Linux

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.

$499? No thanks

Zero justification for that price tag.

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.

Great initiative but at this price it's just a scam srlsy..

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.

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.

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.

MediaTek Helio G81 SoC, with 4GB/64GB

Uhhh. For $500? Sorry, no.

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

At $200... Maybe.

AI slop video, no faith in what will (or likely won't) be delivered.

500$? and they used to make one of the cheapest computers on the market

no social media, no browser
marketing material: social media in a glorified browser

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

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?

Ah yes, another company trying to squeeze ridiculous amounts of money out of people just because "it has linux".

WhatsApp isn't a social media app?

Well, looks like someone made a Jack Tramiel based LLM and let it hallucinate.

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

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.

Sounds great for kids. The price point can suck a dick tho

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.

499? hahahhaa

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.

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.

So happy with my 2nd hand Pixel 8. No BS, ecologically acceptable IMHO and yes runs most Android apps thanks to GrapheneOS.