Nokia 225

I've been searching for a decent dumbphone for the better part of a decade. Unfortunately, I cannot really say I've succeeded. In that time I've tried the following phones: Nokia 225, Punkt. MP02, Mudita Pure, Doro 7030 and now a Nokia 2660. My list of requirements isn't long: 1) should make/receive phone calls, 2) should make/receive text messages, 3) have physical buttons and 4) preferably use 4G and be able to create hotspots (the last requirement, I have deviated on occasionally, like with my current phone). A requirement 0, if you will, is that it needs to do these things at high quality. But in one way or another, they suffer wildly in either hardware or software, or both. Often to the point, where I wonder if the creators themselves use them. The two Nokias unfortunately have quite a few ad programs (like Facebook of all things), that just clutter up its menu (but which I can thankfully just ignore), its T9 dictionary is weak (though this will be a recurring theme, they are all bad at doing T9 dictionary typing), and its text message storage is severely limited. The Punkt. MP02 had high quality hardware, but again its T9 typing was frustrating, and eventually mine just bricked. The Mudita Pure was probably the worst one, though: it only supported characters A-Z, despite being developed in Poland, which is frustrating when living in a country, that regularly uses characters beyond that. The Doro 7030 had bad buttons, that often wouldn't properly click, leading…

I've looked into it, but most "dumbphone" hardware is consolidated in proprietary Chinese manufacturing, with a high barrier to entry. As a side project I've been trying to root my Nokia 225 4g because I want to try and build a Signal client for it, but it's been difficult.

I tried the Nokia 225 4G. Unfortunately, it saves the SMS and MMS to the SIM card, not internal storage, so you quickly run out of storage for SMS/MMS, and you'll need to constantly delete SMS. So I switched to the Punkt MP02. It has a lot of other problems, though, but at least those are more passable. I did also try the Mudita Pure. But it froze on the second day I had it, so I switched back. Edit: My plan is to give the Mudita Pure a fair shot in the future. I'm generally disappointed in the phone market, smartphone and dumb phone. Maybe I should abandon it entirely and get a landline.

What's your experience with group texting? I've been looking for a dumb-er phone, but I need good group texting support to stay in touch with my family. I've tried phones like the Nokia 3310 and Nokia 225 TA-1282, and have been disappointed in the way they handle group texting.

If you mean an old school flip phone, they don't work because of the 2g/3g shutdown. If you mean a current one, they have similar issues to the Nokia 225 plus are expensive. Oh well.

I've been trying to find a dumb phone for a technologically challenged family member, and it seems like they don't exist any more. Remember that 2g and 3g phones are now bricked by carriers shutting down those networks, so don't suggest one of those. Ultra expensive baubles like the Light phone are basically jewelry rather than tools. There are a few basic phones like the Nokia 225 that support 4g, but they have extra crap like rudimentary facebook, they have limited frequency bands (the 225 only supports T-mobile around here), and their battery runtime is much worse than advertised. I'd be happy with the equivalent of an old school Motorola flip or brick phone (i.e. 1+ pound weight is fine, I don't need tiny, I need simple). But it doesn't exist. I decided that the best bet is to get a cheap Android phone and reprogram it to be a dumb phone, constantly running the phone app in kiosk mode with everything else disabled. I'm not an Android programmer but maybe this is something I'd like to try implementing.