Buying a Phone in 2021
Sadly, my Intex Aqua Fish has seen better days. While I've lived with minor hardware issues such as the broken on/off-button, a no longer working camera and that discolored blob on the left of the screen for a couple of years, the need to replace the device came from the USB port loosening to the level where charging the battery now is a real challenge. These years with Sailfish OS have been a blessing. However unlike four to five years ago, it is no longer possible to buy a device with it pre-installed. Since buying a supposedly supported device, fiddling with flashing a new firmware to it and all which comes with that, felt like the opposite of appealing, I reluctantly decided to look for other alternatives.
When it comes to phones, I want mine to be primarily suited for making and receiving actual voice calls. Some occasional texting is necessary, and sharing internet through wifi tethering is an absolute must. I also tend to use my phone for listening to podcasts, something I covered in a forum-thread elsewhere and thus wont repeat here. Apparently I'm old enough to value how things were better in the past. Either that, or I just like good stuff better than bad things.
Most of the android and apple products, which dominates the market of pocket sized mobile devices, are designed to be something I neither need nor desire. There is a thing called KaiOS, with the intention to bring the golden era of phones back, but it seems like the devices running it fails to in practice meet my requirements. If digging deep into what's available worldwide one might find mentions of mocor os, which seems to be a fork of legacy android for feature phones. Yet I found it hard to find further details.
At a very first glance, it seemed the Light Phone could be targeting me. When digging into the details one quickly learns that it is only able to play podcasts listed in itunes, which is a clear no-go among an ocean of other red flags.
Instead I settled for the AGM M7, an android based feature phone initially released as recently as this year. Although it runs android, it is a phone first and it has been stripped of everything requiring a google account. Do not misunderstand me, I'm far from fully happy with the device. Like all contemporary phones, it's huge. Almost double the volume of my previous phone. The software leaves a lot to be desired, to say the least. Yet all in all, of all currently available phones, it is probably the one I am the least unhappy with.