This may sound painful for Purism to do, but it’s their only way out. I’m sure they’ll have the respect of many people who now hate Purism. Honesty can do miracles.
Agreed; I didn’t mean for this to be read as a reason not to do a dumb phone device and should have worded that better!
Yep that too (though I haven’t kept up with those as much personally* I understand it’s pretty relevant to any new device launch)
*edit, context - any of the more recent ones brought up in the past year or two
Would this cover most of the use cases?
You can’t target a gen Z teenager with that 
it’s not modern-looking by any means. And they seem to plan on adding multiple features to it, which isn’t really into the ‘detox’ spirit.
Tagging @david.hamner, @francois-techene. What do you guys think of this thread? A stripped-down to literally bare minimum phone could objectively be called “the most private phone available now”. Since it wouldn’t have any cameras, you’d only need a hardswitch for the mic and maybe modem? And you’d also probably win the most smartphone-detox-friendly phone award 
Can’t Pinephone replace a dumbphone? You turn off all kill switches and add the hardware keyboard. It’s about $200 together. You “only” need a good OS which hides the browser and other “smart” things and provides a simple interface. SXMo comes to mind, although it could be further simplified.
Extra sensors, extra hardware = extra attack vectors.
Plus you wouldn’t get 2 weeks of battery time, with an average of 15h talk time.
In this case you’re wrong here anyway. That means it needs an own operating system that is specially designed for saving power as much as possible. If we just take an existing system, we have same issues again with battery. How to compete with Nokia that improved the system for years?
Also Purism attacked a huge market with Librem 5, but I don’t even think we hit 10k devices yet. How should it work with a device that attacks a little side market? Sure it’s growing, but Linux phones is also a growing market.
I think splitting up investments slow down more important processes. Also don’t think that this device wouldn’t need any updates. It will take years until it’s stable and it will need security updates aswell. Librem 11 is less work since it’s something close to Librem 14 and Librem 5.
Yes. Such FOSS OSes already exist, we could just fork them.
How to compete with Nokia that improved the system for years?
Nokia phones aren’t really dumb, they have lots of features & apps which makes testing expensive. In Purism’s case this won’t be a burden because just to release the phone all they need is calls, sms and a few system apps like Settings. Later updates could add a few other utility software like Calculator, Calendar, etc. So again, not a lot of dev work will be required for such a barebone device.
I think splitting up investments slow down more important processes.
They could start a new crowdfunding just for this phone.
I’m still thinking you underestimate this (think about firmware and drivers - Librem 5 is still not stable with everything). But let’s say it is as you mention …
I guess Purism wont do it again. The catastrophe of L5 crowdfund was kinda a lesson and I remember that Purism wrote somewhere they never do this again.
I guess Purism wont do it again. The catastrophe of L5 crowdfund was kinda a lesson and I remember that Purism wrote somewhere they never do this again.
It’s not that they won’t do it, it’s that they can’t because of the financial investment they made into the Librem 5 development. See Nicole Faerber’s post: https://forums.puri.sm/t/the-librem-micro-a-sbc-whod-be-interested/11109/28
Our focus right now still is getting the L5 fully in shape, we are pretty happy with Evergreen but this story does not end there either and frankly we now urgently need to make some money with them. This over three year development did cost us alot* and we somehow need to get back this investment.
No, I was speaking about something newer - last year. I just forgot where I read it.
It’s not the same thing though. LTE != internet.
In practice whether any given carrier makes them the same thing is another question. From what I can gather, carriers are an oligopoly in most countries and they are supremely unresponsive to customer wishes.
But then …
This sounds controversial. I don’t think you can be half pregnant. You either have internet or you don’t.
Yes, it is possible that a responsive carrier might choose to enable such an arrangement where the carrier provides updates and you have no access to the internet. How many privacy-focused customers would be happy with that though?
Would such a phone be so stripped back that it could get by with no updates? Or maybe updates only via a USB-connected host computer?? (just like in the bad old days of the early iPhones)
I have lots of implied questions.
I’ve seen the headlines too but … did anyone tell Big Corporates?
More and more of them are introducing apps that will in the not so distant future be required in order to authenticate and/or interact. Want to deal with Big Corp or Big Gov? Then you’ll need the app. So there’s something of a tug-of-war there and I’m not predicting the winner.
Clearly the traditional Librem 5 market is not the market for a dumbphone.
Then there are the social-media-addicted Gen Zs … I guess that’s what you mean by detox.
Then there are the questions as to whether MMS will still be possible if there’s no internet. (I think that MMS would no longer be possible - although maybe a carrier could make it work. Now, if the phone has no camera you can’t realistically send any images anyway. However MMS is used for more than just sending images - and of course people can still send images to you.)
Then there’s the newly de facto standard, RCS. Will that still be possible without internet? (The implication of not supporting RCS and only supporting SMS is that basically you won’t be able to do SMS at all eventually. So no real need for a QWERTY keyboard, just a dial pad. No SMS also means that those Big Corps who are security laggards and only allow authentication via SMS will then have no means of authentication.)
Then there’s the issue of homes with poor mobile coverage that can use WiFi calling to make calls while at home. No WiFi implies that that option disappears.
No internet implies that no calling options beyond vanilla mobile calls are possible e.g. no dedicated communication app (like Signal) e.g. no calling via social media e.g. no VoIP.
Some people like to synch their phonebooks from one device to another (and a basic phonebook would presumably still be a requirement even if the only thing the phone can do is make phone calls). That would be difficult or impossible if the phone is too stripped back.
Maybe it needs to be clearer what the dumbphone can do, rather than what it can’t.
I’m also wondering what there is to be kept private if all you can do is make vanilla mobile phone calls. That is never going to be fully private anyway. The carrier knows whom you call. The government can know.
Ditto regarding your approximate location. The carrier knows where you are. The government can know. The mobile phone network is by its nature unprivate as far as your location goes.
Anyway, all food for thought …
Not true. I have a Nokia dumbphone which works great while data is permanently disabled even though it has a few apps which require internet access, I just don’t use those apps. When I wanna update it, I turn data on and check for updates.
Would such a phone be so stripped back that it could get by with no updates? Or maybe updates only via a USB-connected host computer?? (just like in the bad old days of the early iPhones)
This sounds like a nice idea.
More and more of them are introducing apps that will in the not so distant future be required in order to authenticate and/or interact. Want to deal with Big Corp or Big Gov? Then you’ll need the app. So there’s something of a tug-of-war there and I’m not predicting the winner.
1 - this phone (along the other truly dumb phones) will put up resistance to that
2 - most probably the Librem 2 (let’s call it that for now) will be a secondary phone for the majority of customers anyway so…
Then there’s the newly de facto standard, RCS. Will that still be possible without internet? (The implication of not supporting RCS and only supporting SMS is that basically you won’t be able to do SMS at all eventually. So no real need for a QWERTY keyboard, just a dial pad. No SMS also means that those Big Corps who are security laggards and only allow authentication via SMS will then have no means of authentication.)
RCS will work offline (kinda), messages will be received as MMS instead (with a few limitations).
You’re missing the point here. This won’t be yet another “wouldn’t it be great if we add this or that feature/app?”. No. In this phone less is more. It’s what would make it unique. Even the Nokia dumbphones of today are not dumb by any stretch of the imagination. They have recorders, cameras, browsers, facebook apps, etc… So when people will want a real DUMB phone who will they buy it from? Purism or some other company? People now get frustrated because of the overwhelming impact that technology has on them, imagine how they will feel 5-10 years from now!
OK, so what functionality will it have?
I’m not convinced that MMS will work without internet.
The challenge with that is the government. If the government is saying to all banks that you must have best practice authentication and the banks are saying to customers and to the government that that is our authentication app (demanding 2FA, in effect) and the banks are saying that cash is dead and all transactions are electronic then the government can afford to let you swing. They don’t care. Obviously this is highly dependent on the individual country, and where the legal and constitutional framework lands.
For the record, there really are people who are doing banking authentication by SMS (today) but they have no mobile signal at home. So WiFi calling (and hence WiFi) is not a “nice to have”. The alternative is literally to initiate the transaction, drive to somewhere there is signal, retrieve the SMS, drive home … and hope that the banking transaction hasn’t timed out in the meantime.
On the upside … the attack surface is substantially decreased, and the likelihood of bugs is substantially decreased.
This is what I’m talking about!
It’s crazy because who wouldn’t wanna be the first one to develop such an easy-to-develop phone? And the even craziest part is people want it, and you could target so many markets with it:
Do you expect this phone to have hardware kill switches? If no, it will have tracking constantly on. If yes, I’m afraid it will not be easy to make at all.
How about separation of the modem from the OS?
