Commodore made a social media-banishing flip phone
Key takeaways
- The Commodore Callback 8020 is a nostalgic rejection of modern smartphones.
- Commodore also promises not to collect your data without consent, and says it won't monetize any data you do hand over, track cookies or monitor the way you use the phone.
- It also has a good old-fashioned predictive text feature built in, and instead of pop-up on-screen notifications, the phone uses a dome LED light to tell you when you have a new message.
The Commodore Callback 8020 is a nostalgic rejection of modern smartphones.
Commodore. The recently resurrected Commodore is getting back into phones, but rather than taking on the likes of Apple and Samsung at their own game, the Commodore Callback 8020 is a proudly non-conformant flip phone that wouldn't have looked out of place in the '90s.
Billed by its maker as a "retreat from Black Mirror technology," the Callback 8020 (the first phone to carry the Commodore name since 2015's PET) uses patent-pending tech to enforce a system-level block on social media apps, web browsers and email clients. What you are allowed to have is the Linux-based Sailfish OS operating system, which Commodore says offers a "completely de-Googled experience compatible with over 99 percent of Android apps" thanks to the Runtime compatibility layer. These include WhatsApp, Maps and Spotify. Sailfish OS was developed by Jolla, a Finnish company founded by a team of Nokia veterans.