The best dumbphones for a complete digital detox

“Dumbphone” sounds like an insult, but it serves to distinguish these products – more flatteringly referred to as brick phones, feature phones or flip phones – from the modern-day smartphones that 95 per cent of British adults own. Smartphones are increasingly powerful and expensive products, sold by companies like Apple (which makes the famous iPhone), Google and Samsung. They do everything, with many users relying on their smartphones for banking, travel, shopping and more.

Many dumbphones are the antithesis of smartphones, instead offering only core mobile phone functions like calls and messages. For many, this is ample “connectivity.” Other phones on this list are restricted smartphones, with features removed or added to make them easier, simpler or safer to use than an unbridled iPhone.

“Bricks, dumbphones or feature phones are seeing a revival,” says Rob Maule, consumer expert at Currys. “As a whole, sales of these back-to-basic phones are up 13 per cent year-on-year, with the retro Nokia 2660 and Nokia 105 up 50 per cent and 49 per cent year-on-year, respectively.”

We’ve also included some adjacent products in this guide that are relevant to anyone contemplating a digital detox or mulling an appropriate device for a child. Some of these devices are technically smartphones, but they have features that might put them on your dumbphone shortlist regardless.