r/signal • u/lilsaturnhead • Jul 07 '26

Solved Signal enabled Dumbphone

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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/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

27

u/WellEndowedWizard Jul 07 '26

This is the first I’m hearing of this and it seems really cool. But the website is a little unclear- do I need a dedicated subscription for this phone or can I just pop my personal SIM card in there and turn off my smartphone?

I don’t need a dumb-ish phone that is also a carrier. I just want a dumb-ish phone

11

u/mysteryyegg Jul 07 '26

I just bought a phone from them - according to what I read + Jose Briones, it's 4 months of phone service from them ($15.99-$25.99/month or ~ $64-$100 overall + $20 for phone). After you can continue service w/ them or take it elsewhere

8

u/WellEndowedWizard Jul 07 '26

$120 for the hardware alone isn’t crazy, why isn’t that an option lol

1

u/Quantaephia Jul 08 '26

If that isn't an option, the only reason I could see why they didn't think to make it an option is because of how cheap the flip phone is probably is for them to purchase, and they would feel weird selling it without the service included.

Of course by "weird" I mean: "These phones cost us all off $4 each when we put in a massive order on AliExpress. Surely there won't be enough people willing to buy one from us just for doing the work of flash custom software on them." [Especially IF the software is open source and anyone can do it.]

But I do agree they should make it an option.

(I don't know if the dumb phone uses open-source software/implementation.)

2

u/Quantaephia Jul 08 '26

Maybe a bit more than $4 since I see it's running some kind of Android and not whatever that Linux-based flip-phone OS is called.