iPhone 16 or Google Pixel AI? Some CEOs Choose ‘Dumbphones’

Apple’s iPhones have been criticized for current inside a “walled garden” and commanding a excessive value in trade for entry. And whereas the large tech corporations are competing with the newest smartphones from the likes of Google, Apple, and Samsung, there is perhaps competitors from an sudden place: the “dumbphone.”

These telephones, which normally return to the fundamentals with a restricted vary of options, at the moment are being adopted by CEOs who can afford to be much less accessible, studies the Wall Street Journal.

DumbWireless, a market that sells dumbphones from manufacturers like Nokia and Punkt, saw sales of $68,000 in March alone in comparison with $5,000 in March 2023 — an over 14-fold improve.

Benjamin Crudo, the 41-year-old CEO of retail software program firm Diff, advised the Journal that he makes use of a Punkt MP02 cellphone, which provides calling and texting and prices $299. He mentioned he solely solutions emails or Slack messages when he is on his desktop, and if any emergencies happen after hours, staff can attain him with a cellphone name.

Crudo mentioned his manner of speaking causes “a little bit of disruption as a result of everyone round me is speaking in a sure manner, and I am selecting to speak in a different way.”

“Fortunate for me, I am the boss,” he mentioned.

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Along with the Punkt cellphone, different “dumbphones” embody the Mild Telephone 2, a $299 machine with a black-and-white E-ink display that focuses primarily on calls and texts, and the $329 Sunbeam F1 Professional flip phone which may include navigation, climate, and hotspot, or with none media in any respect.

^{Mild Telephone 2 (L) and Sunbeam F1 cellphone (R). Photograph by JASON CONNOLLY/AFP by way of Getty Photographs}

Dumbphones have managed to seize curiosity, even when they are not assured a digital camera. The Mild cellphone fundraised $400,000 from thousands of individual backers on Kickstarter beginning in 2015. Now the corporate says it has shipped greater than 100,000 phones.

Regardless of their restricted performance when in comparison with smartphones, dumbphones aren’t all the time the cheaper various. The $799 Mild Telephone 3, for instance, provides 5G, a digital camera, and a much bigger display to the Mild Telephone 2 at a value level comparable to the new iPhone 16.

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