Personal tech

Ships sans email, web, or socials, but with plenty of beige plastic

Retro computing brand Commodore has brought its pre-internet sensibilities to the mobile phone market with a $500 flip handset that proudly ships without social media, email, a web browser, or most of the things people typically buy smartphones to use.

The company unveiled the device, dubbed Callback, this week and pitched it as a privacy-focused antidote to doomscrolling. Built in partnership with Finnish outfit Jolla, whose Sailfish OS traces its roots back to former Nokia engineers, the Linux-based handset attempts to split the difference between a feature phone and a smartphone.

If your idea of progress is deleting half the apps on your phone, Callback may be for you. Commodore has removed email, social media, web browsing, workplace chat apps, and AI assistants, while bringing back physical controls and T9-style texting.

Instead, buyers get a flip phone with a 48 MP Sony camera, FM radio, HD audio support, a selection of Commodore-themed games, and enough Android compatibility to run "99 percent" of Android applications through Sailfish OS's compatibility layer.

"Phones were fun. Then they got too smart for their own good, and ours," said Commodore chief executive Peri Fractic, who said the idea grew out of his own efforts to reduce screen time before becoming a father.

The company leans heavily on privacy as a selling point, promising no hidden data collection, no account sign-ins, encrypted storage, and what it describes as a "private not profit" business model.

For many tech veterans, however, the real selling point may simply be the badge on the front. Long before smartphones, app stores, and algorithmic feeds, Commodore systems occupied bedrooms, classrooms, and living rooms around the world. For a generation of geeks, the brand still evokes cassette tape loading screens, SID-chip soundtracks, and countless hours spent typing programs from magazine listings.

That's also why the company keeps getting resurrected. Commodore International collapsed in 1994, but the brand has spent much of the intervening decades bouncing between various owners eager to capitalize on the affection still attached to the name.

Callback will initially launch in five versions, ranging from a $500 BASIC Beige model to a $640 Founders Edition complete with a 24-carat gold Commodore button.

Whether nostalgia translates into sales remains another matter. Privacy-focused and minimalist phones have appeared regularly over the past decade, such as Punkt, usually attracting plenty of headlines and relatively few customers compared with the hundreds of millions of mainstream smartphones sold each year.

Still, for anyone nostalgic for the days when hanging up the phone actually ended the conversation, Commodore has an answer: snap it shut and walk away. ®