Bark phone, Gabb phone, Light phone, what do they all have in common? They are all junk. While the first two phones are junk for kids whose parents wanted a parental control app in the form of hardware, which I have repeatedly called malware, the Light phone is a piece of trash that is being sold to adults who are 'addicted' to their phones. Yes, parental control apps are malware.
I believe smartphones are one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. While it can be sad to see innovation crawling and the same pathetic web clients used, and to see phones are not being used to their full potential (where is our moon landing) and hardware not being utilized to the fullest extent, some companies want to sell us the digital stone age.
In the tech world, alt-tech is a huge market. Feel censored on social media? Minds (nottheboy.com is based on that network), Gabb, Gettr exist.
Hate your search results because of bias? Freespoke, Brave, and DuckDuckGo exist. Care about 'saving the environment'? You can get a whole tree planted by using Ecosia, or have a terrible phone in the Fairphone.
Scared your kid will be influenced by the big bad scary phone? Internet-free—oh wait, not really internet-free because the phones also track the kid....thus meaning that they HAVE to have an internet connection....phones exist....that run Android.....
Scared Big Tech is spying on you? Phones claiming to have a 'custom' OS (based on AOSP) exist....and are garbage because it is apparent that the 'spying' actually makes the phone better.
In the intersection of privacy phones and 'kid phones' lies the dumb phone. The phone for people who hate phones. The greatest 'scam' of all time. Sell a phone that was trash 17 years ago, hike up the price, have a great ad campaign about 'notifications bad, social media bad', experience life, whatever that means, then profit.
Let's look at the Light phone 2, which is worse, actually worse than the 17-year-old Nokia N95. If someone asked me which phone they should get, if 3G still worked, the N95 would be the better choice.
The Light Phone 2 has a BLACK AND WHITE eink screen and has "an alarm, a timer, a calculator, directions, directory, a simple music player, notes/voice memo, calendar and a podcasts tool. It also supports hotspot tethering and voice-to-text," as well as calling, SMS, and maybe more tools via an update.
Comparatively, the 17-year-old N95 has a color display (sadly, I have to specify that), WiFi, cameras, document viewers, web browser, email, and HAD an app store with thousands of apps. Yes, the N95 is more of a smartphone today than the Light phone is now.
Even if we went back in time and dropped the Light phone off in 2006, it would still be considered a bad feature phone. The keyboard would be appreciated, but wasted on expensive SMS plans (no IM, no BBM). Other phones had color displays, could play video, and even had a basic WAP browser.
Even the Motorola KRZR K1, a flip phone, was better than this phone with some games and a rudimentary browser. The N95 costs $40 today, while the Light phone costs $299! The truth of the matter is that the alt-tech world is spiraling out of control. Selling outdated technology at current prices is outrageous.
Have smartphones lost their original purpose? Let's continue investigating.
God bless, and Tech Talk To You Later!!
Please make the comments constructive, and vulgarity will not be tolerated!