Can dumbphones revive Europe’s mobile industry? (thenextweb.com)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I post this knowing the article naively hopeful but it's also food for thought. With the recent drama where Google stopped publishing device-specific AOSP code - thus making maintaining custom ROMs more difficult - what will more tech-knowledgeable people do if Android is enshittified further?

Will "phone ludditism" - switching to dumbphone with a simple OS like Mocor RTOS, S30+, ThreadX etc. be the answer for some of them? They're deGoogled out of the factory. I switched to a dumbphone as my main phone, but I still keep an Android smartphone at home for online banking. I also take the smartphone with me if I know I'll need a hotspot or a map. I use the smartphone like a PDA, or a terminal to the Android ecosystem.

It's also questionable whether "Europe is leading in the dumbphone sector". Sure we have HMD, Doro, Crosscall, Gigaset (sold to South Koreans), MaxKom or myPhone but there are so many other potentially bigger companies like TCL or Itel. One thing is for sure - in the dumbphone sector and considering how simple those devices are, Europe at least stands a fighting chance. Whether somebody will become a dumbphone martyr in order to exist in this Europe-friendly sector is another thing.

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

What are you targeting of things that are being built today?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

After years of holding onto my old phone, I recently gave in and purchased a new one from OnePlus.

It's not my ideal phone, but it offered a good value, and I plan to keep it for many years.

I don't like the AI implementation (most AI features are cloid based), and it's still very much full of Google. But, you can uninstall pretty much everything, and the hardware is excellent (including battery life).

Not being able to easily repair it is a bummer.

I might have gone with a Fairphone, if it were available in Canada. I've never used one, so I don't really know.

this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025

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