this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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Smart phones are a bad idea. A simple, dumb phone to make calls, texts and occasionally tether your laptop, vehicle tablet to for data access are all you really need. Even the dumb phone should have physical switches for the radios and a battery that can be removed without any tools.
The problem is that real dumb phones are hard to find. Many modern "dumb phones" are actually full android devices, complete with a boatload of spyware that helps keep the cost of the device itself low.
KaiOS is better but that's a whole linux distro, with similar issues.
Since you mentioned tethering, do you have an example of a non android (or at least one that's not preloaded with a ton of spyware) dumbphone that supports usb tethering? I am skeptical that a real dumbphone would have this feature.