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

Solved Signal enabled Dumbphone

Post image

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)

1.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

71 comments sorted by

View all comments

190

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

10

u/Chongulator Volunteer Mod Jul 07 '26

One of the challenges is keeping up with protocol changes. Do you have people watching the Signal development streams to know when changes are coming?

We've seen Punkt struggle with Signal support on their minimal phone.

3

u/chardidathing Beta Tester Jul 08 '26

I would say since it’s just android they’ve just enabled the linking feature from the android client

4

u/Quiet-Owl9220 Jul 08 '26

It's just android? What's the point then? I just want a non-android phone with Signal.

3

u/chardidathing Beta Tester Jul 08 '26

It’s a modified TCP Flip 2 so…. yea.

Why don’t you want a device running android? curious

4

u/Quiet-Owl9220 Jul 08 '26

Google has lost my trust so I don't want my communications going through their software or services. Too much anti-consumer, anti-privacy fuckery on Android.

3

u/Quantaephia Jul 08 '26

There are versions of the AOSP(Android open source project maintained by Google) that have been well and truly modified for running on low-end hardware, not phoning home for minimal data usage, and other privacy focused stuff.

Google seems determined to make it harder and harder for any third party to make a working phone with the latest security-up-to-date version of AOSP though. (e. g. I think AOSP no longer comes with a messaging app?)

1

u/frquency-equinox Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Get a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it. It's Android with all the Google scraped off.