This Smartphone Won’t Collect Or Sell Your Personal Data… And It Has An Encrypted VPN Too

If you thought your iPhone was protecting your privacy, I have a bridge to sell you. Sure, Apple doesn’t sell your data to third-party data brokers, advertisers, and governments… but it does still collect your data. And hey, maybe Instagram and TikTok can’t track you across apps, but they can still track you on their own app. I’m not fear-mongering, although even if I did, it probably wouldn’t work because you (and I) have made peace with the fact that we’re giving away our data for convenience. There isn’t really any alternative, to be honest, aside from probably the quintessential ‘dumb-phone‘… and renowned dumb-phone makers Punkt have realized that there needs to be a better way. To that end, meet the MC02, Punkt’s first proper 5G smartphone that’s designed with data-security and privacy-protection in mind. It sports a minimal UI that tries not to inundate/addict you, has a built-in international VPN to keep your data from reaching the wrong hands (and even access geo-blocked content), and even runs Punkt’s Apostrophy OS, which individually partitions user data, restricting them to each individual application (so not even the OS can see your entire digital footprint). Your data also gets stored on a cloud server in Switzerland, far away from governments and state actors.

Designer: Punkt

The MC02 isn’t shy about its capabilities. It promises a secure, smarter way of using a mobile device, steering clear of the prying digital eyes that seek to profit from personal information. With over 90% of smartphone apps tracking users across the internet, the MC02 offers a unique choice: a digital sanctuary where user data is stored under Swiss jurisdiction, ensuring GDPR, HIPPA, and PCI compliance, and where a suite of on-device tools—email, calendar, contacts, notes, storage, and VPN—operates free from advertising-based data infiltration.

The phone itself is a marvel of minimalist design and intentional functionality, breaking the addiction cycle with tech while still being fairly modern. It features a 6.7” full HD+ screen, 64MP back and 24MP front cameras, 6GB RAM, and a long-lasting 5,500 mAh battery. But the MC02’s real allure lies in its operating system and ecosystem. Powered by Apostrophy and designed for data sovereignty, it includes a built-in VPN for secure browsing, a suite of secure communication tools, and a Carbon & Data Ledger for monitoring the privacy risk and environmental impact of individual apps.

Punkt takes a step further in personalizing the mobile experience with the MC02’s subscription model. The first 12 months of Apostrophy Services—a suite of security and privacy tools—are included in the purchase price, with a subsequent monthly tariff that ensures users know exactly what they’re paying for: privacy, not ads.

And as for the price of reclaiming your digital autonomy? The €699 ($755 USD) MC02 comes with a clear subscription model for the OS, the first 12 months of which are included in the initial purchase, followed by a $17 monthly fee for continued access to Apostrophy’s secure ecosystem. So, if you’ve ever wished to dial back the digital noise and take control of your tech life, the MC02 might just be the tech equivalent of finding that quiet corner in a bustling café—a sanctuary where your data, your choices, and your peace of mind are all part of the service.

The post This Smartphone Won’t Collect Or Sell Your Personal Data… And It Has An Encrypted VPN Too first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic just got a clean, hip new revival!

The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic was to audio what the N.Gage was to gaming. Now I personally never got Nokia’s nomenclature system, but there are a few phones that really stood out, and the 5310 was definitely one of them. The company, of late, has been on a resurrection spree, bringing these phones back to life with a similar design and a refreshed OS on the inside that is smart enough, but otherwise still a handy, dumb phone.

The 5310 revival looks quite like the original, with the iconic buttons on the side of the screen that control music playback and volume. The phone still packs a camera, although don’t expect it to compare to the ones you find on smartphones of today. If you were to pit it against smartphones of today, its battery life which should easily last a week on standard usage and a whole month on standby. The phone also comes with a dual-SIM slot, and packs all the apps you’d want in your dumb phone, including a radio and the Snake game! Yeah, there’s Facebook too.

Designer: Nokia

Someone made a rotary mobile phone and it looks like the stuff of multiverses!

If you’re looking down at your smartphone right now as you read this, try to look beyond the illuminated pixels and fathom the amount of un-understandable technology that’s gone into making that thin smart-slab you’re holding between your fingers. In a mere span of 20 years, we’ve gone from landline telephones (which aren’t entirely complex) to giz-whiz 4G LTE touchscreens with the ability to upload and download immense amounts of data in split seconds. Skilled (and definitely eccentric) maker Justine Haupt decided to craft herself a cellphone from scratch… without touchscreens and those fancy cameras and chipsets. This absolute Macgyverian beauty comes in a relatively handy format, with an e-ink display, an adjustable antenna for impeccable service, and get this… a rotary dial!

“Why a rotary cellphone? Because in a finicky, annoying, touchscreen world of hyperconnected people using phones they have no control over or understanding of, I wanted something that would be entirely mine, personal, and absolutely tactile, while also giving me an excuse for not texting. The point isn’t to be anachronistic. It’s to show that it’s possible to have a perfectly usable phone that goes as far from having a touchscreen as I can imagine, and which in some ways may actually be more functional”, says Haupt, who’s not only put together the functioning device from scratch but also made all the code and design files available online for other people to build their own dumbphones.

Say hello to possibly the best version of the dumb-phone. It doesn’t need a screen protector, still fits in your pocket, allows you to go through the day without texting, lets you be available yet selectively social (nobody would expect you to dial a 10 digit phone number on that monstrosity)… and Justine isn’t just proud of her creation but says it’s arguably better than most smartphones and she intends on making it her primary phone. The Rotary Cellphone comes with a real, physical, detachable antenna that you can position to get perhaps the best service possible on a mobile device. In fact, an LED strip along the side indicates signal strength (and goes up all the way till 10 bars, rather than the small icon on your phone that only shows 4 bars). The phone’s rotary dial provides a uniquely tactile dialing experience that you may either love or hate, and Justine even added a few speed-dial buttons on the body too. Needless to say, apart from excellent reception, the battery life on the Rotary Cellphone is pretty long too, thanks to the presence of a low-energy e-ink display that functions as a caller ID as well as notification area.

The most important takeaway from Haupt’s experimental swellphone/hellphone (depending on which way you look at it) is the fact that she understands how it works. It’s a device that isn’t mysterious to her, and does exactly what she needs it to do, which is make and receive calls fabulously, even while on the move. No more, no less… and you’ve got to admit it does look a whole lot cooler than that always-connected slab of glass, metal, and silicon you have in your pocket.

Designer: Justine Haupt

Supreme’s burner phone is a hypebeast’s dream

Here's a few things to know about trying to score Supreme products during its weekly drop: I had to wait in line for about two hours, on a cold and windy day in NYC, just to get inside the brand's Brooklyn store. But to even make it that far, you hav...

A 4G flip phone with Google Assistant is coming to the US

Dumb phones are getting smarter. Last year Nokia showed us what was possible in a feature phone with its 8110 4G, now Alcatel is leveraging the same operating system, Kai, to launch a 4G flip phone with Google Assistant integration, as well as apps s...

The Light Phone 2 wants to save our world from a Black Mirror future

After raising a staggering $3.5 million dollars on Indiegogo to fund its production, the Light Phone 2 is here to fight the good fight against bad tech. There isn’t any conclusive proof that being incredibly digitally connected makes humans happier in any way. The technology that was designed to serve us is now in control of us, and like any uncontrollable addiction, the Light Phone’s remedy is simple… detoxify yourself.

Designed to promote communication in a way that is respectful to humans, the Light Phone 2 is a simple, minimal device that gives you the tools you need to stay in touch with the people you truly care about. Enabling you to call and text through an interface that feels familiar and minimal at the same time, the Light Phone 2 doesn’t consume you with notifications from apps, instant social gratification, or worrisome trolls who just want to make others feel bad about themselves. The phone comes with a black and white e-ink touchscreen interface that’s easy to use and comfortable on the eyes and mind. It doesn’t have a camera, or access to social media, mails, or endless news feeds (basically it removes the possibility of information overload), but it retains the important stuff, like a music player, a calendar, calculator, notepad, as well as complete essentials like a map service and a taxi-hailing service… giving you a phone that’s quite literally good for your wellbeing. It promotes a healthier happier life while giving you the tools you need to go about your day, and the absence of an app-market means nobody can ever track your information!

Designer: Light

Breaking smartphone addiction: 10 Designs to save us from electronic enslavement

I read a pretty scary statistic online, which outlines that the average person stares at their smartphone screen for a minimum of 3 hours a day. In fact, that number went from 0.3 hours to 3.3 hours between 2008 and 2017. Today, it’s anywhere between 4-6 hours, which is anywhere around 30% of the time we spend awake. That’s 30% of our waking life spent staring at pixels. Mike Elgan points out that if we spent that time reading books, we could literally read upward of 200 books PER YEAR.

So how exactly do we break this addiction to smartphones? A great way to go about things is buy what they call a ‘dumbphone’. Dumbphones, or the phones we were used to from 15+ years ago, used to be pretty great. People would actually call each other up and talk rather than send texts, emojis, and ephemeral selfies. Fake news was at an all-time low. Phones were cheaper too, back then… and most importantly, a phone’s battery lasted anywhere from a week to a fortnight. Dumbphones today base themselves on the same principle. Remove the app store and internet connectivity, and you’ve got yourself a phone that isn’t really capable of spying on you, and will prompt you to spend less time staring at pictures and videos of superficial lifestyles on social media, and more time doing things of value… like reading those 200 books each year.

We look at 10 beautiful products that solve our screen-addiction, and help us unplug from the toxicity of superficial social-network-based lives. These designs help us achieve what we need, with exactly the amount of resources needed to be productive, healthy, and happy.

01. Blloc Minimal Smartphone

Let’s start simple with the Blloc Smartphone. For people who want (or need) to stay connected to social media (like me for instance, given that 90% of my job revolves around being informed and connected), Blloc has a pretty clever trick up its sleeve. It redesigns the entire OS to be completely black and white, and creates a block-based home screen that gives you all your snippets directly in the menu, rather than needing you to open each app. This, along with the phone’s grayscale OS does WONDERS for your battery life, and leaves you slightly less addicted to your phone’s flashy, colorful OLED screen. Craving some color? Blloc even allows you to briefly view your content in color, just by placing your finger on top of the fingerprint sensor at the back! A great, minimal-compromise option for battling screen addiction!

02. Kyocera KY-O1L

Although the name isn’t particularly catchy, Kyocera’s KY-O1L is a lot like the Blloc, but takes the dumbphone ethos more seriously. A recipient of the Japanese Good Design Award, and also touted as the world’s thinnest phone, the KY-O1L is literally the size of a credit card, and just a couple of millimeters thicker. Designed for the white-collar workers who still rely on business cards, the KY-O1L fits right into cardholders, allowing you to have a phone along with your cards that you can A. carry around with you, and B. Use to instantly make calls, save contacts, and access the web for work-related reasons. The phone does pack an LTE connection, but doesn’t have an app-store. All internet-related work is done via Kyocera’s browser, which not only optimizes webpages to keep them simple, but also displays them to you in black-and-white, an experience that may take getting used to, but will surely provide function without the mindless addiction. The ideal phone for the kind of person who believes in hustling, keeping technology in check while being able to communicate with the world, and most importantly, safeguarding their privacy with technology that doesn’t use apps or cameras to spy incessantly on them. It doesn’t sound that bad when you say it that way, does it?

03. Punkt MP02

I wouldn’t go as far as to call the Punkt MP02 a ‘dumbphone’ because it isn’t. The phone comes with 4G LTE capabilities, but in almost every regard, it’s the absolute antithesis of your conventional, bezel-less, dual-camera, slick-and-shiny, addictive smartphone. It comes with all the features needed in a communication device. The ability to call, text, and receive calls and messages from others. It also comes with an absolutely finger-loving tactile keyboard that you’ll be able to operate with muscle-memory after a month, letting you text without even looking at your screen. The phone comes with an eye-friendly black-and-white screen, and does boast of 4G LTE, but not in the way you think. The 4G LTE feature on the MP02 works as a hotspot, allowing you to use your laptop or tablet to browse the web… only when needed. This slight bit of friction (when it comes to accessing web-services) means you’ll spend less time on the internet, and more time doing things of consequence.

04. U18 Phone

This is the U18. It’s a bare-basics phone designed for parents to give to under-eighteen-year-olds. It’s a phone that your child will probably not like, but then again, teenagers often don’t know what’s good for them, right? It allows children to make, answer, and reject calls, add and remove callers, and call your dad, mom, or set up a group call for parents/siblings. It even has a WeChat button that’s probably limited to reading texts, and a voice-command button that lets you tell the phone who you want to call.
Flip the phone over and it has a camera for video calls (there’s also a secondary front facing camera), and even a panic button for sending SOS signals to your emergency contacts. Designed to be the perfect first-phone for youngsters, the U18 supplies them with all the functions needed to stay connected with the people who truly matter, and strips away all functions that could get children hopelessly addicted to phones and social media, and additionally even protect their privacy by keeping them away from apps that spy on them or gather their precious data.

05. Halcyon ‘Reality’ Phone

The Halcyon does one very crucial thing right. A person’s only motivation to leave a smartphone either stems from A. realization and frustration with the addiction, or B. being presented with a better alternative. The Halcyon concept phone was birthed keeping both those motivations in mind. It boasts of a gorgeous, flexible design that rivals most smartphones in aesthetic beauty.
Made in a clam-shell format with basic controls and two screens (one on the front-face and one on the inside), the phone serves as a simple connection tool, allowing for phone calls and text messages only. The black and white UI keeps it simple too, discreetly notifying you when you have a call or a text, and otherwise constantly reminding you to stay in sync with the world around you with its slogan “reality awaits”.

06. Offline Phone

A winner of the 2018 Red Dot Design Concept Award, the Offline phone is your regular candybar dumbphone, but with a beautiful minimal aesthetic that actually makes you want to adopt it. Composed of just a standard numeric keypad and a rather eye-catching opaque screen, its ultra-minimalist, stark aesthetic is complimentary of this goal. It’s seemingly simple, but does allow the user brief periods of internet access so that they are always mindful of how they spend their time online. No camera, no superfluous applications… just back to basics so you can live in the real world!

07. Yeezy Phone

I get the hilarity of naming a dumbphone after Kanye West, but this isn’t about dissing the great rapper (with a not-so-great reputation on Twitter). This stripped-down smartphone ditches the display entirely for a matrix of miniature lights (you can see them up close here) that form a touch sensitive LED array (a reference to the recent stage designs of John McGuire, featured as part of Kanye West’s Saint Pablo Tour). The phone comes with a reinvented OS too, allowing you to do just the important stuff. Make and take phone calls. Now if only Yeezy did the same too!

08. The Battery-less Phone

This right here is peak dumbphone, but it showcases a technology that’s nothing short of marvelous. The Battery-less phone, although it exists only in prototype and can’t really be bought, runs without ever needing to be charged. Stripped of all its functions, except calling, the battery free phone actually uses and needs minimal amounts of energy which it harnesses via light around it, and radio waves that linger in the air. You can make calls via the capacitive number pad, and it uses Skype to communicate with other phones. However, whenever you want to use the microphone, you need to hold a mic button down to relay your voice (much like a walkie talkie). The phone is just a stripped down grouping of circuit boards and wires for the time-being, but we can expect a fully made mobile phone too quite soon! Marvelous, eh? You can check out the phone in action here.

09. Substitute Phone

Maybe the answer isn’t a dumbphone. Maybe it’s a fidget toy that channels your addiction/distraction into something less intense. That’s what the Substitute Phone is. The designer put it best: you’re on the metro and grabbing at your phone at the first sight of seeing someone else receive a message. It’s a bizarre and unhealthy inclination feeding our attention deficit and we’re all guilty of it!
Designed with this in mind, the shape of the Substitute Phone replicates an average smartphone, however, its functions are reduced to the movements we make hundreds of times on a daily basis. Stone beads are incorporated in the body and let you scroll, zoom and swipe so to speak. No digital functions – just the simple, familiar motions. It’s the perfect, therapeutic approach to coping with smartphone withdrawal.

10. Phone Detox Book

I mean, if you’re going to ditch a screen to read a book, maybe start with the Phone Detox? A palm-friendly, phone-sized book that contains insights, ideas, and meditations that help you get over your heavy dependency on your phone, social media, and validation addictions. The book covers relevant topics like Addiction, Monasticism, Poetry, Nature, Dating, Utopia, and even Death. Its aim being to allow us to take a step back, breathe, and contemplate a little, rather than simply consuming content the internet keeps throwing at you.
The makers of the book say that the “Phone Detox knows we love our phones and would never want us to give them up, but it is also gently aware that these delightful gadgets bear a hidden cost. This flip book is a tool that aims to bring a little sanity to our closest, most intense and possibly most danger-laden technological relationship.”

That’s right. Put that screen down and enjoy life and its beautiful imperfections!

The world’s prettiest Dumb-phone

halcyon_1

A person’s only motivation to leave a smartphone either stems from A. realization and frustration with the addiction, or B. being presented with a better alternative.

The Halcyon concept phone was birthed keeping both those motivations in mind. Not really a dumb-phone but rather a reality-phone, the Halcyon enables you to disconnect from the internet and reconnect with your surroundings. Its gorgeous design helps too, by making you want to leave your blockish smartphone and adopt the beautiful glossy bent-slab that is the Halcyon.

Made in a clam-shell format with basic controls and two screens (one on the front-face and one on the inside), the phone serves as a simple connection tool, allowing for phone calls and text messages only. The black and white UI keeps it simple too, discreetly notifying you when you have a call or a text, and otherwise constantly reminding you to stay in sync with the world around you with its slogan “reality awaits”.

The phone’s design is just simply breathtaking, with a seamless form that bends gracefully at the middle, looking a lot like a wallet. It comes with one solitary speaker, and a USB Type-C charging port. Payments are made courtesy a pay-as-you-go plan (that allows you to know how much time you’ve spent on your phone) and bills can be paid monthly through direct-debit or PayPal.

Designer: Mike George

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Nyx Mobile Twist Connect hands-on

Nyx Mobile Twist Connect hands-on

It's not often that we write about a feature phone, but we were charmed by the Twist Connect's unique design. The dual-SIM device prides itself on its integration with Nyx Messenger, social networks like Twitter and it's MP3-playing abilities. It's the music playing features that caught our attention. The whole bottom of the phone rotates, switching from a full QWERTY keyboard, to a set of dedicated music controls. In messaging mode the keypad is angled out on a chin to make typing easier, while keeping the screen in a better position for visibility -- it wasn't the greatest display, easily getting washed out at even slight angles under the conventions center's lights. Give it a twist (hence the name) and the keyboard gets stuck to the rear, exposing a pair of stereo speakers and a set of controls to raise and lower the volume, skip tracks and, of course, play and pause your tunes. Otherwise, the bulky and plasticky handset holds little allure, but we'll cheers Nyx Mobile for their special twist on the MP3 phone. Check out the gallery below for a few pics.

Nyx Mobile Twist Connect hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 May 2012 23:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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