Doubt.
Haven’t seen a flip phone in use in ages and I work among the public. Even the barely functional elderly on smartphones.
Who paid for this article? What’s their angle?
I though genZ only bought iPhone because of the green bubble or something?
And i thought 90% of them have brain damage in general…
Aren’t they all broke as well?
For the past 10 years I never bought a phone for more than 300 euros.
I usually get a new phone every 3 years to have the latest tech and donate or recycle the old one.
For the last year I had an iPhone 13 pro (usually goes around 1100 euro) as a work phone and my personal Redmi Note 11 Pro I bought for 270 euros and not once I told myself: Man, this iphone is at least 3 times better than my Xiaomi. It’s clearly a premium product but a middle category budget phone can match most features and even more. I still have a headphone jack, bigger 120 Hz screen, IR blaster and an amazing fingerprint sensor.
iphone is clever marketing scheme to become a status symbol for a generation that no longer has a car as one.
Ya, this pretty much me. I had a bad experience with the budget pixel. Wouldn’t recommend them… But otherwise haven’t really missed out on having a top end flagship phone at all.
I’ve purchased several budget/midrange phones as my daily driver, and the long term performance simply wasn’t worth it based on the things that I do with my phone.
Now, this is based on cheaper phones with specs from several years so this doesn’t hold true anymore.
Cheap smartphones are an incredible value. My wife bought a 180 EUR Realme 7 about 3 years ago, and it’s still working great, it’s plenty fast for everyday things (she’s not a gamer), has 8 GB RAM …
One thing you really need to compromise on are the cameras. But the problem is that I’m a sucker for cameras, so I keep buying expensive flagships …
maybe you would be better buying an actual camera. there are some really good compact cameras that aren’t necessarily heavy
I have a Fuji X-E3 with some nice lightweight lenses like XF35mm f/2, but even such combo is still far from pocketable. It’s also not great for immediate processing and sharing.
There are some 1 inch sensor compact cameras (Sony RX100), but they are pretty expensive and the IQ difference gets smaller compared to highend smartphones. In the end, my smartphone is the only device I consistently carry everywhere …
If I was not disabled with way too much time to burn, and where the weight of a phone is ideal, I would go back to a dumb flip phone like this. Smart phones are an addiction that, at best, must be consciously managed. Heck, I’m beside my workstation procrastinating right now.
It’s after 1AM and I’m meant to be sleeping…what the heck am I doing? I’ll put the phone down now, just after I post this comment and maybe just refresh my front page one more time.
As if we needed another sign that ZDnet was trash…
I fucking hate these obviously bullshit articles. “Gen Z is using feature phones”, “Gen Z are using paper maps”, “Gen Z is doing XYZ”.
No, they aren’t. At best some sad excuse for a journalist found a handful of tweets and wrote a whole article on it like it’s a “trend”.
Look, I know “journalists” are being squeezed to produce at an unreasonable rate but if you write drivel like this then you have no business calling yourself a journalist, hell I don’t even think you can call yourself a “writer” or “contributor” either. It barely passes as writing and you are contributing nothing to society.
I’ve considered doing this in combination with a Pine phone or other impractical but cool linux phone so that I don’t have to worry about not having at least reliable SMS and calling.
Anyone know if there is a tiny dumb phone out there that doubles as a 4G/5G hotspot?
I use a TCL Flip 2, bought it unlocked on ebay for $40. It has hotspot, mms, and emoji support (can’t remember if the included keyboard has any emoji, since I use a custom one that has some, but the system can recognize and display most emoji people send). It actually runs a slimmed down version of android and you can root it and run some stuff, though most things are a pain to use. I’ve got signal, jerboa, and adaway running on mine, though I haven’t found another browser that plays nice yet.
Personally I switched to a Qin F22 Pro to curb my smartphone addiction. Only have the essential apps installed on it. So far it has worked out well (I used to have a screen time of over 6 hours every day, now just minutes). Life feels so much more peaceful without all the notification spam I used to get, and my mind is definitely more clear now.
The games are better for one.
These retro-style phones offer limited functionality, lower costs, and are gaining popularity due to digital well-being concerns. Counterpoint projects feature phone sales to reach $2.8 million by 2023, driven by minimalist movements, cost-effective B2B sales, and budget-conscious consumers.
and the numbers don’t lie.
Righto Scott Steiner.
I’m so tempted to do this.
I did it for a few months and really enjoyed it. At the end of 3 months, I realized I could achieve nearly the same thing by turning off all notifications except messages and calls and uninstalling all social media. I realized… if I have the willpower to use a dumbphone I have the willpower to keep the distraction off my smartphone. Phone usage is now 100% intentional with the right setup.
Nice!
I heard cassettes are making a comeback too.
Vinyl did lol didn’t expect that one. So maybe.
It did, but I really didn’t.
https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/7699/lp-sales-in-the-united-states/
What’s the phone on the left in that top image?
Edit: turns out it isn’t a phone - it’s a Gameboy Advance SP.
One of the Samsung Flips most likely
I thought all the Samsung ones had a screen that covered the whole of the inside section? This one only had a screen on the top.
It is just a skin/wallpaper of GameBoy. Everything is a screen in the image.
This I wish, but I doubt. I still have my old Garmin GPS and play with the idea of a flip phone but I’ve been spoiled by the smaller things like iMessage not dealing with MMS. It’s an idea I come back to occasionally, but I also think about going back to my Palm with AAA batteries for my PIM needs. Had one in semi-regular-use as recent as 2018!
