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Feature Phone (Dumb Phone)
A feature phone, or brick phone, is a type or class of mobile phone that retains the form factor of earlier generations of mobile telephones, typically with press-button based inputs and a small non-touch display. They tend to use an embedded operating system with a small and simple graphical user interface, unlike large and complex mobile operating systems such as Android from Google or iOS from Apple.
The functions of feature phones are limited compared to smartphones, which integrate the phone with an Internet communications device; following the rise of smartphones, the feature phone has sometimes been referred to by the retronym dumbphone. However, some feature phones can provide functions found in smartphones, including Internet capabilities, apps and mobile games.
Smart Feature Phone
Smart feature phones are a hybrid of feature phones and smartphones. They look and feel like feature phones, but have smartphone functionalities, including multimedia and internet capabilities. Like smartphones and feature phones, smart feature phones run mobile operating systems (OS).
Though smart feature phones may look retro, they have the essential features you’d expect from modern devices, including: Wi-Fi, 3G/4G/LTE, VoLTE, GPS, Bluetooth, Voice-user interface, App store, Over-the-air updates, etc. Additional features, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, and Google Assistant, might also be available depending on the phone model.
KaiOS Smart Feature Phone
Built by KaiOS Technologies, KaiOS is a web-based mobile operating system developed exclusively for smart feature phones. Over 200 million smart feature phones in over 100 countries worldwide run KaiOS.
KaiOS originates from the Firefox OS open-source project which started in 2011 and has continued independently from Mozilla since 2016. Today, KaiOS is a web-based operating system that enables a new category of lite phones and other IoT devices that require limited memory, while still offering a rich user experience through leading apps and services.
KaiOS runs HTML5-based apps. KaiOS supports over-the-air updates and has a dedicated app marketplace called KaiStore. Some applications are preinstalled onto the phone, including Facebook and YouTube. As of 1 September 2024, there are 1700+ apps in KaiStore. The mobile operating system is comparatively lightweight on hardware resource usage, and is able to run on devices with just 256 megabytes (MB) of memory.
Cloud Phone Feature Phone
The Cloud Phone by CloudMosa is a game changer to "Connect the Next Billion Users" and "Bridge the Digital Divide". A cloud phone is a virtual phone running apps in the cloud on behalf of the physical phone. It enables rich Internet apps on 4G feature phones priced as low as $10 to $15. In fact, it runs on the same hardware as a commodity 4G feature phone, where the difference is entirely in the cloud phone software.
By leveraging web-based applications and services as the primary platform, Cloud Phone facilitates seamless access to an abundance of content and services, from short videos, news, and social media to games (such as Facebook, X/Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, etc). This approach frees users from hardware limitations, giving them access to a rich ecosystem of web-based applications.