A phone soon to be owned by a guy that does not own a television set.
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I think you’re right for all the right reasons, but maybe fail to see the phone’s intended target: Silicon Valley types who intend to conspicuously use a dumb phone.
There’s no point just using an old solid Nokia from the 90s. Then you just look like somebody’s grandfather who never got the whole “smart phone” thing.
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(Full disclosure, though: if somebody designed a beautiful, dumb-looking phone with physical buttons and a tiny screen, yet had all the apps and things I (in my egotistical way) found important in a phone (good camera, music, podcasts, basic email, WhatsApp), I would buy the heck out of that thing.)
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Yuck no thanks 
Thanks @beschizza 
$300 for a dumbed-down phone is like spending $700 for a fixie bike with the brakes removed.
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How do you delete the web browser on an iPhone?
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Are there any linux-based smartphones out yet?
A friend of mine hates Apple, and loathes Java to the point where any form of Android is unacceptable to him, as it is apparently built on a Java framework.
Just a simple phone with linux functionality so it can surf, send and receive email and watch primitive videos would be very helpful to him, and thus to me.
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Android apps are built using Java. The OS itself is built on Linux. IIRC, the built in system native apps are done using native code instead of Java, so maybe what your friend wants is a cyanogen rooted android phone with no installed apps?
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That could be, and I’ve also used Cyanogen. I’ll look into that, thanks : )
Hm, that doesn’t solve the browsing and email bit though, does it? Unless linux programs to do the same can be installed instead?
He should build a RaspberryPi phone. Then all the apps can be written in a sensible language such as Smalltalk.
For a suitable consideration I’ll do it for them.
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Interesting, thanks!
Have a website or similar?
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-viously! He has multiple mums and obviously they need writing to.
The problem I see with dumb phones like this, or an old Nokia, is that there’s no possibility of installing something like Signal for encrypted communication. Your two possible methods of communication with this phone, 2G phone and text, are both facile for not just a government to intercept, but these days anyone with a computer and a backpack of SDR gear.
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RaspberryPi.org to start with. Look for blog/forum posts on the piphone. Then squeak.org for a suitable Smalltalk (the VM is included in Raspbian to support Scratch) and finally look at Rowledge.org to find me.
It weighs 3.1 ounces, uses 2G GSM networks and is $295.
In the US that means it is a critical failure. Most US carriers are dropping 2G support to provide more spectrum to the more modern portions of their networks.
Dumbphone, indeed. No matter how nice it is. But perhaps other countries are still using 2G? Not Australia.
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The man likes his dumbphones.
Ain’t nothing wrong with that.
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I strongly suspect Google’s first party apps are also written using native code, since Java sucks performance wise. I can’t recall for sure, but I think Google opened up a set of native APIs for coding apps without using the performance suck of Java? So maybe diligent research will lead one to apps that are java-less?
oh, you’re going to fit in here juuuust fine, sir. just fine.
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AT&T prefers the soothing term ‘2G Sunset’, admittedly more poetic than your average banal euphemism; but according to their docs it was supposed to have happened by last month.
Since absolutely nobody is going to mind if they underpromise and overdeliver, there might still be areas where they haven’t given it the chop; but that’s not much of an SLA.
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