For reference, I am a millennial and used to have a flip phone growing up before moving to a smart phone.
I heard about Gen Z moving away from smart phones and back to flip phones and just assumed it was a nostalgia trend.
But maybe I was wrong?
I read through this article about a company wanting to make a better flip phone.
Any Gen Z folks in the community that ditched their smart phones and are happier with their flip phone?
not sure if they are or not, but parents are always gonna be in the market for phones that don’t have data so they can protect their kids from social media and excessive screen time.
Yeah, I totally agree about protecting kids from social media.
My first phone was only supposed to be used for phone calls to my mom and other family members. I remember wanting something cooler like a blackberry at the time because it did so much more. But my mom said no.
Looking back, she was totally right. A little kid doesn’t need all of those options.
They are tryna be trendy y2k tbh. Most genz can’t survive without tiktok.
I think “dumbphones” for young kids could be a good idea. They can still call and text family, no data means no social media.
This may sound old, but remember the time before smartphones. How did anything get done? Besides going to the Moon and back with less processing power and storage than a mobile phone, they made computers and programming languages, the early perceptrons used in neural networks, oh, and email.
I’ve heard of people using grayscale so they use their phone less often.
cool idea (grayscale!)
My friend (she’s 19) bought a flip phone because she likes collecting things. She would use two phones: a flip phone for calls and an iPhone for anything else (but it didn’t last long). She once FaceTimed me because she wanted me to hear the ringtone
But overall, I haven’t noticed this trend among gen z
I very like idea of the flip smartphones getting more popular. I don’t need the bloated 6"+ size screen all the time. The folded ~4" screen would be fine for most of my usage. However the current difference in price between flip and non-flip smartphones is ridiculous.
I think it is a great idea, unfortunately one still need to have a smartphone, like, my bank would not let me do home banking without a phone app as 2FA… and online purchases. I guess there are alternatives to that, so it’s mostly the home banking (checking history, doing wiring) that is an hassle without a smartphone.
Even Steam wants the phone app for 2FA!
Like, I already have a computer, I don’t really need to have a smaller computer to keep in my pocket all the time!
I had a few old flip phones back in the day, and remember liking that form factor a lot. The Motorola RAZR came out when I was in high school and I remember being really amazed at how thin it was compared to whatever I had at the time. You can really see that design language in the Light phones.
When I first moved to Korea in 2013, I was surprised at how many flip phones I saw around. Many of them were semi-smartphones marketed towards students or older people who needed simple phones. Many ran stripped down versions of Android and had small touchscreens, but still had the old T9 keypad.
I was always tempted to get one and give it a try, but they weren’t that much cheaper than a regular smartphone. They usually had pretty limited bands, too, so you’d probably run into issues if you took it to another country and tried to throw in a SIM card at the airport.
Still, some of the newer models in Korea like the MIVE Style Folder look cool, and I’m glad options like the Light flip phones exist.
I do miss the more unique designs of older flip phones.
I had this Sony Walkman in 2005 that twisted open and this NTT DoCoMo phone in 2006
We got my grandma a flip phone for that reason. She never would have had the patience to try to learn how to use an iphone. All she wanted to do was make phone calls to family.
These kind of remind me of the sidekick that came out in the early 2000s.
Those always seemed fun to play with 
I was looking to own a sidekick phone, but ended up with the LG Rumor 2 as one of my first phones. My now wife and I used to text each other on the LG Rumor 2 when we were dating. We even had a shared mobile account 
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The flip aesthetic is cool but if the experience is anything like using my old DS handheld, I’m not interested. The hinges on it broke after a while.
Plus I like the idea of being able to use more complex apps and stuff on my phone. I like being able to watch coding tutorials away from my computer. Not to mention the games. There are handful of games like Professor Layton that I want to play, and I am not aware of the hardware trade-offs on modern flip phones. I know for sure old ones can’t handle it.
Now if only most modern smart phones would let me have my headphone jack and microSD card. That would make my day.
Yeah, that is good point. A lot of times if I am waiting in line at the grocery store I like to kill time by playing around on my phone. So I can’t really see myself doing that on a flip phone.
I had a really good Snake record tho
so you can do some messing around even on old fashioned flip phones
I know what you mean haha. It took us years to switch my grandma over from her old rotary phone to one with buttons. We were never able to find one of those rotary looking phones with buttons locally. That would have made the transition so much easier.
We also got her a flip phone for emergencies, or to keep in her car back when she still drove, but she would always keep it turned off to save the battery, so there was no real point in the end.
That’s a good point. I was lucky and never had any issues with my old flip or slide phones, but I remember a few friends getting sand or other grit in them, and the never were quite the same after that.
I remember being so bummed when the hinge on my old DS Lite cracked. It still worked alright, but I could never not notice the crack after that happened.
Also, I do miss the headphone jack and microSD card, too. At least replaceable batteries are on the horizon, though they probably won’t bring back the days of carrying an extra phone battery around and quickly swapping them out.
