In the meantime, Purism would probably make a mint if they could design, source, and release a simple VoLTE-enabled feature phone. Lots of people apparently want one, especially one that’s not based on Google Android.
I think you overestimate the size of the “not based on Google Android (or iOS)” market given the price point as well as other “support and ease-of-use” problems that would come as part of the package.
The people that “apparently want one” will always find excuses (e.g. the price point given the likely “other features”: bad cameras, poor GPS support, battery life issues, doesn’t support my app [Uber, bank, hiking], …).
1 Like
Possibly. My search on “demand for dumbphones” would seem to indicate that it’s a popular idea, though.
But yeah, I agree, people often don’t realize what they would be giving up.
-
If you search for something you should expect to find a lot of confirming data.
-
Data indicates that while there was a spike back toward “dumb phones” in 2022, in 2024 the worldwide demand for “dumb phones” was $428M vs $56B for “smart phones”. Resurgence of the Dumb Phone | Trends & Data | Ooma
-
Current “dumb phones” sell for about $50. Nobody is “making a mint”.
1 Like
Yes, “make a mint” is a big call.
It depends on three things:
- price point
- demand at that price point
- profit at that price point
Without exploring any of that - because really we don’t have that data, and even those that do claim to have that data often involve an element of guesswork …
Which raises the question of what @amarok means by a “feature phone” and what I mean by a “dumbphone”.
Best case scenario: A dumbphone has none of that crap. It literally only makes phone calls. You are contactable 24x7 (well, if you have signal) and in an emergency or in an urgent situation you can make calls (if you have signal).
On the plus side, that makes “support and ease-of-use” less of a drama and makes “feature comparison” basically a non-issue. It is probably much more secure too. On the minus side, you have to sell the user on that absolutely minimalist approach.
It is almost certain that the typical forum denizen here would not be the target market. But if you really care about privacy and security, less can be more. I’ve also seen marketing on the basis of the fact that modern mobile phones are too complex to use, possibly targeting the aging population (without stereotyping). You need a science degree to operate them.
My personal opinion for whether Purism should be looking at this: No.
And it isn’t going to be either Librem 6 or Librem 5v2. So I’ve moved this to a separate topic.
Wouldn’t a dumb phone also be arguably worse because its source code (and hardware) would not be auditable, so you’d have a harder time knowing that the mic was not always running versus the experience you get on a Librem 5?
What I’m saying is that the government might have a backdoor on my Librem 5 and they might be always listening, but the fact that I can unscrew it and take it apart and check what’s in there and remove the microphone if I want for me goes a long way towards trusting the device. I’m not sure I’d get the same for a dumb phone. Plus, today’s society is so addicted to Android and iOS that in order to have a conversation about my smarter phone in the context of their smart phones, I almost have to tell them that I’m using a dumb phone already just to make them understand how to interact with what’s in my hand.
For example, some people in a parking lot one time came up to me and asked for my phone so they could make a call. I opened the call app on Phosh and handed it to them, and they got really confused. They entered a number to make the call, but when they muttered something or other I said, “Yeah, it’s not a smart phone but it makes calls” so they would understand. “Oh, yeah, we can’t use that,” they replied – and they handed it back to me.
In hindsight, I don’t know what that was other than a ploy to steal a phone which failed utterly. It’s hilarious to think that for a moment they had a device that costs over $2000 in their hand, and from their perspective it was trash, simply on the basis that they didn’t recognize it as Android or iOS.
Anyway, that’s just a bit of an anecdote when someone talks about a dumb phone, and my experience. It’s important to define your terms. I’d rather to maybe say a Librem 5 is a smarter phone… than their phones… but they won’t get it.
1 Like
Within the context of this topic, I imagine we can take the dumbphone as having been engineered by Purism and being open source. So the auditability etc. is the same as the Librem 5. The difference is in what hardware it has and what software functionality it has.
I guess it could be argued that a fully open dumbphone is less secure than a locked dumbphone because, with the former, a user could download the source code, add risky functionality to it, compile it and flash it to the dumbphone - and presumably an attacker who is in possession of the phone could likewise. However at least the attack surface starts off minimal, and in any case you could probably address that while keeping it as a fully open dumbphone if you wanted to.
As we are talking about a completely hypothetical product, you can make whatever assumptions you like.
Right. Someone told me this is why the Librem 5’s new version in 2028 or whenever probably isn’t going to have a removable backplate or battery. Because the government contractors who buy Librem 5’s convinced themselves that it’s a big risk that someone could walk by and open the device and swap out things inside of it.
We’re either securing the device from the user, or from big tech. I don’t think it makes sense to do both or neither. And sealing it so it won’t open is securing the device from the user, if anything.
[citation needed]
I have no idea whether that is planned.
I don’t really buy it as a claim though. As it stands today, you don’t need internal access to reflash the Librem 5 anyway - although I dare say it could be a plausible security improvement to change that. (So the Vulcan Death Grip becomes a switch inside the phone.)
You are only really slowing an attacker down. Physical security has its place but it isn’t exactly a substitute for security in the design of the software. In some respects, you are expected to keep the phone on your person at all times.
I guess they could make the glitter nail polish a standard feature. 
A sophisticated nation state attacker with physical access to the phone and preparatory work might just be able to swap out the entire phone (where the replacement, new phone already has the bad software installed on it). Would you notice if your IMEI changed?
I think the demand is for privacy and a time where the internet was less monetized. If people are willing to pay for services that are upfront about costs, then micro amounts are feasible and individuals with their data aren’t the product. But, I digress.
The popularity of phones that are “dumb” is going up. Look, at light phone (founded 2014) and made wired magazine with the third version in 2025. As one example.
A true dumb phone or old Nokia is a scary way to go. The lack of integrity safeguards, not to mention old protocols that can suffer abuse is a significant risk. Security has always followed features in design and is rarely “baked in”.
A minimum feature set phone. Determine, what 85% of the population use their phone for, build around that feature set and offer a reasonably priced alternative. Bonus points it allows you to support an OS and security across both.
The Librem 5 seems built around the highest possible safeguards. You are never going to capture a significant portion of a consumer market with that attitude. Most, don’t want the hassle and just “need it to work” to continue their lives.
Apple for its security issues is still superior with its more or less walled garden mentality. Yes, it maybe a billion dollar giant that is questionable with your data, but it also cares about its reputation and spends a reasonable amount for adequate security. Most don’t spend time finding vulnerabilities in their phone’s operating system and writing the changes to their phone’s codebase.
A minimum feature set phone that appeals to ideals millennials and younger care about (e.g. e-ink screen). Light phone has done a decent job of this. They, also have decent marketing with a gimmick video worth a watch.
It’d be neat to see purism find a middle ground and build a consumer popular product. Who knows.
I have a dumb Nokia 4g candybar which still has a microUSB port. Some research showed it does run locked down Linux inside, the truth is it has a very limited customizability, one of the ‘hot’ keys is always getting bumpde and I have to spend at least keypresses turning off an FM radio while there is no option to ‘hot key’ the torch. I think it still has apps like facebook and maybe other social media though I run it with two no-data SIMs. I have no idea what it is doing or if it is trying to phone home somewhere but doesn’t get net access. I have no ideas about the new Nokia culture since Elop’s burning platform and most of the Maemo team moving to Jolla.
I suppose I might want a Know Your Computer dumb phone with a long battery and dual sim as a backup to my Librem but I would just prefer that we eventually figure out the magic that gives a motorola G7 power 4 days with normal use under LineageOS and get it intergrated into PureOS mobile.
Yes. At first I was going to complain about that. But I noticed he said “simple … feature phone”. And I’ve found out that many people would connect “simple feature phone” with “dumb phone” rather than a “smart phone” and I decided given the rest of the conversation that it might have been amarok’s intention to be discussing things that weren’t “smart phones”.
A pocketcomputer - just like a laptop. You just confuses yourself calling things with completely different feature sets. A real dumphone is like the old Nokia bones with simple software that cannot do anything further than these basic tasks. And those also can be fully open hardware and free software.
1 Like
exists from HTC:
They claim privacy! However.
No Android, no AppleOS, it uses KAI-OS
which is not exactly what Cellebrite would care for with priority 
they have the ressources to do it anyways.
I use one HTC feature phone regularly, the 2720 Flip. OK for phoning on construction sites.
And I own a late HTC-Nokia 8110 Banana Phone.
8110 Banana Phone shows how sexy these dumb phones can be!
Unfortunately the web browser is so outdated it became useless over the last 10 years. Some stupidly old WebKit I was told by a frowning website dev.
My opinion based on experience is all design and electronics inside these feature phones is outdated or of rather basic quality level.
If one of you remembers the Nokia C5 (world best ever mobile phone) or the french Alcatel 715 (beautiful, tactile sensation second to none, looking like 22nd century and still a style sensation)
you will get a feeling there is a market for it. HTC ruins it quality wise and profit wise.
And leaves space for something more ambitious.
Stupid unsmart-chunk phones are large and heavy. Steve Jobs revenge on thoughtful and sensitive people. I never have seen a single advantag ein so called smartphones. Large and heavy like dinosaurs they are a mistake of evolution.
I’d definitely buy an old style feature phone made by Purism !
Only requirement: Cutting edge Opera browser (like “Opera mini”) for small screens - in perfection beyond compare like seen on Nokia C5 mobile phone.
Yes, the idea is promising - profit will be difficult.
This might be a tricky aspect of the (very theoretical) phone. If you are complaining that the web browser is outdated then presumably you want a web browser on the phone. I don’t want a web browser on the phone. And we are both 100% correct. But the tricky aspect is to pin down an agreed feature set.
My approach was “absolutely minimal feature set” but, since it is an open platform, you are free to install a web browser if you want.
I was envisaging a (very theoretical) opportunity to reduce hardware and increase time on battery. That could mean that performance for your web browser is sucky. That becomes even more tricky to resolve.
1 Like
I had gotten the librem 5 several 3+ years ago. I live out in the country and at the time ATT (awesim) was not robust enough for the phone to properly connect so it just sat in a drawer and I went back to using flip phones. In the last year I started looking into alternative phones again. I looked into the punkt 002 dumb phone and the light phone III. Punk didn’t have a camera which I could have done without and more importantly a removable battery (which meant it had a shorter e-waste life) and at the time they were having pigeon problems and everyone was locked out of signal for a month with no solution in sight yet. The light phone didn’t have secure messaging app or seemingly any future means of getting one, and I also wondered how “private” the light phone was. I think I read something that they use android, and people found ways to hack it to get into the android part to make spotify work on it. So I got back into librem 5.
This is not purism related, but did come across this article for the light phone and a community based app thing they are starting.
So this dumbphone (Light phone) is a mislabeled feature phone.
kind of. I read they run their own android program “light apk” or something on top of regular android, maybe almost like a virtual machine? I guess their idea is to do less things but do them well and be reliable, and avoid all the distractions. The problem is not everyone will agree on what those “less things” should be so their opening it up to creators to add features. Their also not privacy as their first motivation, and Id wonder with regular android running “behind the scenes” maybe, how that affects your privacy strengths.
I use two iPhones; The newest one is for all features except the phone calling. This requires simply removing the SIM card & putting the card into the other, less costly older phone, as long as it connects to G5 networks and this is the one I use just for phoning, text and voice and nothing else; This second phone first requires going into Settings to turn off all features that are not required for basic phone use and I get a Dumb Phone. I carry both phones to get all the features except for phone data. The occasions when I have to transfer the SIM to the other phone so as to get a fully featured phone is so rare as to not be a real bother or inconvenience. I am retired so I am not required to have everything at all times such as a business person where time is money and cannot be transferring the SIM card when something extra like transferring data or a picture,is required immediately, during a phone call. So this probably won’t work for everyone.
But it can work if both phones have their own SIM card by adding a second paid up phone number and then the same changes made in the Settings to get just phone use on the cheaper phone.
1 Like