Rant.

Dumb phones are making a comeback, I read. They even have a word for the trend: Digital Minimalism. But pulling back from digital is not so minimal on your pocket. The feature phones you really want are “designer” and expensive. What’s with product designers and innovators, making everyday simple utility gadgets into objects of desire, and starting cults? Light Phone 3 is one example. Punkt is another. Am sure they are solid products with a cult following. Time magazine lists LP under inventions of 2025. Invention?

Fine, invention. But what’s the deal? The price rivals smartphones. Why is it so technically hard to replace the brain-sucking smartphone with a call-plus-text-hotspot feature phone at an affordable price point? Low volumes maybe. Not enough of us want to be digitally minimal. The tug of Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok is just too strong.

Whatever the reason till I can find a $100 one, Digital Minimalism be dammed.

We can do with some design democratisation here. Maybe a good time to separate the user interface layer from the backend device platform, so that users can choose to go keypad and be digitally minimal on the same platform. Let the user choose and pay for the experience, not the backend platform.

Dream away, you say?