alt Hacker NewsI just want BlackBerry back.
Every single time one of these new "minimal", "dumb", "lightweight" phones comes up today it's just marketing wrapped around a kneecapped Android device. I am in the market for something simpler that does nothing more or little else than play local media/audio, read common document/text formats, ordinary SMS, current standard of telephony, and a different OS than Android. I have not seen anything like this yet.
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> Every single time one of these new "minimal", "dumb", "lightweight" phones comes up today it's just marketing wrapped around a kneecapped Android device.
Except the Commodore Callback[1], which is based on Linux (SailfishOS). It's pretty minimal and should meet your requirements, in theory.
Fun Blackberry trivia:
For a while Research in Motion (RIM) / Blackberry had a hiring website at https://rim.jobs , until somebody told them what it meant.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=%22rim.jo...
For a lot of people there's one app that is a non-negotiable, even for a minimalist phone.
For instance: their bank, or 2 factor for their work. Or a parking app for their building. Society now often assumes you can use an app.
It's hard to cover those cases without using one of the two major OSes.
What's the advantage of blackberry over a stripped-down/limited android?
Sounds great until you're required to install an app to pay for parking.
probably because in these days it's hard to get by without some apps like maps, common messengers, delivery, bank transactions and so on
This basically collapses to “a different OS than Android.”
The question is why you care about that.
Pinephone and Librem 5 fit. Surprised you said BlackBerry without physical keyboard.
I’d add payment and maps and ability to login government sites or banks and connecting to your car… we are being very efficiently locked in.
Blackberry is dead. Ibjust wantlinux on phones to gwt to passable level on modern hardware. I can take it from there.
Sending messages with BBM?
Here you go:
How can you not need maps? That’s crazy to me
Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5
minorities are the loudest.
truth is its quite difficult to function today without a smartphone.
banks, uber, food etc etc
edit: remember iphone mini? so "many" asked for it and apple finally made it. it was a flop.
The problem is everyone has a different list of deal breakers that they need in a "dumb" device. It starts off simple, such as calls and texts, but some people want to play music, or get directions from maps, or maybe contact relatives with Whatsapp... Eventually you just end up with a smart phone.
Ideally everyone would just have the discipline to just keep what they need on their phone without trying to fix their problem with an overpriced gimmick that they will give up on after a few months.