Commodore 64's New Flip Phone Skips Android for Linux-Based Sailfish OS
A year has passed since Commodore, the computer brand many of you know and love, came back from the dead under new ownership. The comeback is picking up pace too, with a lineup that already includes multiple Commodore 64 Ultimate editions, a C64X PC, and a licensing program that invites outside builders to use the name. Now, they have announced a return to the phone market, and not in the doomscrolling glass-slab avatar we are all used to, but in a retro, very equippable flip phone format....
https://feed.itsfoss.com/link/24361/17363121/commodore-callback-8020-launchOpen linkView original on lemmy.ca462
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Isn’t it just Commodore? Commodore 64 was a model of computer not the company name.
It was the most popular model. Anyone that knows Commodore, knows the 64.
Yeah, but that is also not the name of the company.
Also, do not underestimate the popularity of the Amiiiiiiiiiiiiga!
Price aside, as somebody who has gotten pretty good at ignoring my old normal slab smart phone, this might only make sense for nostalgia and conversation starter reasons.
Now if I could force this thing upon other people in my life who cannot separate their eyes from their doom-screen, we'd be on to something!
Does this increase the value of my original Comodore 64?
It apparently will be able to remotely control some aspects of the C64 ultimate.
How would that work? Like I still have my original modem, that you put the phone receiver on after dialing into a BBS. But none of those things exist anymore.
And I'm pretty sure I have most of the peripherals. I even have the cassette drive. But I don't remember any wireless tech back then. Granted, it's all in a box in storage.. and it's been at least 30 years since I saw it so maybe I don't remember correctly?
Make your own BBS, with blackjack and hookers!
The C64 Ultimate, the new production model that Commodore sells, has Wi-fi built in.
Tad expensive, and my new Sailfish phone from the O.G. Jolla is preordered already.
It's a tough market if you plan to make money only from the device and not from datamining like Google definitely does and Apple probably too.
Not only are the phones extremely overpriced for what they are- the images they are using for advertising are AI images, and not real pictures. Also using "Make blank great again" format for their tagline is another scoop of excrement on the shit sundae.
What kind of miserable institution do you need to be to generate AI images for a supposedly real product that you will supposedly be selling??
I had a bad feeling about the whole C64 brand when it got overhauled recently. It had vaporware startup written all over it. Guess my gut feeling was on point once again.
The C64U that they make and that my wife bought me is one of the greatest things I have ever owned.
It can't be "vaporware" when they are actually releasing products for purchase.
But they haven't released yet, they've been announced and given no firm release date.
They haven't released this product, but as far as I'm aware they are shipping C64s.
They are. I have one and it was delivered as advertised
This phone should cost $150 max. What's with dumb phones charging smart phone levels of money?
For real. You can grab a cheap used phone for 80 bucks, put lineage on it, and never install any apps except for the very basic preinstalled ones. Boom, dumb phone
I agree it's too much money. But for the record it's not a dumb phone, it is a smartphone running sailfish which can run android apps in a sandbox
However for less money, the Sony Xperia 10 III with Sailfish OS (Xperia 10 mk3) is a better buy.
They are definitely charging way too much, the price and the browser block are the only reasons I am not buying one. I think they could reasonably price it at $250 based on the hardware and that it will certainly be a low production run which massively increases the price. Also, that Sony with SailfishOS is both old (it was released over five years ago) and refurbished, not exactly a fair comparison.
I think I just found my next phone. Do you have any experience with the phone?
I own one but I haven't put a sim card in it to test the actuall phone aspect yet.
My initial criticisms are:
Very good to know, thanks for the write-up!
I love how people throw around "it's too expensive". But did you ever try developing a relatively small batch gadget for the market? Plus as others said, it's not a dumb
pphone at all.Being too expensive doesn't mean they are necessarily gouging. My wife crochets blankets as a hobby, but she'd have to charge a stupid amount to sell them at a profit if she used decent yarn and valued her time at even minimum wage. Said blanket would be "too expensive" without a doubt.
Isn't there a whole lot of small volume 'phone' companies that are charging far less? Nothing Phone, or the plethora of Chinese companies like Unihertz come to mind.
Sidephone, key phone, ikko one with the optional keyboard, upcoming clicks communicator, and dumber mini are all modern semi-smart keyboard phones at or below their discounted introductory price for the base model, with similar enough specs in most areas. Most of these are on some sort of privacy AOSP rom too.
And that's not including all the unihertz, blue fox, and other Chinese phones that would compete
The cheapest Nothing phone is $500.
Unihertz is also $499.
???
Unihertz literally sells a dozen more powerful phones for less than $500. Their cheapest phone currently which still is a better offer is $100. And Nothing's cheapest phone currently is $419, still cheaper than this vaporware phone.
Huh? https://www.unihertz.com/collections/jelly-series
Agree, was thinking the same thing. I would have considered it at that price..
This "dumbphone" runs 99% of Android apps.
Higher end camera and a HD DAC (maybe high power audio output?)
Those sorta things are expensive
Also it runs 99% of android apps
Probably also a low volume product which increases price
I'm certain that the number is inflated by the massive amount of slop and shovelware that is in the play store. The missing 1% is the apps that you actually need, like banking and such
They actively hardcoded all web browsers and most social media (except WhatsApp) to be blocked from installing, hence the 99%.
The social media I understand, but the web browser block is going to severely limit market appeal.
No, the 99% is the android compatibility.
Because sailfishos is not a Google certified platform, every app that uses root detection or play integrity check, won't run.
And which apps use those checks? Not the freemium games. Those are designed to maximize ad viewing, so they want to block uncertified devices
Also: an average freemium game can adapt the UI on a 480*640 screen (big buttons), while almost no developer tests normal UI in such a low resolution. And nobody tests movement of input focus with keypad. Chances of a broken UI that can't be interacted with the t9 keypad are very high.
This is why they showed WhatsApp, Spotify (two commercial apps that are tested and working on the lowest end devices with tiny screens like the qin phones) and AntennaPod (which being open source they can send a PR to fix UI issues) and dismissed the rest as "we block all the useless stuff"
So what I mean is, the phone can run 99% of android apps on the play store using aurora, but, because the play store has million of useless/slip/shovelware games, if you really need to run a specific app for work or for banking, chances is the app is in the 1% incompatible range and not the 99%
You're quite right, though I'm being a bit more uncharitable personally, and assuming they are only marketing it as 99% since they are explicitly blocking very popular utilities as a selling point. Were they not doing that, I get the feeling they would've just said it is fully Android compatible despite it not being true for the reasons you outlined.
its an initial offer model and it does look to have lots of modern tech components in it
the price seems reasonable to me, especially if its got a designer edge to it
From their FAQ:
So I can receive an Email but if it has a link to a website I can't click it? That's just silly, Commodore. You're doing a fine job being memeable and appealing to our nostalgia. Trying to "protect us from ourselves" like that kinda destroys that vibe. And no, the inevitable custom ROM circumventing your blocks won't make up for it.
yeah, i'm intrigued by the idea of a pseudo-"dumb" phone to reduce mindless usage, but this is too restrictive to really work as a phone for a lot of people. those banned work and social apps have and will continue to supplant the phone features of a modern phone. if i got one of these, it would have to be a supplementary device, defeating the whole point! and for those of us who can use a "dumb" phone, they can just got get one for a fifth of a price
It says "Email and work apps are not offered through the Commostore app store". So you can't receive email unless you sideload an email app. And you could also sideload a browser as well to open a link. At which point you just have a smartphone.
You sure you didn't misread? To me it looks like they allow sideloading Email apps but disallow sideloading web browsers.
How are they determining if an an app is a browser?
A hard-coded list of known browsers would almost certainly work. There aren't that many of them. Or better, a list of the common support files that get installed alongside the main browser executable(s), so you can't just rename the main one and have it work.
Anything cleverer than that is about as technical as removing the custom OS and installing standard Sailfish.
Being a flip phone with a T9 keyboard is already a lot of built-in friction. And some people want a device that might intentionally limit them further. But I must admit, this phrasing (and a lot of their phrasing) is kind of weird.
Funny thing is, a T9 keyboard is actually a selling point for me. Current keyboards suck without any feedback and their prediction always causes so many typos I have to go back and correct. T9 I could type without needing to look at it and know I had it right.
Only if the T9 software is good though. KaiOS, a Mozilla initiated project to get web apps on T9 capable phones, absolutely failed with simple things like capitalizing the word "I" for example.
I didn't realize how unintuitive dumb phones could be until I was trying to explain different functions that were triggered by different arrow keys on a KaiOS phone to an elderly person
My daughter has a flip phone with KaiOS and she texts well on it, but she also never used the older, better T9 implementations.
I swear you have to tap the shift key maybe six times if you use the word "I" in the middle of a sentence. If I use that phone seriously, maybe muscle memory would kick in, but it's just so unintuitive.
It's unfortunate because I swear you can design a feature phone well. There just isn't a lot of thought put into it now that Android can (or at least could) mostly overshadow that marke.
Back in the day, feature phones were top of the line, and many of them were great, but I suppose that could be nostalgia talking.
Did they ever try to use a browser on a 2" clamshell at 480*640 with a T9 keypad??? It's so painful that it's already for emergency use only, don't need to protect me from myself...
Its not made for you
Its made for those who wanna listen to music and take a few photos and not spend time on their phone
I am literally that guy, but even I rarely need to look up something simple while I am out of the house. I don't need to be protected from myself. It is both condescending and dumb.
And those people want to spend $500 on a handheld device?
You forgot lack of discipline. Since that person can literally just do this with any phone.
I mean we say this, but I myself cannot do this. Its nearly impossible with a smart phone. Becuase you internally know you can do more.
Same thing with recording. I like my 4 track tape machine sometimes and I say "I/we are making a song, we have 4 tracks, we will utilize that best we can."
Try doing that in a DAW and really restrict it to 4 tracks. I almost guarantee NO ONE would be able to. Theres a reason modern music has over 150 tracks on average (different discussion but its idiotic IMO). Some folks like me need a physical barrier.
Bitwig included a version of their DAW with a midi keyboard I bought that's restricted to 8-tracks (called Bitwig 8-track) and a limited amount of plugins. I had been considering their paid versions in the past, but I found I enjoyed the limitations, so I'll likely not upgrade it. Works a treat on Linux, too.
Ive been meaning to try that !
I doubt this sells enough that anyone bothers with a custom ROM.
This is an advertisement
That's a bit far, isn't it?
Let's see what the article actually says...
This is an advertisement.
"Great again" seems a very tone deaf way of advertising... unless you are trying to advertise against the product, or advertise to inbreds
I don't think Comodore uses that phrase in its ad copy, the phrasing comes from itsfoss
Seems a very odd choice regardless of its origin, more suited to a kid rock album, or the measles.
They probably think their audience is here and they've been spamming this place so much, it's insane.
I have itsfoss in my RSS feed mostly to keep an eye on the FOSS community news in general, but will agree most of their articles seem to lean quite heavily into soft endorsing certain brands.
for that price AND using the make whatever great again slogan? fuck all the way off.
I was excited about this until i saw it was $500!! For a freaking flip phone.
Same. $200 was my cap.
It is a bummer.
I know short run vanity products tend to be overpriced, but I was hoping they would hit "I feel silly for buying this", rather than "I can't justify buying this".
Overpriced, stupid marketing, random proprietary crap, mildly interesting form factor, audio jack, microSD (but only 256GB, why?).
But more linux phones is more linux phones. I'll pass on it, but I don't hate it. You could probably just flash vanilla sailfish without much trouble.
Do you really need more than 256 GB on your phone?
I have lots of music, it has a decent DAC IIRC
I'd be wary of putting more than that on an sdcard anyway, but I am with you. I have far more flacs than would fit within 256GB. I also wouldn't bother loading up everything on the phone.
This was my thought too. I'm going to wait and try and buy a used one, assuming some people will buy it, use it for a week and look to sell.
Android is Linux-based.
...So is sailfish... But ultimately I think the reason they went with it is that it is much more secure than an android phone as it ensure your privacy is respected. You can still run android applications, but you don't have to worry about Google apps spying on your activity. Similar to Graphene OS where you can actually manage the permissions of Google apps rather than allowing it to have unfettered access to everything. Or heck, you don't even need to install any Google application to be able to use either Graphene or Sailfish. To me, they are just better ecosystems. And heck, sailfish isn't the only one. There is also postmarket os, Mobian, Manjaro ARM, Arch ARM, Ubuntu Touch, PureOS, and many more.
I wouldn't say that shipping the phone with WhatsApp preinstalled is privacy respecting.
I'm sorry, did I miss something? The commodore phone doesn't have social media applications.
Edit: Yes I did miss something. True it comes with Whatsapp running in an emulator in an LXC container. https://factually.co/fact-checks/electronics-tech/android-app-compatibility-on-sailfish-os-real-tests-a787aa
Who verifies that the APK is safe to install? Commostore? I'm not putting my trust in that.
What about the fact that Sailfish OS uses Alien Dalvik to emulate the apps in an LXC container? More
This is a company that is committing to never selling customer data and I appreciate that. But yeah, I think blocking Web browsers is maybe a little much. Plus I need Lemmy to get my bean fix 🫘.
They have created a shit phone, but they are proud of it. It's essentially a less dumb version of a dumb phone.
It's one where you don't have to worry about someone emailing you after-hours, see your aunt bitching about her 7th husband, or get you distracted when you should be remodeling the house.
I may not agree with it... I would be more open to A full blown sailfish install, but I see the vision.
That's all very well, but containerization is not nearly sufficient for the amount of scam apps being published, which may be designed to deceive, phish or outright perform fraud.
A headphone jack with an audiophile-grade DAC? 🥵
Why did they ever take this away from us? I was mad when they did.
One reason is that the wire from the headphones acted as an antenna.
It was gone way before the headphone jack was taken from us
In 2009 the LG cookie dumbphone had an internal antenna for FM radio
FM radio is jam-packed with ads and most stations don't even have human DJs anymore. I don't miss it
Most stations yes, but cbc radio is great.
Because they want you paying for their streaming services, not getting free music over the airwaves.
Using Sailfish OS is just trading Android for another proprietary OS. Why even bother going to all that effort and still end up back in the same place?
We have real mobile linux distros like postmarket OS and actual open source desktop environments like Phosh or plasma/gnome mobile.
Sailfish is not proprietary.
Lipstick (the UI) is proprietary. The OS itself is not.
That said, as someone who uses a SailfishOS phone everyday, I both wish Lipstick was OSS and wish this Commodore thing didn't exist. It's only going to bring poor publicity to Sailfish due to its stupid pricetag and featureset.
I could go $299 at the absolute ceiling, but $499 is truly bonkers.
No, no. $299 vs. $599 is PS1 vs. 3DO. Commodore wasn't part of that meme.
That's where my head is at as well.
i'll stick to my nokia.
there's a whole community of people who dedicate time to make even old WAP Phones useable again in 2026 - and that costs like 20€ instead of 499$
Can you share a link? I'm interested in something like that
https://bs0dd.net/index.php?lang=eng&page=news%2Fmain&npage=7
if u keep looking in the vintagemobilephones subreddit you'll find someone wrote a discord wap page aswell as a whatsapp client.
it's incredible.
ps. i remember u from funhole :D nice!
thanks! and thank you for remembering my content lol
That seems pretty neat. I like that it's a "dumb" phone that can still use most apps.
Price seems a bit steep at $600, though.
Only a bit?
I understand custom hardware isn't cheap, but this comes preloaded with WhatsApp apparently. Surely there's a little kickback from Facebook for that.
Lol ya this whole phone makes no sense
II get the appeal of a flip phone, but this product already exists for around $150 just with a crappier OS. There's a whole brand called Qin (https://qinphone.com/) that sells Android phones with T9 keyboards, and I can find weirdly named Chinese flip phones like the Unifone S22 for just shy of $150. Sure, they run dated hardware and software, but there's no guarantee they would perform any worse or get any shorter battery life than whatever Commodore is proposing.
Commodore is just giving us Jolla with a hefty freaking price tag.
Qin doesn't make a flip phone, they don't use Linux, a worse camera, a shitty DAC, no headphone jack, and they're all loaded with Google Apps / Spyware.
They aren't the same product at all.
Then I mentioned the Uniphone S22
Is the camera $350 worse?
At least that one is flip phone so it's closer but it's still not running Linux, has a worse camera, no earphone jack, no FM radio, half the RAM, far less storage, worse CPU and so on.
Is all of that worth
$350$250? Depends on your use case I suppose but it's absolutely not the same product.Nokia sells flip phones for under $100 that use KaiOS. They were more like $60 before the current shitshow in the US.
Unless there's a tremendous performance bump for the price, it seems more and more like this just isn't worth it. And I'm not sure if people want the performance bump anyway...
I am sure there is a big leap in both performance and build quality compared to the Nokias, but for what was originally a $60 phone, it is a great value even at $100. I don't see any "great value" with this Commodore phone, even though I do like many aspects of it.
If you're going to spend that much on a SailfishOS phone you might as well get a good one.
Commodore fan here, but srsly, the flip design has so much more failable mechanics than a simple rectangular slab. Will anybody buy it except for the nostalgia? I expect that will soon wear off when they realize how much they miss a bigger screen.
I had a flip phone once. I kicked it due to being angry that I don't have a smartphone and it split in two. I was 12 maybe
Funny enough I could still recieve calls on the bottom half.
Lies too, that's great!
Maybe they are using OpenBubbles or something.
They specifically state that you can do iMessage through third party bridges that could be stopped at any time. They didn't lie, but it would be foolish to get the phone assuming iMessage capability is solid.
on their tech overview and specs graphic
"sorry no U2"
🤣
Although they’re filling it with “free albums and more.” So they’re actually installing more unwanted shit than Apple did a decade ago. Ugh.
I could see myself using this as a daily driver.
Same. I'm eyeing that translucent one because they sure did hit that nostalgia button for me on a translucent cell phone from the early 00s.
It'll be nice to see if Commodore can work better now, disconnected from Tramiel.
I think they gave Tramiel's son an honorary role in the company.
I'm not interested in commodore or its phones but I do hope the company makes enough money to stay in business, the world is a better place with commodore in it
It's literally just a name. This company has nothing to do with the Commodore you remember.
I watched the video on YouTube where what's his name announced the purchase, he seemed like a weird old nerd who actually liked and wanted to make this work.
So another ^^
stupid^nonsensicalweirdunexpected turn in the Commodore company epos. At least it is consistent with the lore.Such a marvel... oh dear!