this device is designed to be your secondary smartphone
In this economy?
lol imagine having two phones, takes years to save up just to buy one!
Have you tried being rich? I highly recommend it.
Could also try being frugal, there are plenty of smart phones for 200-300$ that will do everything your $1200 iPhone will do with a longer battery life. Most people I know spend more on a phone annually than I spend on my last car! And no u don’t need a new phone every year or two. Currently typing from my Moto G I got for 200$ new.
I don’t buy a new phone more often than probably one every five or six, so I don’t really mind buying an expensive flagship.
The problem tends to be though that people buy an expensive phone and then later have financial difficulties. And people criticise them for having an expensive phone as if they could have known that that would be an issue a year or so down the line.
The other part of the equation here is not every body has 200$ to buy a cash phone, but these days you have to have a phone. So if ur poor what do you do? Spend 200$ you don’t have on a cheap phone or walk out of verizon for 0$ with a brand new iPhone that retails for 1400$ but only cost u an extra 20$ a month for the rest of your life? It’s the same reason a lot of poor people buy new Nissans (read about how they made money on subprime loans if ur interested) and it brings into perspective how expensive it is to be poor!
Legit sound advice, I use the cheaper android phones so I never spend more than £120 on one. Only issue I ever have is the lacking RAM, otherwise they’re great.
I paid 70€ on my current phone, and it has 8GB of RAM, and even a headphone jack. Buying used is great
Damn, I need to start buying used then.
In 2017 I bought a refurbished lenovo p2 for 300 that lasted me until 2024. Out of boredom, non because i needed it to change, i bought a refurbished s20 ultra for 350, still my daily driver.
No one is forcing anyone to buy a top gamma phone every year for 1400€
Work often issues work phones. They’re likely to be quite swayed by something focused on communication.
That’s their marketing pitch but it has every feature you’d need to make it your only phone, which is my plan.
It’s such a weird marketing pitch though…
Can Communicator be used as my primary phone? Yes! Absolutely. Communicator is a fully standalone smartphone that runs Android 16, with all the apps, 5G connectivity and Wi-fi. We think many people will use this as their primary phone while others will use it as a complement to a flagship iPhone, Galaxy, Pixel, etc.
Maybe a way for them to be able to say one day: “yes, it’s not selling in big numbers, but we aren’t competing against the others anyway, ours is a second phone, so it’s not a failure!” I mean, I don’t even know if that makes sense, but it’s the only spin I can give to it.
Can it run Linux? Because if it runs any fascism-tech from Google it’s a non-starter
If you want to use it as your primary device, you may be locked out of using specific security focused apps such as banking apps.
Mobile banking is probably the only reason I’m still on Android
you may be locked out of using specific security focused apps such as banking apps.
they locked me out already, so it does not matter. they can’t play the same card twice.
I’ve yet to try a Linux Touch distro on a phone, but couldn’t you just save a shortcut to the website?
A lot of banks restrict functionality based on how you access them.
That’s true I suppose. The only thing I can think of is check deposits. I only do that like once per year, so I could just go to the ATM or use an old Android device.
What are you using right now because every Linux phone I’ve ever seen has been an unfinished working program that isn’t commercially ready.
Isn’t Android Linux? That was the trench defended when I last checked a few years ago.
Android uses a modified version of the Linux kernel.
when people say linux phones, the point is not the kernel but believing it could have the same open ecosystem as the linux PC. no forced lockdown, no spyware, open source and in turn extensible system software, where its not the oligarchs who dictate. other then the first point these can be told about mostly none of the current phones, and even the first point is going away recently, despite that being the only way to get rid of the preinstalled, google mandated (and sometimes additional) malware.
Does it track and sell personal data?
Itself? I wouldn’t think so. But like almost all Android phones it comes with Google services so there’s that. They said the Bootloader will be unlockable to that should be able to be mitigated…
I’d say less than a mainstream flagship.
Can it do Linux touch and ditch android?
Seriously. This would be a sweet Linux phone.
Ditto
I miss Blackberry a lot but this ain’t it.
What’s wrong with it?
Probably a purist complaining it’s not the fabled mythical Linux phone.
It literally has every feature of a modern smartphone. And it’s not even that expensive.
If I had a need for a new phone right now I’d be buying this.
It even has some of the design team from Blackberry
I saw this kickstarter alternative the other day. IMO if it becomes a reality it would be better simply due to the fact that it fully supports linux instead of android.
I’m gonna keep an eye on it and see if it ends up becoming reality after the kickstarter.
Yeah that looks mega cool but it’s not a cellular device, so I’d still need a phone. I’m really not interested in carrying more devices.
I really want a Linux phone but I e played with them and they are just not to the point of being able to use as a sole device yet.
18hr of battery with the display off is a killer, and even if you could get an m.2 modem working in it m.2 modems tend to be far less efficient than the ones integrated to cell phone hardware. At least it my experience with Quectel and Sierra m.2 modems is representative of other brands.
Wake me when there’s a slider.
Lengthwise, nokia n900 style, with a smaller screen (actually this is 4", that’s one box ticked, prefer 5" tho), and a bigger battery, and an open OS, and sd card expansion, basically an anti-todays-phone I guess…
I actually stumbled across my Blackberry Torch in storage and gave a great big sigh. I don’t use my phone as a media consumption device as much as many people. I understand I’m in the minority, but its comms first for me.
It actually does have an SD card slot. And headphone jack.
It has a headphone jack? They must lack courage.
I had an n900, it was my worst best phone. The software was often arse, the resistive screen was arse, but that keyboard was god tier.
If someone made a modernised version without a bunch of slop I’d buy 2 today just incase they went out of production.
If it had an unlocked bootloader where i could install ubuntu touch i’d buy it. Otherwise naw.
Do you currently daily Ubuntu touch? How is it?
It’s good, no annoying UI gotchas, never had a problem with calling/receiving/texts. Waydroid works great using F-Droid/Aurora store.
I am very uneducated on the topic so bear with me here, can you run android apps on Linux mobile? Thinking banking apps here- thats the main thing holding me back. Not that I really NEED to do mobile banking mobile most days but it has saved my hide a couple times lol. Been thinking about changing the os on my Motorola, my buddy told me to try graphene but it’s pixel only. Not sure where to start but would love to de Google my phone a bit, tired of having to go and disable “features” (Gemini, assistant etc). Android these days is so bloated and sheisty it makes windows look good FFS. If the next update adds one more bs “feature” that might be the last push I need lmfao.
I have Ubuntu touch installed on my pixel 3a xl. On the phone i can install waydroid with gapps which will allow you to install googleplay store. You should be able to run those apps, i don’t use googleplay store though so your experiences may vary, just installed it to see if i could… All i can say is give it a go. There are some other phones on the market you could buy and try it out.
On Ubuntu Touch i installed waydroid through the openstore then in terminal i had to use this command to run waydroid with gapps. sudo waydroid init -f -s GAPPS good resource on waydroid https://docs.waydro.id/
Thanks a ton! Saved this comment as I do have a couple old phones kicking around I could try to experiment on that aren’t terribly outdated. If I can get a bank app to work on one I’ll run it as my daily ! Ive been hesitant about Ubuntu touch because it seemed adoptions low and I worried about lack of features, but I would like to get out of dooms rolling as much so something’s probably just as well without …
What the other person said is true, I have a second old phone that I installed Ubuntu on. It’s really limited which phone support it though good chance you don’t have one.
Banking apps are going to check what is called “play integrity API” which checks if the device is secure locked, and not rooted. The app which allows you to use Android apps on Ubuntu touch is called Waydroid. It basically runs a full Android phone in a virtual machine. I very, very much doubt banking apps will like it. A lot of them will not run on a rooted Android phone for this reason.
Other apps will work fine. A little slow, plus it’s a real battery hog to emulate the whole Android system. So if I was really trying to daily drive Ubuntu touch, I would only open the Android app for as long as I needed it and immediately shut the system down. I would try to find native apps as much as possible.
Ah I just looked at the supported devices and I do not have one. Did lead me down a rabbit hole looking at the pine phones and minimal phones though… Hopefully next time I’m in the market for a phone there’s better options! I was not considering moving away from Android when I got my moto yet.
The bootloader will be unlockable, what ROMs will be installable is going to depend on the community
Someone said with the SOC it has third party ROM’s will be questionable. I haven’t taken the time to check that out but it would be great to have one device out there that still be tailored to the individual.
Already preordered mine
Risky move, but I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Supposedly they’re offering a refund up until it ships if you want. It’s not a completely brand new company so it doesn’t seem super risky. I do it with a credit card that way you can do a chargeback if things go really bad.
I know. But if pre-ordering videogames taught me something, it’s that you never pre-order anything.
Why risky? The company is not new, they’ve been selling cases with keyboard to a few years.
It’s their first phone indeed but it’s quite cheap so wor ty giving a try imo
I made a community for it: !clickscommunicator@thelemmy.club
I joined
I miss Palm and WebOS.
I’ve been wishing to use an old feature phone for that one’s advertised purpose. This one is more interesting than refurbishing a hopelessly outdated phone because it’s going to actually work.
In any work setting where it is common to have a work phone and a personal phone, this would make an ideal work phone
AI slop trash article.
I too would call anything slop that I don’t like!
This could be my next phone.
But, but, though. Will the OS be non-proprietary? Will I be able to actually use all the apps I would ideally want? Because, much as I love my Samsung Galaxy, I really do wish I could remove a lot of its bloatware off the phone that I know I won’t ever use.
You can, without root even! Take a look at uad-ng (universal android debloater). Comes with a community-curated list which sorts APKs into 5 tiers from “recommended to uninstall” to “yeah don’t, your phone needs this to boot”. Apps disabled through this do not come back after updates.
Removed 140+ apps from my Xiaomi, 120+ from my GFs Samsung S24, and 90+ from my brothers Motorola Edge something.
There’s always LineageOS for now
So where is the running prototype? Even a shitty one made with an esp32 and a Display so one can get a feel for it. as far as ive seen they only showed non functional mockups…
Would love for this to be a success but at this time I’m not holding my breath.
They’ve shipped hardware before so I don’t think it’s total vaporware. They’ve said the non-functional devices they’ve shown at CES had the real screen and keyboard hardware so it seems somewhat far along in the manufacturing/design stage. But yeah, everyone would like to see the real deal.
“There are dozens of us!”
