[recursivedoubts]

Regarding the price: the reality with all these alternative phones (e.g. the clicks communicator) is that you are going to have to pay a premium to make them worthwhile for the manufacturers. Scale (and the spyware economy) are what allow the larger companies to produce cheaper "better" phones, so comparing a phone like this with them on price isn't super productive. If you want something different than what the masses consume you are gonna have to pay for it.

The only ones that I've seen beat this dynamic to an extent are the unihertz phones.

[microtonal]

I have always been surprised that "Nokia"/HMD haven't opened up more. The have really affordable Android phones (at some point the line-up was also pretty nice) and near-stock Android. So, they seem to have the volume to make reasonably cheap phones without to much spyware/adware. Sadly, they are only supported for a very brief period and even at release they often have outdated versions.

If they collab'ed with some AOSP-based alternatives and/or Jolla, they could build up a really nice alternative market. Especially because these niche phones generally have worse quality than what HMD can offer and being a Finish company, they could play well into the European tech sovereignty story.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

That unihertz "Jelly Star" with it's small size and rounded corners looks like a good prison phone choice, but still a bit of a "stretch".

[dredmorbius]

NB, there are sub-$100 feature (and even Android) phones available, though there are compromises to be made. Jose Briones's Dumbphone Finder lists about 45, sorted by price, and that's just what he's reviewed. Going to $250 there are about 65 options.

<https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-finder>

Once you're into the Android or Android-adjacent OS territory (LineageOS, SailfishOS (the Callback runs this), /e/OS, iodeOS, etc.), prices approach flagship mainstream Android or iOS devices ($600+ generally), and GrapheneOS specifically requires Google Pixel, at least until the Motorola partnership bears fruit.

And yes, scale of production and the need to be self-supporting rather than relying on business partnerships, advertising, and surveillance capitalism does tend to incur some price premium, though it's still quite possible to find affordable options.

I'd strongly recommend taking a look at Jose Briones's Dumbphone Finder (mentioned and linked above), his website (<https://josebriones.org/>), Substack (<https://josebriones.substack.com/>), and YouTube phone-review channel (<https://inv.nadeko.net/channel/UCFtVwG0NFd6gT3TXfMCU7oA>) in general, and /r/dumbphones on Reddit for more information. I'm going to write a longer top-level comment summarising the current state of my own research into this topic.

There is a larger community oriented around alternative mobile devices including more reviews and technical information. Given that manufacturers often obscure rather than clarify features and capabilities, this is often a preferred source.

Edit: Corrected device support, originally mis-stated LineageOS as restricted, rather than GrapheneOS.

[NopIdoN]

> LineageOS specifically requires Google Pixel, at least until the Motorola partnership bears fruit.

Not true.

[dredmorbius]

Gah! I was thinking GrapheneOS. Corrected my parent comment.

LineageWiki device support page lists a number of options, for those interested: <https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/>.

[aquariusDue]

Yeah, I'm actually excited about the Jolla phone supposed to launch in September. It's a bit on the expensive side but hopefully it will pave the way to a proper consumer friendly phone. Most of these phones comes with a gimmick too to make them more enticing but so far Sailfish OS is THE gimmick I'm actually excited about.

[CobaltFire]

My favorite phone of all time was my Nokia N9.

I would absolutely have another if there was an updated one.

[mistyvales]

Absolutely loved my N9! Used it for many years until I switched to Lumia series until 2018

[sourcegrift]

Wonder why pine can't do this? Not dissing on commodore. With hallucinated apps, the gap is going to be really small with play store

[pocksuppet]

Hallucinated apps are a delusion, and Pine is just yet another random Chinese company remixing surplus hardware. They don't care what happens with the software, that's the plus and minus of it. They don't lock down the software, but nor do they actually provide any. You can run Android on Pine... if you port Android to Pine.

I hear that in China they have a lot of franken-PCs reusing recycled chips because they have all the PCB-level design and manufacturing expertise but they can't make chips. They'll take a GPU off its graphics card and solder it onto a laptop, or the reverse, stuff like that. And each design in low quantities based on what models of e-waste they can get. Pine is one of that kind of company although not nearly as extreme. A lot of their plastic cases are repurposed from other devices. The A64 chip is designed to go in set-top boxes. They don't do low-hundred quantities based on e-waste, obviously, they are set up for mass production but they're still using whatever parts they can get their hands on that are surplus to other companies' requirements. That's half the reason they discontinued so many products.

[burnte]

Ok, so you raise the price so the manufacturers will make it. This creates a bigger problem: users won't buy it now.

No one designs a product to get manufacturers, all they need is to make a profit.