So while yes, you can find an OG flip
phone, some of the relics on eBay, we're seeing companies develop new models to... Flip phones are hot right now. Flip phone. While it might seem like dumb phones are
a product of the past, they've actually remained prevalent around the world and
still make up about a quarter of phones actively being used. And yes, this is in large part due to
their affordability in developing countries, but it's also becoming a
movement among younger generations. So it's been an official week on this
guy, the crappy dumb phone, and I'm never going back to a smart phone. We're going to be talking about my dumb
phone. Today, we're going to talk about the
light phone two. It's been three years since I've had
this device. I had been thinking about getting a dumb
phone or a flip phone for a while, but then I kind of involuntarily adopted
one. My iPhone broke and I loved it so much,
I just I decided to keep it. Despite this, smart phones are still
king. Even in developing nations where flip
phones are still widely used, smartphone usage is growing. Developing countries are definitely some
of the places where Nokia has not just as a brand but also with both feature
phones and also smart phones, has a very, very strong, strong presence. Worldwide, the feature phone market is
expected to decrease by about 10% over the next five or so years, largely
attributed to developing countries making the switch to smart phones and
older generations refusing to use smart phones could be phasing out as there is
a 48% increase in smartphone ownership among those 65 and up from 2012 to
2021. But the amount of dumb phones being
used by young people in Western countries is growing. CNBC wanted to explore what the dumb
phone trend is all about and see if it can compete with the massive smartphone
industry. Within the Dumbphone market, there are
essentially two avenues most consumers take -- one being a classic flip or
slide phone, similar to what was commonly used in the early and mid
aughts, like a Motorola or Nokia. Two being a modern minimalist phone from
brands like Light or Punkt, whose phones are in a way purposely dumb. And these brands are also labeling
their phones as feature phones, which is like a flip phone with some additions
like a hotspot or a GPS. How do you feel about the term dumb
phone? Well, we're trying to do with the Light
phone isn't to create a dumb phone, but to create a more intentional phone, a
premium, minimal phone, which, you know, isn't inherently anti-technology, but
it's about consciously choosing how and when to use which aspects of technology
add to my quality of life versus tempting me with all sorts of
vulnerabilities of the smartphone. In Europe, for instance, you have a
culture here in Switzerland and Germany, they call they don't call it a dumb
phone or a digital minimalist phone. They call it the weekend phone. One of the biggest reasons some Gen Zers
are reverting to a dumb or minimalist phone is the concern with smartphones
effects on mental health. We all know that what people convey
through social media, they only convey the best of their life, which makes
others falsely believe they live a lesser life by social comparison, which
in turn negatively affects their self esteem and well-being. The US Surgeon General even recently
stated that 13 is too young to be on social media, so some are taking the
initiative and switching to a dumb or feature phone incapable of browser and
social media use. It's definitely a trend that we've
noticed that people have been very occupied with digital social media for
a while, and a lot of people want to take a step back and get a bit more
detached from from that part of their life. I take my smartphone with me absolutely
everywhere. So I decided to jump on the dumb phone
bandwagon and test out a couple of different devices. This is the Punkt MP02 phone. It's my first dumb phone ever. Sent over from Switzerland in this
mysterious box. It is a T9 layout which I've never
actually used before for typing. So we'll see how that goes. A study found that Americans in their
20 seconds are on their phones for about 29 hours a week, equaling about four
hours a day. That was in 2021. Just for reference, my own screen time
trends about at two and a half to three hours, which is a little bit less than
average. The vast majority of my time is spent
on messages. Now I'm going to swap out the SIM from
my iPhone to the Punkt phone. The punt phone retails for about $380 or
400 if you want it in light blue. You can call, you can SMS, you can call
and message through signal and you can make it use as a hotspot for
connectivity. There are other like purposefully dumb
phones, like the light phone, which allows for a little bit more leeway, I
guess, on what you can do. Retailing for about $300. The light phone has a few more built in
tools. We kind of set these guidelines of let's
create things that have a real utility purpose. So something like an alarm or
directions or a calculator or even, you know, a voice memo and notes tool. These things have like a really clear
use case. There's nothing about punk that is
against technology. It's about intentional technology. Right now I'm actually waiting on a call
from somebody who I've been dating for about a month and we've never actually
called before, but we're trying to set up our plans for tomorrow. And texting is just so inefficient on a
phone like this. So we're going the old fashioned way,
doing a little call. Hello. Hi. So far, I actually haven't run into too
many issues. It's actually kind of nice to be able
to just sit with the uncertainty of things instead of looking them up. And I'm still able to text just, like,
kind of poorly. I'm a little bit more reliant on
calling, but I'm about to have about an hour and a half commute up to our
office in Englewood Cliffs because I live in Brooklyn, so. I'm not going to be able to use music
or podcasts, which I usually do the entire time. Instead, I'll have to doing some
reading. But maybe that's for the best, you
know? Sit with my thoughts a little bit more. One sort of weird issue that I'm
running into is directions. The Punkt phone does not have any sort
of map or directional indicator on it. So I'm having to look up directions
before I go for certain places. It's no problem like getting to work
just because I have that memorized. But for places that I'm not as used to
going, I have to check before I leave and then just try to remember
everything, which can be a little bit of a challenge. Okay, so I did have to
briefly cheat, was trying to meet my friend at a coffee shop and couldn't
find it. Got a little lost, so I just swapped my SIM just to pull up the map. Now I've got my hands on the Light
phone, so I'm going to swap my SIM and see how this one goes. So the Light phone has an actual
keyboard on it, which makes it a little bit easier to use for me, but
everything on it is a little bit delayed because of the type of screen it is. So I'm still struggling a lot. One of the tools that they added to the
Light phone two, which I think is actually really nice, is voice to text. And it works pretty well. You have to go a little slow for it but
overall very convenient. This is the home screen and you
actually have to go on your computer to their online dashboard to add any
additional tools past the alarm. So I went in and added the directions,
hotspot, music, notes, podcasting. The directional tool actually works
really well. I expected to have to put in the actual
address, but you can actually just type in the name of something or most of s
omething and it'll figure out the rest from there. The Light phone music tool only allows
you to upload basically MP3s. You're using it as an MP3 player, so
you have to download music, you can't actually stream it. So I'm actually
going to buy an album for the first time and I want to say like ten years. So I mean, it is working. It's not like the best listening
experience, but I am listening to music, so it counts for something. Well, I don't really use my phone that
much to begin with, compared to most people my age. I decided that a dumb
phone really isn't for me. And honestly, one of the biggest
negatives for me was not being able to listen to music and get around super
easily using something like Google Maps. On average, over half of kids in the US
received their first smartphone by age 11, and that percentage has continued
to grow, making Gen Z the first generation to entirely grow up with
social media and smartphones. And about half of teens in the US said
they feel addicted to their mobile devices, which can have adverse effects
on mental health. So this is why parents should be
encouraging healthy device habits. It's not about prohibiting or banning
totally devices from being used, maybe like encouraging their children to take
some regular breaks. A recent study found that decreasing
teen smartphone based social media use by 50% improves issues with emotional
distress. But I think you can see it with certain
Gen Z populations. They're tired of the screens. They don't know what is going on with
mental health and they're trying to make cutbacks. And from 2019 to 2022, over a billion
feature phones were sold globally. I think this trend, starting in the
United States, could very easily move, I would say first to Western Europe and
Australia, and then after that, places like Eastern Europe and even places
like China. This trend is largely a result of mental
health concerns and in part why companies like Light and Punkt said its
devices are popular among younger audiences, despite having simple and
intuitive designs. A study connecting mental health and
the rise of social media from 2008 to 2018 found that 18 to 23 year olds who
reported experiencing a depressive episode increased by 83%. So I wanted to change my lifestyle, you
know, kind of like get into a slower lifestyle instead of like the fast pace
of the Internet. We kind of had this hypothesis that, you
know, taking a break from smartphones and the Internet at large from time to
time would yield a really refreshing and positive experience for users. And brands like Light and Punkt that are
geared toward younger audiences have found success and increasing device
sales. From 2021, for example, to the last year
2022, we did grow 50% year over year. You know, we are fivefold compared to
2018. As for this way, so but you know, we
are not in the millions. We are in the 100,000, you know. But I think this Light phone Punkt and
brands that are that are new, I think could make a much bigger impact,
particularly in the Western world, because it's not apologizing for being
not a smartphone. In 2021 just 61% of Americans 65 and up
were using smartphones, while 29% were using a dumb or feature phone. The biggest question that that I wanted
to figure out is will they age out or will they move to something different? And as with most technology, older
generations were slow to adopt smartphones in 2012, when smartphones
had picked up some serious steam, only 13% of those 65 and up had a
smartphone, compared to 66% of 18 to 29 year olds. What's assumed is that older
generations are still using feature phones because it's what they're used
to and have no need for the updated tech. And just 45% of them said they
ever use social media. I do believe we'll see higher adoption
of dumb phones even when folks like I age out. If nothing else, the dexterity
that it takes to touch the screen of a smartphone when you get older is tough. Your eyes go and directly you cannot
operate a smartphone without having some reasonable eyesight. The older generations are sticking with
Nokia phones and still doing that. But I think that's also where we really
try to bring on top of that innovation. So so they can still function in a in a
modern society. Older generations are clearly shifting
away from dumb phones. And despite the growing movement among
younger generations, 85% of Americans have a smartphone. And that percentage
has grown every year since their inception. But some think the dumb
phone industry will grow as well. In North America, the market for dumb
phones is pretty much flatlined, right over the past 4 or 5 years. But I could see it getting up to, you
know, 5% increase in the next five years. If nothing else, based on the
more public health concerns that that are out there. The problem is that humanity is not yet
ready for this fast evolving software. Children are not yet ready because they
are going through the the very important developmental age. So they're not yet prepared to face all
the challenges. That are currently available on the
Internet, video games or even the social media platforms. I think in the next five years we will
have major CDC warnings about the dangers of smartphones and collectively
that the smartphone industry wasn't able to manage on its own. And I could see there being some
restrictions. And that alone, I think, will will
bring out likely parents not giving kids smartphones, but more dumb phones in in
into the future. There's a reason why there's 15,000 sub
redditors on the dumb phone subreddit like that's not a small I mean it's
small when you compare it to like Android subreddit or Google or iPhone. But it's a trend that is catching on
and a lot of people are really interested in for sure. This is actually one of the best things
I've ever done for my mental health because I've decreased the stimulation. I've created more space to feel my own
ideas and to touch in with my emotions and just to kind of feel like what's
going on with me without all of the noise. The smartphone market in emerging or
developing countries has grown rapidly. The global smartphone market was valued
at about $485 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach nearly 800 billion by
2029. And the Middle East, Africa and India
made up about 80% of feature phone sales in 2022. But these countries are also becoming
concerned about the mental health impacts of increasing smartphone usage. A survey conducted in 11 developing
countries found that 63% of adults were concerned that mobile phones were
having a bad influence on children. But despite this, mental health isn't
really the reason people in developing countries are opting for dumb phones
-- price is. That has very little to do with
capability and parents watching their kids. It has everything to do with the
the price point and the reliability. In that same 11 country survey, 70% of
respondents said that mobile phones have been overall good for society. A lot of folks in areas like India
they'll run their entire business on a smartphone. And therefore I do see the
numbers going up for a country like India. And the makers of Nokia phones said
they're still selling millions of feature phones globally every month. However, the US is one of few markets
where they noticed growth in feature phone sales last year. While feature phones do make up most of
the cell phones actively being used in India, new phone sales are heavily in
favor of smartphones. Of the roughly 200 million mobile
phones shipped in India in 2022, only about 57 million were feature phones. And while feature phones are decreasing
in developing nations, the industry does have a steady following elsewhere in
certain niche markets and could see some growth as mental health concerns
associated with social media and smartphones rise. While my experience wasn't terrible and
I really don't use my phone that much to begin with, it's definitely something
that I decided isn't really for me, and it remains to be seen whether it'll be
more than just a trend in the U.S.
