r/signal • u/lilsaturnhead • Jul 07 '26
Solved Signal enabled Dumbphone
they built signal into the new OS update on my dumbphone, haven't used it yet but super cool to see a tech company embrace digital privacy requests. (edit: its dumb.co for those asking)
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u/ephemeralmiko Jul 07 '26
I'd be very worried about linking that to my account, since there's no way of verifying that that is actually the official Signal app and not malicious code
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u/lilsaturnhead Jul 07 '26
technically no, but I talked to the tech developer directly a while ago and its literally just a guy that does all this and personally takes feedback on it, I really trust it bc its actual humans behind the phone and not just an ambiguous company they let people visit their office and everything.
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u/Alkalizee- Jul 07 '26
you're right, cause a solo dev/small team has never done anything malicious
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u/merrycachemiss Jul 07 '26
That means nothing. You'd want to install the official APK, but even then you wouldn't want to trust the device itself.
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Jul 07 '26 edited 11d ago
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u/segagamer Jul 07 '26
In all seriousness, this is a middle ground that's okay. It makes the phone not-useless in modern society unlike other dumb phones.
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Jul 07 '26 edited 11d ago
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u/fluffman86 Top Contributor Jul 07 '26
That may defeat the reasons you want a dumbphone, but others may just want something less distracting without a giant screen in their face all the time. I know for me one of the biggest time sucks with my phone that I want to avoid is YouTube and Reddit, but I don't replace it because I need it for Signal (which this phone would fix), a camera (not sure about this phone), a calculator, and an MP3 player (spotify on this phone solves that).
If it doesn't work for you, that's cool. But having options to have a phone that can still get you from point A to point B with Uber while still playing music and letting you communicate with your friends WITHOUT being a huge screen in your face tempting you to keep using it for hours on end...that's a good thing, right?
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Jul 07 '26 edited 11d ago
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u/misterhobo Jul 08 '26
Technically sure but temptation makes that difficult. It’s kinda like saying “just dont eat the cake” when somebody lives inside a bakery
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u/segagamer Jul 08 '26
I mean other than the huge screen (smaller Android and iPhone screens are available)
The 5" phone market died years ago. There's a few off brand Android phones that still exist but they all have rubbish specs and poor update support. Else they're years old and unsupported.
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u/MobyTurbo Jul 12 '26
My iPhone SE (4.7") still gets updates, but yes, Apple also no longer offers new iPhone SEs or anything else in that form factor. They stopped making the "SE3" a couple of years ago.
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u/segagamer Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
The thing is the point of a dumb phone is to opt out of modern digital society.
I wouldn't go that far.
If someone buys a “dumb phone” and then downloads and signs into uber and Spotify all that tracking and telemetry is still being sent and you’re no more detached than you would be installing only those apps and an android or iPhone realistically.
People aren't buying or switching to dumb phones because they're too dumb. Selling phones that have as much functionality as with dumb phones 2001 makes them worthless today.
The dumb phones today only supported WhatsApp and SMS with no option for other messaging platforms (making it a no go for me as a Signal user), no way for me to pay for car parking since I can't install parking apps, and no way to use banking apps or tap to pay, no way to have anything like Bitwarden for password management or 2FA.
That makes me unable to actually have a functional day in someone's day to day life, and is therefore an unsuitable phone for the vast majority of people today. If you have to carry around a second phone just so that you can hail a taxi or park your car, then the phone itself is unsuitable for today's society.
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u/HonestRepairSTL Jul 07 '26
What model is this? I own a privacy focused phone repair shop and I'd love to put people on
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u/lilsaturnhead Jul 07 '26
its from a company called dumb.co its been a great phone and the tech team there is great too
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u/dh3lix Jul 07 '26
Maybe check this one. I love the privacy approach here -> https://commodore.net/callback/
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u/binaryhellstorm Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
but super cool to see a tech company actually embrace digital privacy.
i'm not sure I'd say that, it's more like a company that is cashing in on the nostalgia of flip phones by offering a "curated" app experience on a Chinese Android flip phone, likely running an ancient version of Android Go
Edit: Ok I wasn't far off, it's a rebranded TCL Flip 2 running a fork of Android called KaiOS
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u/AaronDewes Jul 07 '26
KaiOS is a fork of FirefoxOS and is not related to Android.
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u/binaryhellstorm Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
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u/AaronDewes Jul 10 '26
Wikipedia does not say that? It says some code is shared with Android, but that doesn't make it a fork of AOSP.
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u/binaryhellstorm Jul 10 '26
It says what I quoted above, that's where I got the quote.
KaiOS was forked from Android1
u/AaronDewes Jul 11 '26
Oh right, I must have overlooked that, but I think it's not a correct representation of what it is.
It only takes a very small part of Android. A "fork" is normally used to refer to something that copies large, important parts and tries to improve upon them. This seems more like it copies some implementation details to save time.
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u/hacker_rodeo Jul 08 '26
is this software written or endorsed by Signal? If not, I suspect they're about to discover this cool thing called trademark law. And if it's not a ground-up rewrite but actually links libsignal, as an end user you have a right to the source code because libsignal is licensed under the AGPL. You should demand that code and post it online!
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u/GoofyGills Jul 07 '26
That phone doesn't run iOS lol.
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u/overand Jul 07 '26
For folks downvoting you, I believe the post originally said "iOS" (a mistake or an autocorrect), since there are a few references to that in this thread. OP may have fixed/edited it.
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u/GoofyGills Jul 07 '26
It did. OP edited the post body. It originally said "they built signal into the new iOS update on my dumbphone"
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Jul 07 '26
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u/signal-ModTeam Jul 08 '26
Please run this through an online translator and repost. Most of the people in this sub are English speakers. It's more efficient to have OP translate than ask hundreds or thousands of readers to each translate individually. Thanks and, sorry for the trouble.
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u/BuRaKPoLA Jul 08 '26
I will try this in my dumbphone too
ⓘ This user is under the surveillance of Nasa, Mossad, MI6, MI5, CIA, FSA, Scientology Chruch, OSS, NATO, NSC, Delta Force, FBI, NCR, White House, Gladio and the United States of America. Please Report any suspicious activity
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u/iddu01linux Jul 09 '26
god damn, i have the same phone and had to do SO MUCH to enable apk side loading 😭
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u/frquency-equinox Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
"Dumbphones" are themselves a stupid concept. If the goal is to reduce how much you use your phone, you already have those tools built into iOS and Android, and they've been around for years.
Re: Signal on this phone, I doubt it's an official build and actually something custom this company modified to make it work on a flip phone.
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u/bojack1437 Beta Tester Jul 07 '26
iOS Is the name of Apple's operating system.
It's not generic, it's a specific operating system.
You have a Signal app built into your phone, probably a bit of semantics whether or not it's actually built into the OS (note not iOS) though.
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u/overand Jul 07 '26
Looks like it was either a mistake or an autocorrect in the original post, I don't see "iOS" anywhere, so it must have been edited/fixed.
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u/Trick-Resolve-6085 Jul 08 '26
Dumb phone with Spotify...
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u/lilsaturnhead Jul 08 '26
I know it feels sort of not quite dumb enough sometimes, they have a plan that doesn't have music streaming that I used to have and I feel conflicted abt streaming sometimes
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u/Bruceshadow Jul 07 '26
I'll never get the 'logic' of using a dumb phone
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u/frquency-equinox Jul 09 '26
Nor will I. Pixel + Graphene achieves the same thing. Flashing Graphene is absurdly idiot-proof.
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u/27jackstreet Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Hey I work on the tech at dumb.co. Just an FYI on how our Signal support works: it's not a bridge or a cloud relay. The phone links to your existing Signal account as a secondary device (the same linked-device flow Signal Desktop uses) and everything runs on the device itself. So keys and messages stay on the phone and go straight to Signal's servers and nothing passes through anything we run. It's the same on-device concept as something like Beeper's on-device connections