Commodore's Callback 8020 Is a $499 Flip Phone That Blocks Social Media and Browsers

Commodore's Callback 8020 Is a $499 Flip Phone That Blocks Social Media and Browsers (techspot.com) 60 Commodore has unveiled the Callback 8020, a $499 Sailfish OS flip phone that runs most Android apps but deliberately blocks social media, browsers, email, and workplace apps to discourage doomscrolling. The "not dumb dumbphone" still supports messaging, music, maps, ridesharing, hotspots, a removable battery, and plenty of Commodore nostalgia. "The phone uses T9-style texting with predictive input, includes Commodore SID ringtones, ships with a selection of Commodore and Sailfish games, and even includes Snake," reports TechSpot. From the report: Commodore says it has developed patent-pending technology that prevents browsers and social media apps from being sideloaded, while DNS-level blocking should stop them from working even if someone finds a way to install them. Users can still sideload nearly anything else if it's not available on the Commostore, but apps designed for doomscrolling remain off limits. That means useful services such as WhatsApp, SMS, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, Spotify, Uber, Lyft, maps, podcasts, QR scanning, voice notes, and hotspot support work, but the likes of Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Gmail, and browsers do not. The Callback 8020 has a 3.25-inch 480 x 640 internal display, a MediaTek Helio G81 chip, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a 48MP Sony rear camera, an autofocus front camera, dual SIM support, USB-C, a headphone jack, FM radio, and something many of us miss from flagships: a removable battery. There's no 5G as Commodore argues that 4G VoLTE and Wi-Fi better fit a device meant to discourage constant streaming and scrolling. [...] The main screen is touch-capable but disabled by default, while the outer display keeps things deliberately sparse, showing basics such as time, battery, signal, and notifications via dome LEDs. The 8020 name is a nod to Commodore's 8010 modem from 1980. The phone comes in ProtoPET White, SX Silver, BASIC Beige, a translucent Starlight Edition, and a gold Founders Edition with a 24-karat gold-plated Commodore button. Standard models start at $499, the Starlight version is $549.99, and the Founders Edition costs $640. Preorders open June 30, with shipping targeted for winter. You can watch the launch ad on YouTube. The Callback 8020 has a 3.25-inch 480 x 640 internal display, a MediaTek Helio G81 chip, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a 48MP Sony rear camera, an autofocus front camera, dual SIM support, USB-C, a headphone jack, FM radio, and something many of us miss from flagships: a removable battery. There's no 5G as Commodore argues that 4G VoLTE and Wi-Fi better fit a device meant to discourage constant streaming and scrolling. [...] The main screen is touch-capable but disabled by default, while the outer display keeps things deliberately sparse, showing basics such as time, battery, signal, and notifications via dome LEDs. The 8020 name is a nod to Commodore's 8010 modem from 1980. The phone comes in ProtoPET White, SX Silver, BASIC Beige, a translucent Starlight Edition, and a gold Founders Edition with a 24-karat gold-plated Commodore button. Standard models start at $499, the Starlight version is $549.99, and the Founders Edition costs $640. Preorders open June 30, with shipping targeted for winter. You can watch the launch ad on YouTube. Whitelisting? That trick never works (Score:1) Blocks innovation. Dare I say anti-freedom? And the motivations of the "evildoers" will drive them past the safeguards. But I do have a funny smartphone anecdote to report. Trying to find an old picture yesterday in response to a human query. The google's Photos app was not being cooperative. We could both remember this as a relatively trivial task on the webbrowser version of the app, but it seems like a case of "no can do" on the smartphone. Finally gave up and stuffed the phone back into my pocket. A few m Re: (Score:2) If you don't like it, don't buy it there are a ton of alternative Be a great phone to give kids though, you know that parental responsibility thing where they can keep kids away from the BS. Re: (Score:2) This is not stealing a beer, this is an ongoing cost, and its a large enough cost it will be seen. Your fairy tale why it won't work is only true for a small group. I see you are posting as a coward though, you scared your PDF behaviour is going to be made harder ? Brand necrophilia at its worst (Score:4, Interesting) This is the retrocomputing equivalent of the Trump T1 phone, and I'm far from the only person saying this. Fundamentally, there are two groups of people in this world: People who think having a YouTube influencer buy a venerable brand to "reboot" it is a good idea, and people who recognize this for the quintessential grift it is. Oh, and then there are people who don't have any emotional investment in Commodore - but based on a sampling of the people I communicate with regularly, there are very few of those. The kindest thing that can be said about Perifractic is that he started out running a reasonably interesting retrocomputing channel, but he slid through a one-way sphincter straight down the colon of SEO and YouTube monetization, never to return. (Pointlessly long intros and stretched content to maximize ad impressions and keep the "suspense" coming to meet minimum view time quotas, careful scrubbing of language, clickbait thumbnails and video titles - everything bad you can think of is there). What is being done with the Commodore indicia now is a deplorable embarrassment to the community of Commodore collectors, historians and aficionados, on par with the ludicrous "PET phone" that was created by some bootleg company in Italy a few years ago. Re: (Score:2) What is being done with the Commodore indicia now is a deplorable embarrassment to the community of Commodore collectors The phone is way overpriced, but I can see what they are trying to do. I would actually like a phone with real buttons, removable storage and battery. I'm just not going to pay $500 for it. And their new Commodore 64 replacement looks genuinely good. Sure, it's a niche product, but if you want to play with an old C64 and can't be bothered find a good vintage example, then build/buy and adapter to connect to a modern screen, then build/buy some way to get software onto it... this FPGA version fills that niche Re: (Score:2) I would actually like a phone with real buttons, removable storage and battery. I kind of miss physical qwerty keyboards, but definitely have no nostalgic feelings for the awful era of T9 texting. The problems with physical keyboards though, is that you either have to give up a bunch of screen space, or end up with a real chonker of a folding/sliding phone to accommodate the keyboard portion. It's been tried and for the most part ends up being too much compromise for something that, unless you're writing a novel on your phone, you probably don't actually need. The T9 style flip phone Re: (Score:2) I kind of miss physical qwerty keyboards, but definitely have no nostalgic feelings for the awful era of T9 texting. The problems with physical keyboards though, is that you either have to give up a bunch of screen space, or end up with a real chonker of a folding/sliding phone to accommodate the keyboard portion. It's been tried and for the most part ends up being too much compromise for something that, unless you're writing a novel on your phone, you probably don't actually need. The T9 style flip phone design (which is what this phone is) is really the worst of both worlds - it wastes a ton of space that otherwise could've gone towards a larger screen and is still absolute garbage for text entry. I'd be happy with T9 if it was as slick as the old Nokias. I even bought a Nokia 2720 a couple of years ago, hoping to find the same experience I had in 2001. Unfortunately, since then the T9 text entry has become quite laggy and they have tweaked the handling of capitals and punctuation so it was actually slower to type a proper sentence on a "modern" T9 keypad. I still keep the 2720 around, because it's very compact and works as a hotspot for a real computer. In my case I use a GPD MicroPC, which isn't mu Re: (Score:1) there are people who don't have any emotional investment in Commodore People who are too young to have used a Commodore or who were adults when it came out and who never had one at home, university, or work come to mind. But yeah just about any American who was school-aged between the late 1970s and the late 1980s probably used a Commodore computer or gaming system somewhere. Throw in the Amiga users, K-12 teachers, and it's a whole lot of people. Re: (Score:2) People who are too young to have used a Commodore I was actually being sarcastic there by stating that the group of people without a real connection to Commodore is insignificantly small - not that it's super important. People who are really Commodore enthusiasts like me loathe the tosser who owns the Commodore paperwork ("Commodore" per se ceased to exist long ago), and the zombie influencer Temu entity into which it is being fashioned. People who are too young to be Commodore natives are consuming the fast-fashion aspect of it the way they'd buy an iPho Re: (Score:2) This is the retrocomputing equivalent of the Trump T1 phone The Trump T1 phone is just a gilded HTC U24 Pro. The controversial aspects of it are entirely related to its association with the president, and that it was originally claimed that it would be US-made. As far as its actual smartphone functionality goes though, it is an entirely unremarkable mid-range Android phone. This Commodore phone, on the other hand, is a far more niche product with some substantial limitations compared against what the market typically expects. You know it kind of bugs me (Score:4, Insightful) There's just something uniquely fucked up about a clearly substandard product that exists specifically to cater to someone who can't just u