Announced a short time ago, the Callback 8020 is seen as a means of combating the addictive lure of the modern-day smartphone. While it supports Android apps via its SailfishOS, it disables features like web browsing and social media by default.
However, despite the noble quest for a ‘digital detox’, the phone met with a somewhat frosty reception online (no pun intended), with many comparing it to an elderly relative’s flip phone. In our poll, 70 percent of you said you wouldn’t be buying one.
I have a dumb-phone. 20€. I had to buy a new one because the old one used only 2G and that infrastructure is gonna be put down sooner rather than later.
I don’t get what they are trying to achieve with that thing.$399, what? This is tech from over a decade ago, there are smart phones that sell for under $100. Seems like a stupid gimmick only wealthy parents will buy for their kids.
Yes, mass production feature phones. This won’t be a mass production product. You’d be surprised how much that increases costs. The question is of course, if one can make a product under those circumstances that people are still ready to buy. In other words, it has to offer something (can also be non-material) that differentiates it from those mass production feature phones.
Nostalgia-bait isn’t going to make addictive social media go away, and these devices will probably end up with easily foiled workarounds to get to those services anyway.
Also, did Commodore even used to make flip phones? I had a legendary indestructible Nokia brick, Motorola flip phones, and one really shitty Samsung flip phone. I’d feel nostalgic for something from them if it had the same design (but not the shitty Samsung phone), not for a pseudo-oldschool actually-it’s-just-Android-but-less-functional phone.
Nope. Commodore did not sold phones. Commodore International of the C64 and Amiga fame got defunct in 1994. Since then the company and brand name got sold many times. You can read more about it on WikiPedia
I just want an affordable, maybe regents classes level type of smart phone that I can give to my elderly father, that can run the apps needed for things like his hearing aids. One that will fit in the breast pocket of old man shirts. I feel like this isn’t a huge ask :(
$500 USD -> $400 USD for those of you that don’t want to click.
Ok just $350 more to reduce
“Consumers can now choose whether to add Commodore’s custom-designed Hi-Def IEM earphones during checkout, rather than needing to pay for them when they may already own a pair they love. Premium memory will be available as an option, with Callback defaulting to rigorously stress-tested “post-consumer” high-speed memory chips, backed by Commodore’s identical, comprehensive 1-Year warranty.”
so… to lower the retail by $100… earbuds not included, and reclaimed ewaste memory chips (hopefully that does not also include the main storage) now the default configuration.
Phones cheaper than USD$400 tend to have 4 year old chipsets*, so imo if they’ve beaten that, they’ve probably done well against the current market. By my standards a posture dumbphone should be cheaper, but it’s obviously marketing to a different demographic than e.g. Oneplus Nord and the now-dead iPhone SE. At the very least it might be a cool museum piece
*modified for accuracy
Phones cheaper than USD$400 tend to have 6-8year old chipsets
What area of the world are you from? Just curious where there is such a state of affairs.
This is definitely not true for Asia and Europe. It been a while since I was living in North America, but this didn’t seem true back then. Although I lived in a city and didn’t buy through carriers and never dealt with carrier blocking independently bought phones.
Perhaps North American carrier requirements have changed since then.
Ah yeah, I’m west Europe. I used the Samsung A series as a baseline for this claim, as their A04 and cheaper have 4+ year old chips, but overall it seems I was exaggerating. You know what, maybe I was getting confused with iPhones always being released with 8 year old specs
You’re either paying a massive markup for that Samsung brand mark or your idea of a phone starts at the upper-middle range.
If you look for it there are plenty of recent phones with recent chipsets at around 250 EUR, they’re just not processing powerhouses with 8’’ HD screens and 256GB Flash but rather run some recent low-end chipset with less storage, less memory and smaller/fewer cameras.
Here’s an example from a big store chain in Portugal which is around $187 including 23% VAT, chipset is Qualcomm Snapdragon 6s 4G Gen 1, which according to this was launched in September 2022, so less than 4 years old.
You can get this one for $157 via AliExpress (shipped from France, 23% VAT included).
🙏
What the heck‽ Is it gold-plated‽
Phone? No. But the CEO’s yacht is.
As far as I remember comodore is owned by youtuber
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/commodores-been-bought-by-a-youtuber-whos-re-assembling-key-execs-and-already-teasing-new-hardware/Amusingly, Commodore’s statement says the [high prices were] triggered by an “explosion of new technologies” but stops short of specifying exactly what those technologies were. That perhaps shouldn’t be surprising given Simpson’s love of GenAI and its use in Commodore’s promotional material thus far, but it’s somewhat ironic that one of the reasons for the high price is, in Commodore’s case, self-inflicted to a degree.)
I’m starting to dislike this CEO
Turns out that maybe a YouTuber gathering a bunch of old failed Commodore executives who don’t give two shits probably isn’t the best way to bring a failed company back online who’s sole purpose is to cash in on nostalgia from GenX’ers who is general give zero fucks about it.
The other big question, even though Simpson goes into some detail on this, is how the deal is going to be financed. A share purchase agreement is in place for those “low seven figures,” Simpson says he’s re-mortgaged to get this far, and adds that “household names who don’t want to be named” are interested before name-dropping Elon Musk (whose computing career began on a Commodore). They’re looking for angel investors, but there’s no indication of the timeframe on any deal.
So it’s basically owned by musk, got it
He wouldn’t be the first person begging Elon Musk for attention, though. Anybody remember Elon Goat Token?
Even if he doesn’t secure Elon as an investor, the simping does not look good.
“oh no, leopards ate my face!”
Doing the Lord’s work sir
You can’t claim privacy first, promise you wont sell user data, then preinstall whatsapp.
These three things cannot all be true. At any price.Lol Whatsapp as a system app sounds like a nightmare.
The usuall approach established by Samsung etc. is to bundle a few “shim” apps as system apps for Meta. One shim is used by the regular Meta apps to bypass restrictions and talk to each other, one collects data from any app that uses the Meta ad network, and some are there in case you install the corresponding user app (eg. Facebook) to give it system privileges.
I mean it ends up technically the same as having Whatsapp bundled outright, but you gotta give props to a manufacturer so shamelss they don’t even pretend to hide it. 😃
Didn’t Nokia still make dumbphone and only cost double digits? With $400 i can just get a decent smartphone and then install app locker and lock all irrelevant app in it.
Or get something that run on non-bloatware OS and don’t download
They still do, HMD Global, a Finish company that started with ex Nokia employees and made the Nokia smartphones for Microsoft, also lives across from the Nokia headquarters in Finland and still makes dumb phones to this day:
I work in product management, this was not a marketing ploy.
Supplies are expensive now. They are cutting into their margin considerably and probably did find some slightly cheaper components. Maybe they cut a better deal with the suppliers.
Either way, they are playing smart by listening to the market on an untested product in a new product category of “semi-smart” phones. This could signal a comeback of this type of product but only if they pave the way with affordability and usability.
I hope this does succeed for them because we need more companies taking risks in today’s market. Everything is so bland right now.
I’m on the Engineering side and $400 buys you parts for A LOT more phone than that, especially with that screen size.
Are they planning on having the phones individually hand-assembled by Degree holding Electronics Engineers in the US - hence the manpower costs are insane - or is it a situation of putting a jet engine on a small car (tons of memory and a big processor on something with a far too small screen to be useful for most things, especially gaming)?
I bet the price bares no relation to the actual product manufacturing costs.
Yes, but also, ROI on development and marketing and research costs etc. This is a niche product with no clear distribution channel. While cost to produce based on parts alone is low, what about procurement, planning, distribution, marketing, development etc? Everyone needs to make money to get the product off the ground.
Plus this is a completely unproven product (generally) static landscape. Price is basically dictated on how they can penetrate a market, gain market share, and still make profit after all the work that goes into making that a reality.
Those things are mostly a problem due to limited number of sales and thus lack of economies of scale, as they’re mostly the kind of cost that are global rather than per-device hence the more the sales the less their impact in the device price.
That’s the vicious cycle of “not enough sales for cheaper prices via economies of scale leading to higher prices leading to fewer sales” for hardware startups without massive upfront investor funding and the reason why, say, a Fairphone or Jolla Phone are a bit more expensive than one would expect.
We don’t need companies taking risks for the sake of risks though. We need companies that actually have good ideas and can produce products. This isn’t much better than a Kickstarter. And you probably know incredibly well, no one is changing or going to succeed in the very bloated cell phone market.
You may be correct but that just makes them look dumb for trying to do this in the first place. Why? Make some mechanical keyboards, retro looking monitors or other peripherals, whatever might actually make sense for the Commodore brand and style. Not a phone.
Atari should make a pager. It also runs on Android software. It will cost $800. It comes with belt clip.
Was $500 now $400 still lol.
It’s $400, there’s no choice of carrier, the battery won’t hold a charge, and the reception isn’t very-
Shut up and take my money!
Lol I forgot that $400 was considered excessive.
Now people buy $1200 phones yearly.
Well when Futurama made that joke about the iPhone, the line was “It’s $500” and everyhing was basically true.
When I first saw it I was thinking 249USD. But twice that? Nah.
jesus I buy older model phones so I don’t have to deal with the enormous price tag. Samsung Galaxy S10 with headphone jack and removable SD card, got it for $150. Who tf still buying new phones? even worse, who’s paying 3 times as much for a phone that does so much less? I’d love a digital detox thing, but I like having google maps on my phone
this phone actually supports maps apparantly.
Old phones, if nothing else, lack software updates meaning also security ones. Also battery might need replacement.
They mean new old stock, not used phones.
Security updates… meh, it’s a mixed bag. Outside of maybe Google I really doubt any manufacturer bothers to keep their Android phones super up to date with all the possible fixes, even within the support period.
And as for the privacy angle… honestly the manufacturer is usually the first one to spy the shit out of you. Using Google services while worrying about a hypothetical security breach is really ironic.
yeah you can replace the battery and install lineageos, good enough in most usecases
So still $100 more than a LightPhone II, an already somewhat pricey ‘detox phone’, or about the same price as a used Moto RAZR if yoh just wanted a flippy phone made of pre-owned components
Translation: We couldn’t really sell it for that price, now we try it with this price.
(Edit: This is no mockery, only of the marketing. The phone is nice)
That’s more like it!
And I completely disagree with the people saying it should be much cheaper.
It’s a LTE Linux computer. In 2026. With multiple screens, a 48MP camera, good DAC, enough power to run real Android apps and tons of bells and whistles; what do you expect?
Electronics are expensive, unless it’s cheap garbage, heavily subsidized, or both. That has a huge externalized cost, and avoiding that is the whole point of this phone. R&D, customer service, and continued software support for the translation layer and OS, must crazy expensive too.
I know wages haven’t gone up with inflation, which makes $400 hard to afford, but that’s not in Commodore’s control.
If one wants a cheaper AliExpress Android fliphone, that’s reasonable.
But it’s not the same product. And you’re going to pay for it in other ways.
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An Oppo A5M 4G costs around a bit over $150 in AliExpress and that’s including the VAT for Europe (which will be the VAT of whatever country they imported it into, normally around 20%).
This thing has a 1080p 7" screen, which judging by the pictures is more than that Commodore phone.
Electronics are expensive for these things but that’s when you’re aiming for heavy use such as gaming, and that means larger/higher-density screen, more CPU/GPU power and bigger battery to feed those all the things as well as more memory and storage, which are the most expensive parts. LTE modules are comparativelly cheap nowadays, as are stupidly high resolution cameras and good DACs.
The only reason I would see for this to end up in the expensive electronics range is if they’re aiming for it to run heavier AI models locally, which might very well be the case since judging by what others said the CEO of the company which bought the Commodore brand is AI-bro.
This, I think the price is decent. Most dumbphones are low cost but you notice it - terrible buttons, slow camera, lackluster audio. On top of that they have no coolness factor. This is a phone that ticks all boxes and is privacy friendly. On top of that, it is from a company I like to support.
the cheap flip phones are truly dollar-store build quality and cameras. mine has a crappy radio, it seems, too… nearly always roaming on another carrier’s nearby tower because it can’t pick up the vzn one just a couple miles outside of town.
the ‘rugged’ ones are built better and can take a literal beating and still work, but they cost as much as a recent model 128gb smart phone… and still have squat for storage and lousy cameras.
Android fliphone
Not interested. Want SailfishOS.
1st-party supported SailfishOS, to be specific.
That’s huge, to me.
Yeah! I have a Sony Xperia 10 III, but the SailfishOS support is kinda… not officially supported in the US?
The alternative would be a mid-range phone with SailfishOS on it. I have one, a Sony Xperia III which I chosed for the small size. I like it. BTW I had nearly every Linux phone by Nokia and Jolla since the N900.
But if you still want something that is more like a pocket computer and less like a distracting phone, you could look for handheld PCs / ultraportables, and put Linux on one. These can run Threema Web, and Waydroid if you still want apps. (I have a Gemini PDA, and I like it, but be careful - this is NOT a phone - but fine for answering mail).
Saying “lte Linux that can run Android” means nothing. All Android phones run Linux and support LTE. It’s an Android phone with restrictions on what Android apps it will run. That’s it. The screen is tiny and two small screens are cheaper than a larger one.
You can buy all of that for $100 on Aliexpress.
This is trash dressed up in a fun skin to sell to Commodore fans who don’t know how to delete an app from their phone.
It’s not Android. It’s SailfishOS. With first party support.
And even that aside, I don’t see anything comparable on Aliexpress, hardware wise.
How about a phone for people who aren’t addicted to them, but want the basics without being spied on?
Things I want in a phone:
- GPS with maps and directions.
- A browser for the rare occasions I want to look something up when I’m away from home. The last time I used it was to find which aisle something was on at Lowe’s.
- Texting.
- Phone calls.
- Notes.
- A decent camera.
- No bigger than an iPhone 12 mini, which is what I have now, and it’s plenty big enough.
I don’t do anything else. Mostly my phone sits on my desk, ignored unless it makes a noise at me. I take it with me sometimes when I leave the house, but sometimes I don’t bother--not addicted.
This can easily be achieved with most any Android phone.
- Switch to a degoogled OS like GrapheneOS or LineageOS
- Install a minimalist launcher (there are dozens)
- install CoMaps for private gps and navigation
- use whatever chromium browser comes on the phone or install a privacy browser like Firefox (again, there are dozens)
- add a notes app (there are dozens)
Most Android phones nowadays fail at
Switch to a degoogled OS like GrapheneOS or LineageOS
either because they’re not unlockable or because neither OS supports that specific brand and model.
Not saying the rest isn’t correct, it’s just that “most” in there that in my experience is wildly optimistic.
This can easily be achieved with most any Android phone.
lots of phones are not supported even by lineage. it does not help that manufacturers are continuously farting out the same mediocre models just with slightly different hardware, so that drivers need to be figured out again
Yes, by “most any” of course I mean that you can find a device with almost any spec or form factor you choose. If you like pixel, you can choose lineage or graphene. If you have an old phone lying around - with hundreds supported by lineage - there’s a good chance it works.
right. what I wanted to say, is most people can’t just convert a phone they already have. though tbh, that might not be a great idea either, in case there’s a fuckup or some unexpected regression.
doing this with a used pixel 8 pro bought off ebay.
I’m personally waiting for the Moto/GrapheneOS collab coming out next year. I’m rocking a slightly older OnePlus with LineageOS now.
this may very well be the phone for you. I think it does all of this
Except for the “A browser on rare occasions”, which sadly is likely the only thing stopping me from buying this at the new far more palatable price. I don’t need to be treated like a baby, but apparently this is considered a core feature of the phone and they won’t back down from it.
Its fine if it doesn’t come with one by default. If it is fully capable of running one but it stops you from doing that, forget it.
Sadly, it is the latter.
I 100% agree with this. This is SO CLOSE to getting it and offering a phone I actually want. But I want to own my devices and decide what I do on them. The thing hard locking me out of a browser (and discord) is unfortunately a deal breaker. I don’t want the hardware mfr to have a say in how I use the device and treat me like a literal child in the process. It’s disappointing.
I was also thinking about buying it, but I want my phone to be my phone.
I actually use my browser from time to time. What is the use of a phone if you need a “backup phone” just to look something up?
Also, their reasoning for blocking the browser is absurd: “you could use the browser to access social media.” I don’t use TikTok, Instagram, X, or the like, so why do I need to be nannied?
Exactly. I can understand them not installing a browser by default as part of their “principled stance against social media”, but blocking the install entirely is WILD. I also do wonder how they actually do that though… Just a list of “known browsers” and blocking their install? It’s Linux - what if we fork a browser and rename it “totally not firefox”, would it even catch it?
A phone with SailfishOS is fine for that. It can get tricky with messengers and banking apps (but I think phones are Not A Good Idea for banking authentication).
Yup.
Although I’d expand texting to “messenger apps” specifically Signal for me.
Fuck SMS.
