a “dumb phone” OS as such. They appear to dumb it down for the Callback. It is not dumbed down for the Jolla Phone. If things work out, we should get real units into our hands at the launch event in July.
Nostalgia-bait isn’t going to make addictive social media go away, and these devices will probably end up with easily foiled workarounds to get to those services anyway.
Also, did Commodore even used to make flip phones? I had a legendary indestructible Nokia brick, Motorola flip phones, and one really shitty Samsung flip phone. I’d feel nostalgic for something from them if it had the same design (but not the shitty Samsung phone), not for a pseudo-oldschool actually-it’s-just-Android-but-less-functional phone.
Nope. Commodore did not sold phones. Commodore International of the C64 and Amiga fame got defunct in 1994. Since then the company and brand name got sold many times. You can read more about it on WikiPedia
“We worked tirelessly to lower the price…and by subtracting 100 we managed it goddammit”
So still $100 more than a LightPhone II, an already somewhat pricey ‘detox phone’, or about the same price as a used Moto RAZR if you just wanted a flippy phone made of pre-owned components
I’m more concerned about the dictatorial-feeling attitudes in the marketing than I am about the price. I’m all for a privacy respecting phone, but an even higher priority than that is respecting me and my choices. Blocking me from social media doesn’t feel like it’s catering to me, it feels like its nannying me and dictating my choices to me. That’s not something I’m interested in at any price.
I realize that I will, in reality, be able to choose whether to leave those blocked, but having them blocked by default feels just as aggressively judgemental and disrespectful as preinstalling them and shoving them in my face like most existing brands do. It’s not your place to tell me what apps to use or not to use. Give me a fucking blank slate, and let me decide, thankyouverymuch.
That’s what I thought, that keyboard means almost no messaging; I get the ‘no social’ vibe, but this way looks like there’s no middle ground between “grandma and her SMS” and “glued to the screen 20hrs/day”.
The
CATS22 is $150. It doesn’t have the same hardware, but I don’t see $250 worth of upgrades between that one and this.Definitely closer than asking $350 more, though. And it’s not like Sailfish functionality is worth nothing.
bought and used one of these. it sucks ass. if you want something dependable dont get this. keypresses on the dialpad dont register half the time which nade t9 input impossible. also you must install a 3rd party app to use t9 as your main input. stock rom pops the qwerty touch keyboard on the yiny screen for every input
