Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/21/review-punkts-mp01-is-the-u.html
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“Reminder: write your mums ob…”
…ituary?
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GSM is 2G and it is starting to be phased out.
Telstra in Australia has shut down its 2G GSM network on December 1, 2016, which makes it the first mobile network operator to decommission a GSM network. The second mobile provider planning to shut down its GSM network (on January 1, 2017) is AT&T Mobility from the United States. Singapore will phase out 2G services by April 2017.
It is also insecure, which is great for the NSAs and GCHQs of the world, but not for the rest of us.
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2G is the baseline- 1G was the old analogue standard that hasn’t been used for years. Some networks are 3G only, with no real fallback to 2G, like 3.
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I’d rather have an old Nokia 3310.
The whole point of a dumbphone is to be cheap and durable. This thing is just an easily-smashed piece of conspicuous consumption wankery.
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@beschizza can you add an email account?
I’m looking for a dumbphone with email.
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I want a dumbpone so that I can do calls and messages without being distracted by the internet and especially not by the addictive lure of social networking.
@heligo there used to be an emailphone with no calling! http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/09/10/peek-email-theory.html
You can’t add email to this one, sadly.
Basically, all these 2G phones, even the fancy ones, seem to have very similar underlying capabilities centered on calls and SMS. Nothing (except perhaps the Cat B100, a true 3G dumbphone, or perhaps a Nokia dumbphone of just-right vintage) has done that clever trick we imagine, where proper email and more contemporary messaging is added without also adding in Facebook and the like.
I guess the problem is that if you build something capable of doing those things, you’re building something capable of anything, and it will be added to enlargen the device’s audience.
It’s as if these well-designed phones are really just a nice side effect of it being possible to refine yesteryear’s technology into something beautiful without too much expense.
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That was my reading too. A bit grim if we are right.
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Soon you may have a new Nokia 3310!
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Still got my old one stashed with my camping gear, I think. Virtually indestructible and good for a week on a single charge.
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Just as easily smashed as my iPhone at a third the cost! Plus I’d like that phone more than this one. If I had that phone I wouldn’t be here typing this, and I don’t think the world would be worse off for that.
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That would be a blackberry. You should be able to find one relatively cheap.
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That thing is pretty high on my list of dumb purchases.
Probably wasn’t helped by my employers giving a Blackberry very soon after I bought it.
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2G = basic service out-of-doors. I recently moved off a 2G feature phone until I could afford better. No signal except near windows, and spotty outdoors – on T-mobile in a densely populated California suburb, too.
I love the idea of a dumb backup, but it’s going to have to be 3G for me. Stucco houses are like Faraday cages to 2G signals. I won’t blow $300 when the $15 beater never went above a bar of signal.
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…[quote=“Herrmannator, post:3, topic:95481”]
“Reminder: write your mums ob…”
[/quote]
…gyn?
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…servatory. Observatory. Mum is an Astronomer and her work consumes her so much that she doesn’t get home much and never reads the mail there. So, obviously, he needs to write to her and send it to the Observatory so she will actually get the letter.
Of course, he’s writing to tell her that Dad died of a broken heart pining for her to return from her star gazing.
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$295 for a dumbphone. By Punkt. Punked? What am I missing? I could get a really shitty smartphone for less than that, with so little memory that apps are unusable anyway, thus achieving the same effect.
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Wow those sounds are surprisingly nice. Even the beepy boppy ones don’t sound harsh. Sounds like the sharp edges were taken off. Wish I could download, but hey, if they paid a fancy sound designer to make them I understand if they’re not in public circulation.
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I don’t care if people buy this, but it’s objectively a failure as a design. It comes up with dubious problems to solve, and then solves them demonstrably less well than existing solutions.
Smartphones are expensive, but so is this. Smartphones aren’t great for phone calls (?) but this can’t make phone calls at all in many scenarios. Smartphones don’t have physical keyboards, except the ones that do, and they all have full QWERTY keyboards. Smartphones have distracting (?) apps, but you can delete them for free; etc.
It’s not like they’ve boldly pared the object back to its fundamentals – that would imply no screen, and you make calls by dialling a number – this is just a pastiche of a nineties phone, wrapped in a knockoff of Dieter Rams’ design language because it was trendy to be into him a couple of years back.
Oh, and Santa Claus? Very much a lie.
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I find this very interesting, but I can already see that for me personally this would be a fool’s errand.
Not because I’d miss social, oh no.
For me it’d be I want the same features as @beschizza but i’d also want it very cheap, very light, very durable, well designed (obviously duh) and maybe hack-able/modable, with good customer support, oh and not built in a sweatshop while we’re at it.
This thing probably does not exist, it’d be multitools all over again
(P.s. I did settle for a vintage Leatherman Sideclip though after searching time and again).
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