Punkt MP02

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 bought and tried to use the MP02 as a daily driver. Quite different from where Punkt is heading now. The industrial design is gorgeous, but the software was pretty bad (laggy, unintuitive navigation - Android on such a low powered chip was a bad choice). I can guess why, but it baffles me they didn't jump on the growing demand for dumbphones. If they had just released an MP03 with identical form factor but improved battery life, latency and screen improvements, I would have bought one in a heartbeat.

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.

I too have quested for a Dumber Phone. As an easily distracted engineer who values my time, I enjoy being on a dumb device, particularly one without Maps: - Punkt MP02 (Pigeon): small black & white Android phone with a non-standard launcher. Doesn't support MMS on Google Fi, which is needed to participate with friends & family (USA), so it sits on a shelf. - Unihertz Atom: tiny Android phone, storage chip began dying within 3 months. Supports MMS, but my previous company's MDM locked it out due to a lack of recent security updates and their phone plan required a login to receive MMS! - Hisense A9: An e-Ink Android phone. I almost bought one, but it felt hacky to use this it in the USA (lack of frequencies & Google Play) After failing to find a dumb phone that was as flexible as I wanted, I ended up writing a shell script to turn an Android phone into a dumb phone: https://github.com/tstromberg/quietude * For a true "dumb phone" experience: `quietude.sh disable all` * For a less distracting experience: `quietude.sh disable distractions` The key here is that the script disables things in a way that you can only enable if you plug the phone in with a USB cable, which keeps you from re-enabling it when you are bored in line somewhere.