from Hacker News

Is America headed for an age of dumb phones?

by herbertl on 5/24/25, 11:06 PM with 50 comments

  • by tedunangst on 5/24/25, 11:36 PM

  • by incompatible on 5/25/25, 12:13 AM

    Seems more like the smartphone is becoming compulsory as e.g., people want to use more secure messaging systems like Signal, or banks insist on apps instead of websites (maybe for security reasons, maybe something more nefarious?)

    In any case, we really need a true open platform, so that we aren't dependent on potentially hostile companies like Google and Apple.

  • by Bender on 5/24/25, 11:33 PM

    I have not been able to find many true dumb-phones. Most of the "dumb phones" are running Android and just hide most of the UI. A proper dumb phone would only have enough firmware and OS to make calls and text, maybe a very rudimentary calculator. AFAIK most of those are gone or depend on networks that have long since been shut down such as GSM in most places. With the engineering firmware they could display what cell site one was on along with the signal strength of each sector. That and the basic GSM spec was about it.

  • by BirAdam on 5/25/25, 12:02 AM

    It sounds like people just hate social media. One needn’t have a social media account to have a smartphone.

  • by throwawayffffas on 5/24/25, 11:25 PM

    The title is "The age of dumb phones is here"

    What's up with the question?

  • by attendant3446 on 5/25/25, 7:42 AM

    When I hear "dumb phone" I think of a device that can make calls and send and receive SMS, maybe a game of Snake and a radio that uses headphones as an antenna, and that's it. But how often do people use these things?

    I have a dumb phone, with multiple SIM cards, I used it to receive SMS messages from different countries where they restrict the phone numbers for services and it has to be a local number. But other than that, it's not useful at all.

    I kind of agree that today's smartphones are too much. I'd be happier with a mobile web browser (probably something like what Firefox OS was trying to do). But of course that have to be popular enough for companies to start making proper web apps (I'm looking at pretty much every bank now).

  • by rr808 on 5/24/25, 11:42 PM

    I'd love a dumb phone, but unfortunately kinda need authenticator and uber and some restaurant apps, also a camera. Now I just want a regular smartphone that can never install social media.

  • by deadbabe on 5/25/25, 12:22 AM

    I could imagine entirely app-free phones, the number one feature is an AI that does everything:

    Call people for you, send a verbatim text, prompt a text to send it a certain way, answer any question, connect with MCP servers to retrieve data from other services, banks, etc… why browse the internet or social media manually when an AI can organize it all for you and feed it to you?

  • by FridayoLeary on 5/24/25, 11:46 PM

    It's actually harder then ever to have a dumbphone because gsm, which most old nokias rely on, and helped give them such good battery life is being depracated almost everywhere, as is 3g.

  • by paulcole on 5/24/25, 11:54 PM

    Clearly not. People absolutely fucking love their phones. They may say otherwise but their actions tell the truth.

  • by babuloseo on 5/25/25, 12:56 AM

    No the current smartphones are dumb we need smarter smart phones. AI PHONES.

  • by blipvert on 5/24/25, 11:47 PM

    “Phones” considered an unnecessary qualifier.

  • by vivzkestrel on 5/25/25, 1:29 AM

    only 2% market share for dumb phones so why are all these articles acting is if 90% people threw away their smart phone?

  • by peteforde on 5/25/25, 12:48 AM

    The fundamental ignorance of these devices is that they all seem to assume that the one thing a phone should do is make calls.

    The Phone app doesn't even make my top 10.

  • by more_corn on 5/25/25, 2:31 AM

    Given the US administration’s attacks on education, science, and plain old facts I’m guessing that we’re headed for a plain old Age of Dumb.