Hello there, fellow candy or flip phone enjoyers!
As an introduction note, let’s discuss your current EDC setups: what phone do you use and why?
Glad to see r/dumbphones over here! I’ll start:
Current phone: Sunbeam F1 Orchid
I picked it because it was one of the few dumphones that didn’t run KaiOS (can’t trust it) and didn’t have Google’s claws in it (as far as we can tell). There are surprisingly few dumbphones that also have a focus on privacy. I’ve looked into the Punkt and Mudita Pure, but I’ve read too many horror stories about buggy software.
My ideal phone would be a reincarnation of the Blackberry Curve (preferably not running Android, although a stripped down AOSP is ok). Unihertz comes close, but the ability to put modern apps on it ruins it for me.
I also have a separate Garmin for travel. The Orchid is fine for what it is, but traveling is much less stressful with a dedicated GPS device.
Do you miss any features on your Orchid? Like maps, music etc
Not at all! The Orchid has a basic GPS app, but I’ve never actually used it since trying to look at a tiny flip phone screen while driving gave me early 2000s flashbacks. I picked up a Garmin shortly after getting the F1, and that setup has worked very well for me so far.
Thank you for creating this community!
Currently I use a minimalist Pixel 6a running GrapheneOS, greyscaled with Olauncher Clutter Free with just the apps that I need, but I switch back and forth between this and a Nokia 110 4G which I’m also very fortunate to own.
The Pixel works well and this setup generally reduces screentime but I still have to keep myself in check with periodically enabling the pre-installed browser and using it. That’s a me problem rather than an issue with the setup though!
The Nokia is a very functional phone and I switch to it during the periods where I don’t need access to a smartphone and need some downtime or run it in tandem with my sim installed as the EDC and use the Pixel on WiFi only at home. Apart from one or two annoyances I generally really like it and really appreciate its utility.
My hope is to one day switch over full time to the Nokia but for for now, this setup generally works okay.
Ex-iPhone 11 to a KaiOS phone to a bare bones Nokia 105 4G and loving it!
I’ve been meaning to get a dumbphone again to supplement my OnePlus. I’d rather take the former out and about for daily tasks, just need to look into them again. I really miss having a small flip phone
Unfortunately even the smallest new flip phone is roughly 3x larger than they were 10 years ago. I have an old 2G LG flip phone that I compared my Sunbeam to when it arrived and I couldn’t believe how giant the Sunbeam was when they were side-by-side. That being said, still way smaller than the average smartphone, but the Sunbeam is still > 3/4 the size of my iPhone mini when folded.
