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Comment by qgin | Hacker News Reader

These types of phones keep getting made and people keep not buying them in any significant numbers. I think people want to want this kind of phone. But it ends up being a kind of performance art thing / statement about modern society thing more than filling an actual demand in the market.

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I've signed up and sent contributions to a few "let's build a phone!" projects (like, for example, the neo900). I've come to the conclusion that building a phone is just not something a small group of people can do on a small budget. They won't get access to good processors, etc, because their projected volumes are too small to interest suppliers. The project inevitably ends up being very, very late. They can't build many prototypes and test them extensively, so if something actually gets shipped, it will be buggy.

This seems more practical though, providing access to the full play store rather than crippling user functionality.

I've tried a couple of them. The problem is that they add so much friction to the basic functionality you want from a phone that they eventually become too frustrating to be worth it. Using a Light Phone gave me an enormous amount of respect for the work Apple has put into making their touch screen keyboard feel so responsive and type so "accurately" (by which I mean gracefully handle the inaccuracies that inevitably arise when typing on a touch screen). I just don't see a small startup ever being able to deliver a user experience that even comes close to what we've all gotten used to thanks to Apple, Samsung and Google. At the time that I bought a Light Phone I was desperate to be free of digital distractions but eventually I decided I would rather be distracted if it meant that I could effectively communicate with family and friends and maintain a social life without so much hassle.

While I don’t disagree with you, I think you have to be heavily plugged into tech news to even know they exist in the first place. I’d guess 99.9% of people have no idea such things exist even if they did want one.

Maybe price is a factor? If this thing cost $100 you'd see mass adoption.

My guess is that the people who want minimal phones buy feature phones. They are less of investment for lifestyle change, can be used as secondary phones, and have nostalgia.

I bet this phone would be more popular if it looked more like Blackberry.

I’d guess effectively no one knows they exist in the first place.

And they're thin and light, have week long battery life, don't need a case and can often flip to avoid pocket dialing.

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