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....

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[–] 191 points 4 months ago (7 children)

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.

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  • [–] 44 points 4 months ago* (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 22 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    It had vaporware startup written all over it.

    It can't be "vaporware" when they are actually releasing products for purchase.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    But they haven't released yet, they've been announced and given no firm release date.

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  • [–] 26 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Do you really need more than 256 GB on your phone?

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  • [–] 51 points 4 months ago* (20 children)

    From their FAQ:

    Can I install my own apps?

    Web browsers and social media apps are blocked at the system level. Email and work apps are not offered through the Commostore app store, keeping Callback focused on life outside work and feeds.

    Users are still be able to sideload apps outside those that are blocked, using APK installer files, but Callback is designed first and foremost as a calmer, more intentional phone.

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    So I can receive an Email but if it has a link to a website I can’t click it?

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    You sure you didn't misread? To me it looks like they allow sideloading Email apps but disallow sideloading web browsers.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    How are they determining if an an app is a browser?

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    Web browsers are blocked at the system level

    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...

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    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

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    My daughter has a flip phone with KaiOS and she texts well on it, but she also never used the older, better T9 implementations.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago

    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

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    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

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    You forgot lack of discipline. Since that person can literally just do this with any phone.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 24 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    A headphone jack with an audiophile-grade DAC? 🥵

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  • [–] 78 points 4 months ago (21 children)

    This phone should cost $150 max. What's with dumb phones charging smart phone levels of money?

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  • [–] 53 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I think I just found my next phone. Do you have any experience with the phone?

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    I own one but I haven't put a sim card in it to test the actuall phone aspect yet.

    My initial criticisms are:

    • because each app is in its own jail, there is no way yet to set a global DNS setting like one can do on android
    • there is no native mullvad VPN app
    • all android apps are in the same sandbox, there is no out of the box way to have an android app isolated from others
    • there is no work profile
    • the gesture based ui is weird and id rather have more navigation options.
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  • [–] 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

    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 dumbp phone at all.

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  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    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

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    The cheapest Nothing phone is $500.

    Unihertz is also $499.

    ???

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago* (4 children)

    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

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    99% of android apps

    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

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    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%

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    And when you want more music without algorithms, accounts, or another monthly subscription, just launch the built-in FM radio. Unlimited songs in your pocket, all powered by the MediaTek Helio G81 processor, with efficient passive cooling.

    Why did they ever take this away from us? I was mad when they did.

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  • [–] 35 points 4 months ago

    for that price AND using the make whatever great again slogan? fuck all the way off.

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  • [–] 49 points 4 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 50 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    That's a bit far, isn't it?

    Let's see what the article actually says...

    Making Flip Phones Great Again
    The Specs
    Get Yours

    This is an advertisement.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    They probably think their audience is here and they've been spamming this place so much, it's insane.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 31 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I was excited about this until i saw it was $500!! For a freaking flip phone.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Isn’t it just Commodore? Commodore 64 was a model of computer not the company name.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago

    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!

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I could go $299 at the absolute ceiling, but $499 is truly bonkers.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    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$

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Can you share a link? I'm interested in something like that

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    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!

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago* (11 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 4 months ago (10 children)
  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    I understand custom hardware isn't cheap, but this comes preloaded with WhatsApp apparently. Surely there's a little kickback from Facebook for that.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Lol ya this whole phone makes no sense

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    but this product already exists for around $150 just with a crappier OS.

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    Then I mentioned the Uniphone S22

    Is the camera $350 worse?

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    Then I mentioned the Uniphone S22

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    $500 - $150 = $350

    I realize they're not exactly the same phone, but still, does it make sense that it would cost 233% more

    I legitimately don't know, but I'm sure the ability to run one OS over another OS doesn't come for free.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Nokia sells flip phones for under $100 that use KaiOS. They were more like $60 before the current shitshow in the US.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    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...

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    If you're going to spend that much on a SailfishOS phone you might as well get a good one.

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