An App Platform for Dumb Phones

An App Platform for Dumb Phones(dumbsto.re)

144 points by ramseynasser 13 years ago | 47 comments

I like the idea.

Note that if there is a lot of text traffic on a given number, carriers like AT&T, Verizon, et al will block texts to and from that number until the traffic subsides. What's worse is that if you send a message to that number from the Twilio dashboard, its status will be "sent," but you will not actually receive it. Apparently in the world of SMS, "sent" simply means the message has been delivered to the destination carrier, and it is not a delivery receipt like with iMessage or BBM.

Twilio suggests that, to reduce this risk, you load balance across a collection of such numbers, or purchase a short code, which isn't cheap: http://www.twilio.com/sms/shortcodes

jakemcgraw 13 years ago |

If you want to see what this would look like if it was a real business, checkout http://www.dotgo.com and http://dotgo.com/Support/Documentation/.

DOTGO solves the problem of service discoverability by mapping domain names to shortcodes representing TLDs. Want wikipedia.org? Text "wikipedia" to DOTORG (368674). Want to checkin to Foursquare? Text "foursquare" to DOTCOM (368266).

DOTGO also provides a language of reusable components, known as CMRL (Concise Message Routing Language), it allows you to create hierarchical menus, links and URL callbacks.

They're available in the United States and select countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Previously, I was a web application developer for them, I still think it's a great idea and recommend you guys give it a go.

ramseynasser 13 years ago | |

Wow. Thanks! We will be studying this thoroughly. I hadn't heard about it before.

bryogenic 13 years ago |

Slightly off topic, are there actually any good (i.e. recommendable) dumb phones? It has been an interesting market to try to navigate and research.

rapind 13 years ago | |

I actually spent some time looking into dumb phones a couple years ago. My favorite would be the motofone. It's got an e-ink display, which is great for battery and sunlight, and 2 antennas which is also great if you heaven forbid make actual calls with it. Also, pretty sturdy, small, and light.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone

Beware though, if you txt a lot, you won't like it. Not enough real estate for the crazy font they use.

There are also these printed cell phones showing up. Do a google for "card phone". Pretty interesting.

kevinconroy 13 years ago | | |

I had a Motofone (also called F3) for the last 7 years. It started with a two week working battery life. It's a pain to text message on since it only shows 4 or 5 characters on, but it just worked as a reliable phone. Finally switched to an iPhone 5 after it became vital for me to have full Internet access 24/7 for work. If it weren't for that, I'd still have my F3. I love it as much as I love my iPhone 5.

You can still find some of them on eBay. I'd offer mine, but I'm keeping it as an emergency (911) phone for my car.

JimJames 13 years ago | | |

I used this phone for about 6 months. The screen made it hard to navigate the menus and got in the way of even simple things like adding someone to your address book. The battery life was good but it was not significantly longer than the battery life of other dumb phones (since the screen is mostly off it doesn't make a huge difference).

Eventually I traded it in for a cheap nokia with an lcd.

ramseynasser 13 years ago | | |

I've been using the Motofone for three years now and I love it. The texting doesn't bother me either. It's also the lowest common denominator of phones that call and text, so we test all our dumb apps against it.

nsmartt 13 years ago | | |

Do you happen to have a recommendation for an e-ink phone that is favorable for SMS?

freehunter 13 years ago | | |

Googling for "card phone" doesn't actually bring up a lot of card phones. I see more prepaid cell phone cards and banks with mobile apps. The first card phone for sale isn't until page 2, and it's an eBay link.

beggi 13 years ago | |

I believe Nokia Asha line of phones is leading the charge in dumb phones in developing countries, Nokia Asha 501 being the newest. It has pretty freaking awesome (especially in countries where access to electricity is a luxury) 48 day standby time (beat that iPhone!). In addition, Asha 501 actually has some kind of support for 3rd party apps.

zokier 13 years ago | | |

And if you want physical keypad instead of touchscreen, then the 301 is probably the best featurephone available. Similar crazy long battery life, good looking design, and all the features you'd need (aside flashlight). 301 also has 3G connectivity, so I believe it has better reception than pure 2G models such as 501.

devd 13 years ago | | |

I can't wait to get my hands on the 501 - I am pretty excited about this phone.

SCdF 13 years ago | |

I have a Nokia 1202 that I keep in my emergency drawer, that I take with me hiking and so on. It's very reminiscent of the 3315 in build quality. It talks, it txts, it has snake. What more do you need!

shrikant 13 years ago | |

I actively use a Nokia 100 (as my "family calling" phone - calling and minimal texting -only-). A brand new one cost £18.99, it has a monster battery life, is super light and yet an absolute rock in build quality.

I'm sure it has some additional bling like FM radio, a media player or whatever and some games, but I use literally use that phone for nothing other than calling and texting.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0068ZAPB0/

nedwin 13 years ago | |

I lived for the last 2 years with a Nokia 1610. Highly recommend but they discontinued in January and a new model came out with a camera (which was against my minimalist ethos at the time).

I ended up breaking the chain and switching back to an iPhone 5 but this app store has got me pining for the simpler days of pure sms and voice based comms.

nedwin 13 years ago | | |

I'm also pretty frothy on this $12 phone.

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040

fsckin 13 years ago | |

Any used Nokia 3310 on eBay will probably outlive you.

train_robber 13 years ago |

A very similar concept has been around in India - http://55444.in/

ramseynasser 13 years ago |

Don't forget that anyone can write a dumb app! Just fork the repository, add your app, and take out a pull request!

https://github.com/dumbstore/dumbstore/

JosephRedfern 13 years ago |

Cool idea - but how is it being paid for? By the looks of things, it's using Twilio - but that'll get expensive if this becomes popular.

allisonburtch 13 years ago | |

I'm doing my best to find change on the ground and in fountains and mailing them to Twilio.

hayksaakian 13 years ago | |

paid apps? (android market start with only free apps)

"if this becomes popular"

is a nice problem to have, in general

mayanksinghal 13 years ago |

Seems extremely similar to what Intuit has been building in India: Txtweb[1]. The apps support two modes PUSH and PULL. The most common is PULL, where you SMS to some number something like "@appname.optionalExtension <stuff that will be passed on to the application logic", response comes back as SMS. Their experimental PUSH automatically pushes subscribed users with SMSes. I had developed an app, @news a couple of years ago and still see decent traffic on it. The developers are also quite friendly and responsive. If you are interested in a similar platform but in a market that is benefitted from this application a lot more, you should definitely check them out.

[1] http://www.txtweb.com/

auston 13 years ago |

I've thought about how you could probably get Siri to use SMS as an API to tons of services, like opentable, fandango, etc, etc - this seems to be a great step in that direction - which is actually the opposite of dumb, but instead seems uber smart.

cheese1756 13 years ago |

I like the idea, it might be a nice replacement in the wake of the Google SMS shutdown. One quick thing: You might want to make app names case insensitive. My phone automatically capitalized Ltrain, resulting in a message stating the app was not found, however when I manually changed it to ltrain it worked. Maybe simple spelling correcting for app names (e.g. off by a letter or a letter is missing) could be added too?

ramseynasser 13 years ago | |

These are all great ideas. Case insensitivity has come up a few times and it's an easy fix. We should have it in soon!

allisonburtch 13 years ago | |

fixed, thanks!

brackin 13 years ago |

Don't like the interface (makes it seem 100x more complicated than it is) but love the idea. I often hit my data cap, am in an area with slow or no data coverage or don't want to load up an app and would be happy to shoot a text off to get a piece of info.

I'm in the UK but this is a far bigger problem in other countries so if executed better this would be very interesting.

ramseynasser 13 years ago | |

Do you mean the interface of the website, or how you use it on your phone?

brackin 13 years ago | | |

The website.

Groxx 13 years ago |

Neat idea. I might recommend allowing at least the first letter (of the app) to be case-insensitive though, since lots of things auto-capitalize. Also I'm not having much luck with 'dir', and some error messages or something would help, but meh - the concept is great!

allisonburtch 13 years ago | |

it's a little buggy, but we're getting there. dir is hard because it needs a city,st for each location. thanks for the rec!

ramseynasser 13 years ago | |

dir can be buggy, depending on how you format your location names. Can you give me an example of what's not working?

Groxx 13 years ago | | |

I wasn't really sure what to expect, so I tried something that Google Maps gets correct: AOL in Palo Alto to Pier 39

I didn't feel like typing too much :) What service does it use?

hayksaakian 13 years ago |

I did an app for rolling dice

https://github.com/dumbstore/dumbstore/pull/15

ex:

    roll 1d20+4

    =21 | rolled 17 plus 4 for a total of 21.

huertanix 13 years ago |

Just wrote up an app called Rick Roulette. It's like Russian Roulette, but with Rick Astley instead of bullets: https://github.com/dumbstore/dumbstore/pull/13

amjd 13 years ago |

Similar services already exist in India and are gaining quite a lot of popularity among users. http://txtweb.com http://55444.in

SSilver2k2 13 years ago |

This is really awesome. Back when I was helping work on Pingie (an rss->sms service), I put some of this functionality into it (weather reports, stock quotes, traffic reports).

Good luck with this!

frankdenbow 13 years ago |

Saw this at the ITP show, will be adding some Twilio apps

allisonburtch 13 years ago | |

thanks!

netghost 13 years ago |

I knew my phone would be valuable some day!

hatu 13 years ago |

This is exactly what companies were doing in the .com bubble of early 2000's! SMS "games" and services.

amikahmad 13 years ago |

for all the technology and cool applications we have today, we can't forget that accessibility is still a key issue. dumbstore FTW.