In my quest to simplify my life and avoid smartphones, I've bought the Opel Touchflip phone.
Unfortunately the Aspera R40 mentioned in a previous post started great but developed issues with the keypad. It's going in for a warranty repair
Don't Opel market phones for "the elderly"?
They're still a functional dumbphone.
Or rather ...
Okay, It's running Android 8.1. And YES I wanted to get away from smartphones.
But this isn't anything close to a smartphone. Not with a tiny little screen, a measley 4GB ram and a honkning great numerical keypad.
Good and bad
The default launcher was ok and I could've left it as-is, but had the following issues:
- Order of app buttons couldn't be altered
- Facebook lite and Whatsapp were front-and-centre
- super slow refresh on the keyboard when tapping physical buttons
- too many steps to get to tethering menu
Workaround
The workaround was to sideload apps by installing F-droid on the phone via USB tethering or via download from the browser.
BUT this required a new launcher because the phone and some other functionality was hard-coded into the default launcher.
These apps definitely work and were recommended by Opel Touchflip 4g Hints and Tricks
- KISS launcher - lightweight launcher that displays whatever apps you like
- Emerald Dialler - because the default dialler is packaged with the default launcher AND other diallers seem to crash all the time.
- Simple Keyboard - doesn't come with emoticons, but works and it's just big enough to use on the tiny screen (I tried the T9 keyboard and found the autocorrect insanely annoying)
- Fossify Messages
These are my own choice and appear to work just fine:
- Fossify Clock
- Fossify File Manager - not necessary but I wanted to be all open-source
- Open camera
- Simple Contacts Pro SE (I imported my contacts as a file via USB tethering)
- Weather Forecast
I'm not intending to do anything with the browser.
Note: Confirm any updates if requested, and enable any permissions if asked.
Next step
Remove Meta bloatware from Opel Touchflip