If someone needs a phone like this for email and job searching and has no other option, 2G speeds will work. It’s not e-waste for the intended purpose.

Guess how I know you've never actually tried this.

Part of my job is testing the web sites I build in the terrible real-world conditions where our customers are. Places like machine rooms, deep basements, and small towns with only municipal or small-carrier 3G cell service. (In spite of what HN believes, there are plenty of places in America with 3G or even zero cell service.)

2G speeds will not work. The device or one of the essential thousands of processes in it will time out because they were designed by tech bubble tech bros who never use their apps in the real world.

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qingcharles an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Thank you. I often get people responding that 2G speed will work fine for email, chat, Google Maps etc. Maybe if I installed an IMAP client on their phone, maybe.

But I can promise you from sitting with them dozens of times things like Google Maps are unusable once the connection is throttled. It might load some of the map, some of the time. But it never loads all of it and it is just plain unworkable. Even if it loads some of it it takes so long that the busses have gone past by the time they've tried to figure out what direction they need to go.

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MBCook 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is a spot near me near a local college that is a worthless dead zone for data.

The signal is terrible, but it’s there. You can talk on the phone or send texts.

Surfing is horrible. At times you get great speeds. Two seconds later it feels like slow dial up. Really that’s what it feels like most of the time, any kind of speed is the anomaly.

As said in other comments, very few apps actually handle this well. They seem to expect that you either have a good connection or nothing.

It’s been like that for a decade plus. I assume it’s just overloaded and will never be fixed.

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kuschku 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I used to have an extremely cheap phone plan that had 500MB data, then 64kbps for the rest of the month.

You'd be surprised how far you can get with that. IRC works just fine (as long as you use Quassel w/ Quasseldroid), HN works well, so does reddit (via redreader). RSS readers and wikipedia work as well, and for general web browsing you can set up a readability proxy (basically Firefox' Reader Mode, but server-side). And of course email works really well, too.

	▲	II2II 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Been there, done that, and all without the benefit of a home Internet connection. I also created a couple of scripts that I could run on my desktop computer to install new software or update my operating system. After running the scripts on my computer, I would wander over to the library with nothing more than my phone to download the packages along with grabbing some videos to watch offline. The issue isn't really living with 500 MB/month of data. For most people, it will simply be knowing that you can do that. The next issue they will face is having the technical ability to actually do so. Then, once you've done all of that, the question will remain: will they be interested in the stripped down Internet. A lot of us who frequent HN may be since the results will still reflect our interests. There are people on IRC who we would want to talk to. There is a slant towards tech sites with RSS. And so on. That isn't going to be reflected in sites targeted at a general audience.
	▲	qingcharles an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Sure, me and you and everyone here can open a shell connection and do everything with text and it'll work great on 64kbps. Some of these guys have been locked up for 40 years straight. They're not doing all that extra stuff. They want to go on Indeed or Monster or YouTube. One job site I had to load on my desktop to find out why it wasn't working for them, only to discover the pages had a 250MB payload of random crap downloading, including videos.
	▲	roywiggins 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The COTS solution for some web browsing is Opera Mini, which may still work? It also uses a proxy to prerender and compress websites, and worked ok at 2G speeds last I used it. It used to work well as a java applet and made the wider internet functional on feature phones. Very solid software. But as a practical matter, what people rely on phones for are services that are app-based. Good luck completing a Venmo transaction or any amount of banking.

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zamadatix 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> (In spite of what HN believes, there are plenty of places in America with 3G or even zero cell service.)

0 of course, but wasn't 3G all shut down in the US in 2022 to open up the airspace?

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reaperducer 4 hours ago | parent [-]

0 of course, but wasn't 3G all shut down in the US in 2022 to open up the airspace?

One of those HN myths that comes from only being willing to Google (or ChatGPT) information, rather than encountering it in the real world.

3G still exists in rural and remote areas that no major carrier wants to serve, at least as of April, 2025 — the last time I did a round of real-world web testing. Next round is in September. Maybe with 5G in the cities, some hand-me-down 4G equipment has made it to the places where I test.

	▲	coryrc 42 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's weird, because it's directly contradicting that the carriers themselves say they have decommissioned it. https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/plan-ahead-phase-out-3g...
	▲	3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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