caseyy 6 days ago

Sunbeam is a popular one. Also a bunch of Nokias should work.

There is also the Xiaomi/Qin/Duoqin F30. It’s a T9 phone with Android 11. But the “Westernized” version with Google Play Store has tampered with software (hacks applied) as the original Chinese software doesn’t have Google stuff nor is the phone Play verified. Then there are questions about the Chinese software itself. I’ve gone deep into the rabbit hole of trying to verify it’s secure but couldn’t to a satisfactory standard.

The F30 is still considered a dumbphone for how limiting the T9 keyboard and its tiny screen are. You won’t enjoy consuming or searching for any kind of content on it. But you can install many modern Android apps if you are comfortable with the security situation. And that’s quite important sometimes to not get isolated from people, to bank, for 2FA, streaming music, and a few other things. It’s basically then a capable but highly inconvenient phone, which I think is excellent.

Still, if you want privacy and security, how many days are you willing to sink into tinkering with these Xiaomi/Qin/Duoqin devices? You will need at least a few, possibly more.

It’s much less hassle to just get whatever dumb phone with a feature OS you can get on Amazon or Walmart.