Featurephones
Need a featurephone? If you are looking for a simple phone that does more than just make calls but do not want a complicated and expensive smartphone, this is the starting point of your search. All available featurephones, with specifications and prices can be found here.
The most popular featurephones
- Super easy to use
- Digital detox
- Old-fashioned long battery life
- Wireless radio listening
- No apps, no social media, no WhatsApp
- No-nonsense building phone
- Dual SIM support
- With simple camera
- Built-in flashlight
- Battery not removable
All featurephones
A featurephone is the type of phone that was common before the smartphone made its appearance. It is a cell phone with numerous features. These can be anything from built-in FM radio to a camera to Internet browsing. The price ranges from a few tens to nearly 100 euros for the most comprehensive.
Because of the enormous popularity of smartphones, we see feature phones less and less often. Many manufacturers have stopped making them. It is mainly HMD Global under the Nokia name and TCL with Alcatel that still releases models. Senior phones are a subcategory of feature phones. The extra features besides calling and messaging are then particularly aimed at this target group. Feature phones are also very suitable as festival phones. Leave your expensive smartphone at home and still stay in touch with everyone. There are even models with a built-in camera although that is not a requirement.
Featurephone with WhatsApp
Finding a featurephone with support for WhatsApp is a tough search. The only one available is the Nokia 8110 4G. WhatsApp is further available (anno 2019) for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone (until the end of 2019). It also used to be available for S40 which many Nokia featurephones used. Support for that was discontinued in 2018.
In mid-2018, a WhatsApp version was also released for the KaiOS platform. The disadvantage is that not every phone with KaiOS can just install it. The manufacturer still seems to have to make the necessary adjustments for this. After previously JioPhone did so (in 2018), HMD Global followed suit in 2019 with support for the Nokia 8110 4G.
Those who do not want that will have to be patient on featurephones running under Android; Android Go would be a suitable candidate for this. Those who necessarily want to use WhatsApp on a simple phone can also look at budget smartphones.
