this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024

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132

Mudita Kompakt - E-ink (truly) dumbphone with FOSS OS. (dailyweb.pl)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Thought this might interest some Lemmy folks.

all 36 comments

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That’s not a dumbphone. It has email, a camera, an e-reader and , looks like, a few other apps.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Mobile phones in the era before smartphones had cameras, email clients, games, music players, and even web browsers. They just weren't very good at those functions and their core feature was being a phone for voice calls. Texting was barely a feature on some of them (the first camera phone in the United States, the Sanyo SCP-5300, didn't have a two way text messaging client - the user had to go to a website on the phone to send texts, which was inconvenient even on a 1xRTT 3G connection.)

The e-ink phone seems closer to a dumbphone than a smartphone, IMO, largely because it lacks access to an app store.

Source: I sold mobile phones before smartphones and during the early smartphone years (BlackBerry and Palm Treo, for example.)

Edit: calling it a feature phone instead of a dumb phone might be more accurate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

SCP-5300 😮

[+] [email protected] -30 points 2 months ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (2 children)

While I get your opinion, these things have definitions. Here's a super simple version:

A dumb phone does not connect to the internet. Its a phone. Just a dumb device.
A feature phone is what you're referring to here, where it may connect to the internet, but isn't part of some larger ecosystem and is certainly not an app-first approach. Its a phone first, ancillary features are a bonus.
Smartphones are your android and iOS devices, which connect to the internet, is part of a large ecosystem of applications, is an internet first oriented device, etc.

So yes, this is a feature phone from what I've read of the translation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Then I can't message anyone since people use messaging clients like signal and not actual texts

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Which is why dumb phones and feature phones aren't common anymore, and the people choosing them are specifically choosing it to avoid being available via WhatsApp/Signal/Slack/Discord/Teams/whatever else.

My FIL for example has a clamshell feature phone, because he doesn't want to be reached except by phone or SMS. He doesn't want to read email or get messages on his phone, he wants to restrict that to when he's in front of his computer.

So yes, you would not be able to use messaging clients on a dumb phone, that's the idea behind their use today.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I remember sending a Facebook message on my feature phone. I had to type with the num pad and it took minutes to load the page, but it I was successful.

I think people are forgetting that feature phones were connected to the internet back in the day

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

A dumb phone and a feature phone are not the same thing, and a feature phone may connect to the internet.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Since we're just making up definitions, a dumb phone is now a type of salad.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I need to get more dumb phones in my diet.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's a feature phone.

Man when's the last time you heard that one?

[–] 0x0 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why is this tagged english if it's a polish article?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Fun fact: While mudita is Pali for "vicarious joy", it's also Spanish for "little mute girl".

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

If this gets decent standby battery life on 4g I would seriously consider it as my secondary phone

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I don't speak polish, but from the photos it looks like a nice concept.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I love the thicc boio!
(Ngl, would have loved a thinn boyo like this one too)