I have tried desmartphoning myself before. The reason was I do not need this expensive device with 1000s of functions and 1 day battery life, Id rather have a simple one that is mostly just a phone. I dont like typing on a phone either, prefer to use the web versions of messenger, whatsapp and signal.
The device I went with before was Nokia 8110 4G. On paper this was everything I wanted. Low price, 1 week battery, love the slidy thing, etc. Unfortunately it had two big downsides: it failed to receive most automated SMS for some reason (eg bank login tokens), and while it had whatsapp it didnt support whatsapp web, forcing me to use the t9 keyboard.
Then covid came and I had to switch back anyway to use track & trace app and other stuff. But now Im thinking again about this, do you have anything to recommend?
finding something inexpensive ahould be easy. for simplicity… i would say anything that is supported by lineageOS.
battery life may be tough.
i had an alcatel onetouch and the battery life was great and also very durable.
you could also try the samsung s5 with lineageOS. it’s very cheap. and LOS makes it simple. it has a amoled display but battery life is weak.
there are many affordable phones that offer worthwhile advantages for around $100. but you said you wanted minimal.
As someone who just switched from a Lineage OS Galaxy S5, I couldn’t possibly recommend it myself. It hasn’t aged well, including, importantly, in terms of battery life. I just switched to Oneplus 5t, which does much better in terms of battery life and supports a whole range of cellular bands that the S5 simply doesn’t have, resulting in better signals. They’re available on eBay now for little more than $100.
Yeah, minimal as in preferably no touchscreen, no fiddling with the OS, but its got to at least support whatsapp web and able to make a hotspot.