Flip Phone Companies Bet on Small Screens, Not Ditching Phones

Dumb Co and Commodore are selling basic flip phones loaded with essential apps—WhatsApp, Spotify, Uber—priced at $20. The phones link to your main smartphone, handling calls and texts while your primary device stays tucked away. The bet is that people will use the smaller phone rather than abandon connectivity entirely—a lesson learned from earlier minimalist phones that failed. Whether this genuinely reduces smartphone time or simply adds another device remains to be seen.