Punkt. MP02 4G LTE Minimalist Mobile Phone - Unlocked Cell Phone with Nano-SIM, Wi-Fi Hotspot, 2GB RAM+16GB Storage, Bluetooth, Digital Security, Multiband - Black

Battery life will be what you make of it. If you have mobile data & bluetooth disabled it will be pretty decent. If you use signal/pigeon and have 4g enabled it lasts around 3/4 of the day for me which is okay for my use case as I have it plugged in when I'm in the car or at work. Pigeon has a setting to set message fetching interval which I've noticed really improves battery life when set to 5 minutes or higher. Overall there was a bit of a learning curve going from having constant access to a smart phone but about a month in I hardly feel the difference. I love the feel and design of the phone. I would suggest ordering a screen protector with it or leaving the screen film it comes with. Like the headline says, I think its completely worth getting so long as you do your research. A lot of it can be negative (especially on places like reddit) which I knew going in and fortunately the only issues I've had are a less than ideal battery life (still perfectly manageable) and the pigeon app would crash which a recent software update has resolved completely.

I love this phone. It's everything it should be...for the most part. However, there are a couple issues - one in particular that leaves the phone unusable. First, the software. Over all, it's decent. The texting, calling, and contacts work fine. Importing contacts was quick and easy. Never had an issue with calls. The smart keyboard works well while texting. There are a couple minor issues, such as the fact that when you scroll down on a text, it only displays on the top half of the screen. A bit odd, but not the end of the world. I don't really use the other apps, such as the calculator. The clock is fine, and the alarm works well. The calendar is a bit useless, as it only shows the day in a month view, with nothing else to do. The notes is just what you would expect on a T9. And this is what I expect from a dumbphone with smart features, so I see it as a plus. The mobile hotspot works fine. The reception is decent. The battery life is great, normally getting 4-5 days of use on a single charge. Now for the hardware. It runs fine, lasts a long time, and does its job. The problem is the build quality. The case is built of a solid plastic, which is strong yet light, and the rubber on the back is a nice touch. Sadly, the buttons are not built with the same sturdiness. After 2 months of use, the printing on a couple of the buttons is starting to wear off. And the star button no longer works... I got some dirt on it while working, and it got underneath the buttons. Most of them were fine, but the star button no longer works and I have to really press the 0 hard to get it to register. So while I love it, I cant use it anymore. Most of my communication is texting, and without the star button or 0, Icantwriteamessagewithspacesorpunctuation

I like the concept. When it worked the call quality was awesome and the speaker phone was fantastic. So far I have tried it with Ting and Mint Mobile (winner!) but there is one major issue. AFTER YOU HAVE INSTALLED A SIM CARD NEVER RESTART THE PHONE! If you do the phone will just randomly cut off, actually not even randomly, more like every time the phone auto locks so basically all of the time! So here you have a phone in your pocket and you think its on and it isn't. Not a very reliable means of communication. I have left two complaints with Punkt and have yet to hear back from them. Also, the phone always switches silent mode on, so if you are listening for notifications forget about it. The company says they are working on it but the product never should have been released in the first place until all these bugs (and there are more) had been worked out. I'll increase my overall score when the bugs have been worked out but for now I cannot recommend this product to anyone. **Edit** After a shaky start and a few OS updates, this is not really a bad phone. The texting brings me back to the 1990's but I wasn't good at it then either. The battery life has substantially improved and I can report that it no longer just randomly shuts down because it feels like it. The tethering for the internet works great and on one occasion when I was on call for work and we were at a winery in the middle of nowhere, this little guy saved my butt. The WiFi at the vineyard was not secure so I could not use it to VPN into my office but the connection went through on the Punkt phone, even though it had a very poor signal. I have an 8GB data plan that I pay $240 a year for so the phone works out to be a bargain.

Pros: no internet, no browser, no apps, no tracking, no unnecessary notifications. I love it is not a distraction. This phone feels solid and comfortable in my hand. It doesn't feel like a heavy computer weighing down my gym shorts. I love the feel of pressing actual buttons. Love the USB-c charger. The extra botton press to unlock. Loved the loon alarm. Cons: Pigion or signal or whatever can only be used with other users; I cannot ask 40 other people im in group chats with to change over. No group chats for the regular phone messagin is very confusing. Have you ever come back to your phone and found 15 messages in a group chat? Well here they come through as individual messages and then I have to go back through all the individual messages and try to piece everything together. I did not like have to unlock my phone to see IF there was a notification. I often have my ringer off but take a quick sec here and there to glance at notifications, not efficient to have to unlock phone first. The menu is clunky. The think there are too many menu items and sub menu items. Navigation is not quick, but it would speed up much more if there were multi directional buttons instead of just up and down. The clunky slow menu and the lack of group messages will be the reason for my return. I love almost everything of this phone and I was willing to sacrifice on the clunky menu until the group messages started. These two items caused me to be on my phopne much much longer than i want to be

Is it overpriced? Maybe, but so is an iPhone—come on, don’t act like it’s not. Other reviewers say this phone is all about design and not functionality, as if design were some worthless, frivolous thing. This phone is not meant for your elderly loved one who just needs a dumb phone—you can get one of those for a third of the price of the Punkt. They won’t care about the interface anyway. But for someone who wants to exit the matrix, the slick, minimalistic design is precisely what makes the Punkt usable long-term. It’s not annoying, it doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not; it is utterly uninteresting. I don’t care about battery life since I barely touch this phone unless I’m making an actual call. This phone is NOT a substitute for a smartphone. You can’t live in this day and age without a smartphone, but you don’t have to let it take over your life, your sleep, your attention span, your energy. I have peace now. It’s so nice to know I’m not carrying my entire digital footprint in my bag—the personal data, the anxiety, the overkill security measures I'd have to take if I lose the damn thing. It’s also incredibly lightweight. And if my family or friends have an emergency, they can (and will) make a call. I’m really happy with this product overall. It works for me. I don’t care about social media at all. Punkt + laptop + smartphone turned off at home is the way to go. I keep my smartphone for bank apps, WhatsApp, and GPS on the rare occasions I travel, but I don’t carry it with me all the time. Sadly, I don’t think this phone will stay on the market for long because most people won’t make this leap. It’s like living in a different reality. If SMS is your main messaging app (USA, I’m talking to you), this probably won’t work for you. No voice clips, no group chats, no images. I do all of that via WhatsApp linked to my laptop, so I’m golden. I’m lucky I can use this. Even if you don't feel as negatively affected by the constant flow of information and excessive screen usage as I do, this phone is worth a try. You deserve to at least remember what it's like to live without the chokehold "the algorithm" has on you.

For a designer product, this thing doesn't execute too well. Note that the phone comes with TWO layers of screen protectors, and the lower layer often ships with ugly bubbles. Carefully peel off the two layers to reveal the main screen. Its big privacy feature, the Pigeon Signal client, stops working every three months. The contacts editing UI is awkward, prompting you to erase changes when you're not even making any changes. There is only one alarm sound, and it is annoying. There are a handful of messaging alert sounds, equally awful, and a few more ringtone choices. They're all bird noises that are more jarring than anything else. The company spends a lot of time hyping their products to new customers on Twitter, but little time resolving the hundreds of bugs and quirks for their existing customer base. Even the worst, most cheaply made Android phone has better notification controls than this supposedly lifestyle enriching phone. You cannot reply to MMS SMS chat groups.

The design of this is great but ultimately this phone fails at its intended goal. The Punkt does basically two things: Phone calls, and text messages. The phone call quality is fantastic. The calls are very clear and loud. The speaker also works great. As for text messages, this phone is a big loser. The T9 typing works just fine, but the lack of MMS makes this almost unusable. If you are in a text group, you will not receive most messages and the ones you do will be hard to sort out. I just stopped responding to any group messages. That and the inability to see pictures or GIFS sent is a bummer (although this does work on the signal app, pidgeon. As for the signal app, it's terrible. It's so bad, it's not worth using at all. It's separate from the text app and only works with other people who also have signal which I think is about 10 people worldwide. Also, when you install this app, it will break any other instance you have of signal, so no more signal on desktop or a tablet. Your choices will be: highly restricted lousy Signal or no Signal at all. I gave this thing 3 stars because I think the people who buy it know what they are getting into. Altogether though, it's not very good at the limited things it claims to do. If they improved the texting, it would be expensive but acceptable. Without the texting working well, it's basically a very expensive telephone. If you can swallow your pretensions and just buy a cheap feature phone, you will be much better served. Update: 8/2021 I decided to update the firmware on this phone and after the update, the phone was bricked. Black screen and would not turn on. I contacted Punkt support and they told me they would not issue a refund for their phone that bricked itself after 5 months because I bought it from amazon. They offered to send me a new phone sometime around December (4 months from now). Thankfully this isn't my only phone or I would be screwed. Nonetheless, I will have to go get another phone and definitely not a Punkt phone. All in all, this phone is garbage, even for what it claims to be. I don't expect it to be a smartphone but it is one of the worst dumbphones on the market and definitely the worst dumbphone for the price. Support is absolute garbage and is not willing to stand behind their product and fix major issues in a timely fashion. Like I said before, find another feature phone.

Like a lot of people, I was tired of spending too much time on my smartphone and becoming distracted by all the notifications. I wanted a simpler device with only what I absolutely needed. Before purchasing the Punkt. MP02, I powered down my iPhone and switched over to an old flipphone for about a month. What I experienced, can only be described as FREEDOM. After using the flipphone for a month, I felt ready for another “downgrade“. I use the term “downgrade“ in referrence only to the loss of functions I came to consider as unncessary. After setting up my new Punkt. MP02, what I actually had was an upgrade. I really love the minimalist interface and barebones features of this phone. It is aesthetically pleasing, both the physical phone and the interface. Besides a calculator, notes, clock-stopwatch, and calendar, what you have is a phone that basically does a couple of things, calls and text. There is no camera, and no internet browser on this device. The call quality is good in my opinion. I actually have not noticed much difference from any other mobile phone I have used. Having to text is annoying, but I do not text much anyhow. For work, I use a BoxWave Bluetooth Keyboard in order to quickly respond to coworkers. I do not carry this keyboard around with me of course, that would be ridiculous, but it stays at my work station just in case I get a text that requires a lengthy response. Besides having to adjust with a few minor workarounds, I have in no way felt that I have given anything up. Overall, this phone is great and I have been using it as my only phone for 6 months now. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to either take a break from smartphone slavery or permenantly leave it behind. My one and ONLY complaint is the battery life is not what I would have expected for such a minimal mobile phone. I charge it once about every two or three days depending on usage, but I was having to charge my iPhone daily. ONE YEAR UPDATE*** I’m now one year into using this phone. What started as a hopeful experiment, turned into a permanent solution. The Punkt. MP02 still works great and I haven’t had any issues with it. This is the only phone I use. It’s not an afternoon sim card switcheroo situation or a weekend break. I powered off my iPhone a year ago and still have not seen fit to turn it back on. After a short period of time adjusting to the minimal features there has actually been no real inconvenience to me. It only seems like I have gained, in time and freedom.