In this podcast series, Bruce interviews people from across different communities and industries who, in their own way, are fighting for a better web. In this episode, Bruce’s victims are Sebastian Snell and Chris Ristovski, co-founders of Sidephone, a newly-released device that is intentionally not smart, but also not completely dumb, so you can put real life first. Transcript[Bruce:] Hello, everybody. And welcome to another edition of the For a Better Web podcast. With me, Bruce Lawson, technical communications officer at Vivaldi Browser, where I interview people who, in their own way, in their own industry, and their own niche of the world, are working to make the web. a better place. And it is my pleasure to introduce two chaps, one from Canada, one from upstate USA, Sebastian Snell and Chris Ristovski. And they are co-founders, lords, lords, kings of Sidephone. What’s the correct mode of address, chaps?[Chris:] Honestly, you said it perfectly with co-founders. That’s the perfect way to say it.[Bruce:] Excellent. And I know what it is (because obviously I haven’t just completely invited arbitrary strangers from the street), but in case our listeners don’t know, what is Sidephone?[Chris:] At its core, we like to describe it as basically a better flip phone. It’s at its core. It’s a simple mobile phone. And it could basically perform all the functions you’d expect from a classic mobile device. It could text, it could call. But it’s also got some additional functionality that could help bridge the gap over from a smartphone.So, say for example, you’re out and about and you wanted to identify a song. Well, you could get Shazam on your device. If you wanted to listen to music, if that was a core part, of your daily experience.You can get your Spotify album on the device as well. If you need to browse the internet, you can do that as well. There are ways to add those additional applications onto the device.So at its core, it really begins as a very simple phone. But if you need those additional apps and services to get through your day and feel confident doing so, you can bring those on. That’s what it is in a nutshell. It’s a simple mobile phone.[Bruce:] So why? Why? Is it a retro thing? Like, you know, people, people, mad people by vinyl, when it’s, in my opinion, and this is a heated debate, not as good sound quality as CD. Or is, is there a rationale behind sort of bringing back the simpler flip phone experience?[Chris:] It’s a very, very important question. And it is not a movement for the sake of being retro designed to go back in time.We like to see it a little bit as a course correction. That’s sort of the mentality we went into the project with. And what do we mean by that?Well, I think Sebastian, myself, we both personally felt this constant pull from our smartphones, and as ambitious individuals, people who want it to really get the most out of life, we adopt this philosophy of real life first.We know at least in our personal experiences that life’s best enjoyed with presence, with intention. And oftentimes we feel like it’s experienced in sort of the offshoots, the trips to the grocery store, the trips where you meet real people and you go on adventures. And what we had felt and what I personally felt (Sebasitian, I’m curious to get your input as well) what I personally felt is that I constantly had this pull into my smartphone.That really prevented me from living life the way that I wanted. So rather than actually experiencing the things I wanted, I would find myself viewing oftentimes other people doing these things, getting sucked into Reels and other items.And what I personally found is that there’s power in the form factor. So if you look at the evolution of a smartphone, it really began with a smaller screen. It just got larger and larger and larger and it really got optimized for content consumption above all else. It’s, I mean, a smartphone today is essentially a tool that could do absolutely anything.That’s essentially what it’s been designed for. It’s been designed to be everything. But we’ve come into the picture and said, what if a device had a bit more intention to it? And what if you could set that intention?So one of the things that we’ve incorporated with the device here is a modular component. So at its core, the most important thing that sort of makes Sidephone a Sidephone is this small display up here. And what that means is that as you’re using the device, you’re not going to feel that constant pull to, say, for example, start going through social media, start getting distracted, with consuming, whatever it is you find yourself consuming, whether it’s news, whether it’s, it’s just going through and possibly spending the entire day on dating apps, for example (that’s a common one as well). This, you’re not going to feel that just by the nature of the display.But then there’s an additional component, which is really neat. And that’s this modular component right below here, which really allows you to dial in what your intention is for the day. If you find yourself preferring an MP3 player style of device, well, just adding this component in here is going to make it an MP3 player first. That now sets the intention for you. It’s hey, I’m going to listen to a podcast today. I’m going to listen to music today.Alternatively, we have other keypads which, Bruce it’s perfect timing for the podcast: Just this week, we’re going to be releasing this one year. It’s a more traditional style input. This is sort of our classic keypad is what we’re calling it. And it’s got 21 button for your traditional keypad up here. It’s got your start call and call buttons. And of course, you are your T9 style inputs along the bottom. And you can easily sort of pop that into the device as well.And now you’ve got a more traditional style phone that really signals, at least to me, opening it, feeling it holding in the hand. It signals call first. It signals that that is the true intention of the device.And again, it’s such a magical feeling, but just having this form factor, having this in your pocket as well, truly changes the way you spend your time with your electronics. And that’s something that, again, I felt having this and adopting this as my primary device has significantly improved the relationship I have with any other device I then use. Just much more mindful. I kind of see this as a bit of a, in a way, a bit of a filter for all the distractions that go on.It’s not that I don’t have another mobile device, but it sort of sits away in my office, and it acts a little bit like a hub of all the messages. It keeps me there, and I timebox my use with it, and all the most important messages make their way here for me to respond to throughout the day.[Bruce:] So, Sebastian, it’s sort of an anti-dome scrolling device, is it?[Sebastian:] In a lot of ways, absolutely. One of the reasons Sidephone came about is because Chris and I had tried all kinds of products in the market promising a similar use case.You can go to Walmart and get a TracFone flip phone or something simple and cheap, but it’s not particularly useful or usable for an adult living out in the world. You end up wishing you could do more. Maybe you need to look something up while you’re out. Maybe you want to find a good place to eat. Maybe you want a decent texting experience.I use our compact QWERTY keypad pretty much all the time. I find it very fun to use. I do a lot of texting with friends and family.I’m probably the youngest person here, and I’m very tech-centric. Traditional flip-phone interfaces were extremely frustrating for my use case.A fun little party trick when showing the phone to people is this: they’ll say, “But you’ve got a browser. Isn’t that distracting?”I’ll open YouTube Shorts or Instagram and show them. It’s a terrible experience to doomscroll on. You’d rather use another device for that. But it still meets the needs of a quick web search, GPS, texting, calling, and all those things.The problem with modern smartphones is that they’ve become larger and larger consumption-centered devices.It’s like going to a car dealership and being forced into a three-row SUV because that’s all that exists. They tell you: “You can haul more people, carry more stuff.” But maybe that’s not what you want. Maybe you want something sportier or more fuel efficient.That’s where Sidephone comes in. It’s not the bicycle compared to a car. It does almost everything you could ask of it, but it’s not this hulking seven-inch-screen consumption-centered device.[Bruce:] It sounds great. At Vivaldi we often talk about getting rid of algorithms pushing things at you. You choose to consume rather than having content stuffed in your face.So did the two of you know each other beforehand? Did you meet online and discover a shared philosophy? What’s the story?[Chris:] It’s a fun story.I entered the project through the community on the subreddit r/dumbphones. I gravitated toward that community while looking for a solution in my own life to find balance with technology.I fell in love with the variety of devices there, but from day one I had this question in my head: why did we stop innovating on devices with those form factors?If we had continued applying modern technology and modern learnings to those older form factors, I felt something magical could have happened.I started writing posts to see whether I was the only one thinking this way. I wasn’t. There were thousands of other people interested in the same idea: what would the world look like if we applied modern innovation to the form factors of the past instead of always defaulting to large displays?That eventually pulled me into the project we now know as Sidephone.Very quickly I realized it would take a monumental effort to get a project like this off the ground. There were already projects within the community that had succeeded, and Sebastian’s project was one of them.Sebastian had a project called Ghost Mode, and I reached out because I wanted established people who had already been building and shipping phones to come on board.That’s how we connected.[Sebastian:] I started Ghost Mode out of college. I had tried various simple phones and dumb phones and wasn’t satisfied with any of the options.I studied computer science and had been messing around with Android since I was a teenager. I thought custom ROMs were fun.I used a flip phone for a while and it was reasonably good, but I dropped it and it broke. I thought: “I bet I could make something that works for me.”I made a custom ROM for myself and showed it to a family member who had also been experimenting with dumb phones. They asked if I could make one for them too.I did, and after using it for a while they said, “I think you could sell this.”That forced me to get more serious with update servers and all the infrastructure around it. I ran that business for a couple of years, selling Pixels with a custom ROM, until Chris reached out.He said: “I see you know what you’re doing with Android and ROMs. I want to build a new phone. Can you do the software?”We had a meeting, hit it off, and now, over a year later, here we are.[Bruce:] This is a shipping product. It’s in the market now. It’s not vaporware, like the Indiephone.You mentioned Android, Sebastian, but Android is heavily tied up with Google. It’s open source, but a lot of Google infrastructure is effectively required to make Android work well. How “Google” is Sidephone, and how difficult was it to adapt Android to your vision?[Sebastian:] That’s an important distinction. Sometimes I get so deep into development that I forget to explain it clearly.Sidephone does not use full Google Android like you’d get on Samsung phones or Pixels. Those use Google’s version of Android.We use AOSP, the Android Open Source Project, which by default has no Google Play Store, no Google Play Services, and no Google backend features.We deliberately chose not to include those.There are also restrictions from Google requiring larger screens in order to even think about certification, which is necessary for official Play Store support.We decided that being locked into Google’s framework and being required to include YouTube, Chrome, and other apps by default was not what we wanted for Sidephone.So we took AOSP, which is very bare-bones, and spent a year making it usable and adding features to turn it into its own thing.It’s still Android. It still supports Android applications. But it’s distinct from Google’s Android and doesn’t out of the box include any of Google’s tendrils sticking around at the OS anywhere.[Chris:] As a company, we exist to create healthier device variety. To do that, it’s important that we control our own destiny.If we want to create software and hardware that are completely different from what exists now, we can’t be constrained by a certification process that mandates minimum screen sizes and other requirements.Being dependent on certification bodies to access apps and services was a non-starter for us.That necessity pushed us outside the current ecosystem structures, but in doing so it created a lot of magic.People told us we were crazy and that we should just build a four-inch display device so we could get Google certification. Many companies do exactly that.We said: “Great. That’s not Sidephone.”We went hardware-first. We wanted to build what we considered the perfect device, and let the design dictate everything else that followed.We believe very strongly that the form factor dictates how you use a device.What emerged from that process was an opportunity to build a truly open alternative in technology.A healthy technological future depends on people being able to build the tools and services they want, using open protocols and open systems.We’re robbing the world of beautiful tools and ideas if we only allow technology that fits within existing commercial frameworks.That’s why Sebastian and I felt this project had to exist, even though we knew it would be difficult.[Bruce:] I love the attempt to break out of Big Tech’s walled gardens. You’ve already answered my next question, which was whether leaving out Google Play Services was practical, ideological, or both.[Chris:] I want to be very clear that we are not anti-Google or anti-Apple. That would be an unfair generalization.What we are for is an open landscape. Both things can coexist.We focus on what the world could look like if there were more open protocols and more freedom for people to build what they wanted.Imagine if automobiles had only two operating systems forever: CarPlay and Android Auto. What if developers could build entirely different experiences for their vehicles?Technology is not a zero-sum game. It gets better when more people can contribute to it in their own ways.If one company ultimately won and controlled every device category, every future device would depend on that company choosing to release it.The alternative is much more exciting: a world where people can build the things they personally believe are beautiful.[Bruce:] Music to my ears. We don’t want everybody using Vivaldi. We want everybody using what they want to use.A mutual friend, John Ozbay from Cryptee, asked me to ask you about RCS. Why is it difficult to deal with something that’s supposed to be an open standard?[Sebastian:] RCS is a perfect example of the kind of gatekeeping we dislike.RCS is an advanced messaging protocol. It builds on SMS and MMS by adding things like reactions, high-resolution media, and richer messaging features similar to iMessage.But it requires your messages to go through central servers that handle all the processing.At the moment, most RCS traffic goes through Google servers. There isn’t a clear way for independent companies to run their own compatible RCS infrastructure.And if your device is not Google-certified, there’s effectively no way to connect to those services and enable RCS.The frustrating part is that the restrictions are often justified as “security,” but from our perspective the issue is really certification and ecosystem control.We’d love to see more openness and more diversity there.[Bruce:] I noticed while reading about Sidephone that you’re refreshingly honest about what it can and can’t do. You don’t overclaim.But you’re also a commercial company. How do you make money by being honest?[Chris:] That’s a great question. I don’t think we’ve fully solved it yet.This project is purpose-driven. From the beginning, Sebastian and I looked at the landscape and thought: if there’s going to be change, it’s now or never.We measure success differently. Can we cover the basics, live comfortably, and continue building meaningful things? Beyond that, additional wealth has diminishing returns.We focus on the next step forward: how to make the device more usable for people who want confidence and functionality without the distractions of smartphones.I also want to clarify something important. The device is not fundamentally an anti-doomscrolling device. That’s a benefit, not the core purpose.What it really signals is that technology should let people focus on themselves, their lives, and the moments around them.We wanted technology that supports a “real life first” philosophy. Everything else is secondary.[Bruce:] And there, gentle listeners, is where the MacBook that was recording decided to break down. But it was the end of the questions, and it was only the goodbyes that we’re missing from the recording. We’re very grateful to Sebastian and Chris A for coming on and talking about it and B, for injecting a bit of competition and something exciting into the pretty stagnant phone market, which is just seeing basically boring incremental releases year on year.Sidephone is indeed a shipping product. You can get it in 60 odd countries on sidephone.com. I’m pleased to say that Vivaldi is one of the browsers along with Firefox that’s offered in the browser pack that Sidephone allows you to install. And we will no doubt have Chris and Sebastian back on in the not too distant future, as we often like to do to find out how the projects that our guests have been discussing are progressing.So thank you very much for listening and see you again on the next for a Better Web podcast. Bye, love you. No, you hang up. Love you. Love you.Show notesSidephone showcase siteRich Communication Services (RCS)Podcast sourcesAmazon Music Audible Podcast Addict RSS Feed Spotify YouTube YouTube Music See all For A Better Web podcasts.