Dumbphone 2

A new company called dumb.co is pitching the Dumbphone 2 as the answer for people who want to break up with their smartphone without becoming helpless in public. Born out of a Washington, DC “Month Offline” challenge, the gadget is basically a sidekick device: it can pull in maps, music, ride-hailing, and messages from your main phone, while trying to keep you off the endless scroll. Cute idea, wholesome origin story — and then the comments section kicked the door in.

The biggest uproar? No email. One commenter practically sighed in disappointment, saying the phone looked promising right up until that omission, because email is actually a huge time-saver for real life. Another fight broke out over the forced phone plan, with people grumbling that a so-called freedom device shouldn’t come with a built-in restriction, especially if you live outside supported countries. And then came the most brutal drag of all: people asking whether this is basically just a dressed-up existing flip phone.

But the funniest and most savage theme was the identity crisis at the heart of all “simple phones”: your must-have app is someone else’s useless clutter. One person wants Signal and Slack, another wants Facebook Messenger and Google Maps, and somebody else doesn’t care about Uber at all. Translation: the community is split between “finally, digital peace” and “congrats, you invented a subscription for being inconvenienced.”