Simple: make your own cell phone. Instructions (from easily obtainable parts) here: http://web.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/index.html
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My wife and I recently gave up and took a gulp of the smartphone kool-aid. Our pre-paid flip-phones were dying, and more and more people were insisting on texting me at $0.20 per. Getting the right service is as important to me as the right phone, we donāt use the cell as primary so donāt need unlimited everything. I discovered the Airvoice Wireless $10/month plan. ATT MVNO: $0.04min/voice, $0.02/text, and $0.06mb/data. If you go over just put in another $10.
Next was $30 Nokia 520 smartphones. We turn off the data unless we absolutely need it, kinda like a data āpay phoneā. Best thing for this āthumbs newbyā is being able to dictate texts. Only bad thing so far is WindowsPhone does not have any way to set persistent voicemail & text alerts. If you miss the first you wonāt know till you check the phone. Iām going to try a $75 unlocked BLU Advance 4.0 Android because this is important to me.
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I went through the same process as you @corbintron and ended up with the Nokia 301, which Iāve been using on P-Tel (a T-Mobile MVNO) prepaid for the last month and I love it. I wish the 515 were cheaper, but the 301 is solid and feels just as strong, but lighter, than my Nokia 2128i from 10 years ago.
It felt a little awkward to use at first, but I soon got re-accustomed to the Nokia ālogicā of the phone. I would probably hate one of the no-name phones since theyāre certainly lower-quality construction, worse UI (no threaded sms, for one) and shorter battery life than a Nokia. Oh, @beschizza, the 301 is also one of the only Nokia dumb-phones that uses micro-USB to charge, so you donāt have to toss out your old chargers and you can probably borrow your friendās if you need it.
It took me four days mild use without charging it to half-kill the battery.
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Get the absolutely cheapest cell phone you can off ebay, use it for two weeks, and then write up the experience as a Boing Boing feature.
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Yes, Iām seriously missing that. Iāve had a hard time learning that the power button on a smart phone does NOT end the call!
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I like the look of those - dual sim, quad band, very cheap, off contract, decent looking but very basic. Iād grab one of those if I were headed overseas for sure.
Side note: how is it that a whole phone like this costs less than the price of upgrading an iPad out with an LTE chip, and yet every phone that you buy from American carriers costs $400-$600 āoff contractā - its crazy the level of price fixing the carriers engage in.
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Fitās nicely in your pocket too.
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Have you considered a $50-level watchphone, such as ZGPAXās S28?
Or phones advertised for āelderlyā people, such as the $30-ish Gusun F10?
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One word of warning, while I think of it: āTracphoneā branded handsets and SIMs look like ordinary happy-swappy-GSM devices; but are not. Some aspect of the firmware has been tweaked to make them non-interoperable.
If you donāt mind using both their handset and their service(itās not a terrible deal), this isnāt an issue; but do not buy a handset expecting to use somebody elseās SIM, or service expecting to use somebody elseās handset. Unless you are a haxxor guru, and possibly even then, it wonāt work.
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I have a dumb phone still. I figured I spend enough time on line, do I really need it on my phone too? Also I save money with a small data plan I barely use.
I really liked my old Samsung slide phone. I have a similar one made by Pantech, though the battery isnt as good. I really like the side out key board design. Tactile keys I just use better. I wish they made a smart phone with one.
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I have the TT Phone
itās a senior phone. looks nice, great price and been using it for more than a year now.
battery lasts the whole week.
Your post confused me for a while there. Paying to receive texts is such an alien concept here. (UK)
http://www.quora.com/Why-do-US-carriers-charge-for-incoming-calls-and-text-messages
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Same here, I loved the older HTC models with the slide out keyboards. A hardware keyboard is so much nicer to use than touchscreens.
Sadly the industryās obsession with making phones excessively thin is incompatible with the added thickness a physical keyboard requires 
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That is the phone manufacturer cost and profit.
The carrier makes money off of the monthly payments, and will usually sell the phone/device at a loss.
I do find the large mark up for embedded wireless cards interesting though (for laptops, tablets, etc). My best guess is that the majority of devices with embedded cards are sold to business customers who require the functionality, and can also charge the cost of a premium device and the monthly data plan to a business account. If more consumers were buying wireless embedded decices, the prices would have to be more competitive.
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I still use an old Motorola Razr V3 flip phone. Had it for more than a decade and it still works fine. Compact, folds shut, slides into my pants pocket with no hassle. Looks good: metallic body and keyboard with good backlighting of the keys. Freat sound quality, good screen with minimal extras. Theoretically it has a browser but the screen is maybe 2 inches across and o no one int heir right mind would use that.
Battery seems to last forever and in fact still has the original battery. Itās GSM (T-mobile int his case) and works all over the world anywhere Iāve needed to use it.
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I still use the Nokia 1100 prepaid candy bar phone that I bought in 2005 for $99. Still works fine, just starting to show its age this year. About $100-150 per year in top-up minutes. I receive occasional texts on it but hardly ever send them myself since the standard phone keyboard where you have to press each button two or three times to enter each letter is pretty annoying. It would be nice to have a camera on it though.
Looks like the Nokia 215 is the current model that is most similar to this. Same annoying keyboard that would keep you from spending too much time sending texts. Bigger screen looks like it might be more likely to crack than the tiny plastic covered one on the 1100 but other than that, it doesnāt look like there is much on it that would be breakable.
One considerationā¦
How to initially transfer contact data to the phone from whereever you currently have it. Had to do all kinds of data transformation gymnastics to get my momās data from her old Sony Ericsson to her new Nokia 301.
For ongoing syncing, I think the Nokia 301 can sync to/from Google Contacts.
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Iām definitely going to get one of those chinese third-shift specials,
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Iām traveling the same path. Iāve already dumbed-down my iPhone 4S with the expectation of getting rid of it when my plan runs out this June. The key for me was to find a replacement for my calendar app: the 2.75" x 4.25" Moleskine pocket calendar has been great. Iām such a tactile person that Iāve loved writing again.
Have you looked into the Talkase Phone? It looks cool and is super small. Not sure how well it works, though.
