Yeah, that title sounds like click-bait. I should change it.
But I probably won’t.
Why? Because as much as I want to love this phone, which went on sale as a pre-order today, it just makes me sad.
Why?
Because when Christian Simpson (aka Perrifractic), a YouTuber who started out making brilliantly delightful explorations of vintage tech a number of years ago, pulled the Commodore brand out of the mothball-filled, dank, dark, (likely moist) closet it had been shoved into since the company’s bankruptcy in the 1990s, he promised his leadership would ensure the company never repeated its prior mistakes.
What did that mean?
To me it meant that this new rendition of Commodore would look both forwards and backwards with love and intelligence when designing new products to delight those of us who never really fell out of love with the company. Even when we were bewildered by its insane product development and release practices. It meant that this new company would listen to its loving supporters1 and bring us products we would delight in.
And that’s how it started.
We got the C64 Ultimate. I hear it’s a very cool machine. I love watching videos about it. I whole-heartled support its existence, even if I cannot afford to pay the $299 price it carries. I have a small collection of original C64s and they scratch most of that itch anyway. Would I like to have one? Yes. Perhaps someday I will. I think of that possible future day fondly.
But this new product-thing-disaster-machine-monster-nightmare-enducing dumb flip phone simply makes me sad.
I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.
Commodore, you could have done better. You should have done better.
I have no idea who this thing is really for. Some part of me looks at it and thinks – “yeah, that might be nice to carry around in my pocket.” And then I consider the pricetag. I think I’d rather have the $368.202 in my pocket. Pause. And then I think about why they (or perhaps just Mr. Simpson) thought this was a good idea. Pause. And then I wonder if I can just buy an $80 dumbphone, paint it C64 beige, draw a chickenlips logo on it and experience the same tiny bump of nostalgia while I hack away at a text message using my rockstar T9 skills. Pause.
And now I’ve completely lost interest in this thing. What were we talking about?
Oh, Commodore is putting out a flip phone in 2026.
I’ve got to go water my oscilloscope.