Flip phones are back — and people love it

The problems associated with smartphone overload — sleep disturbances, difficulty concentrating, and mental health issues — are prompting people to seek out simpler devices. A growing community of people opt for keypad phones with limited features as a way to digitally detox, protect their data, and live consciously.

More and more people reject smartphone overload and rediscover the beauty of simplicity, CNN writes.

Why keypad phones are gaining popularity again

Online movements like #BringBackFlipPhones have fueled the rise of niche manufacturers offering premium alternatives. Switzerland's Punkt offers the MC02 smartphone, which the company's founder, Peter Neby, describes as having a "restrained and Lutheran" approach to design — he calls it "digital minimalism."

Kaiwei Tang, co-founder of feature phone maker Light, explains that the problem lies in the business model of the "attention economy". Every free app and platform competes to attract users, collect their data, and sell it to advertisers.

However, "simple" does not mean "cheap". The Light Phone III is priced at $699, and the fifth generation of the keypad Punkt phone costs $299. Small companies pay more for materials and have fewer R&D resources than giants like Apple or Samsung.

HMD (Human Mobile Devices), the company that continues Nokia's legacy, has been reviving "bricks" since 2016, including the classic Nokia 3210. In 2022-2023, sales of its clamshell phones doubled. Last year, the company introduced the HMD Barbie Phone to address the lack of social media access.

Meanwhile, HMD is developing smarter solutions that suggest a future "middle" niche between smartphones and basic devices. The HMD Fuse starts as a basic phone and lets parents unlock features as their child grows up. The phone has HarmBlock, an AI that detects and blocks explicit content in the browser as well as on social media and in messengers.

Amidst fatigue from endless feeds and notifications, simple phones are becoming a symbolic "switch" of attention, as well as a premium alternative for those who want control over their time and data usage. The only question is whether users are willing to pay as much for minimalism as they would for a full-fledged smartphone.

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