Commodore gets into the phone biz with Sailfish-powered retro 'Callback'

Personal tech

Ships sans email, web, or socials, but with plenty of beige plastic

Retro computing brand Commodore has brought its pre-internet sensibilities to the mobile phone market with a $500 flip handset that proudly ships without social media, email, a web browser, or most of the things people typically buy smartphones to use.

The company unveiled the device, dubbed Callback, this week and pitched it as a privacy-focused antidote to doomscrolling. Built in partnership with Finnish outfit Jolla, whose Sailfish OS traces its roots back to former Nokia engineers, the Linux-based handset attempts to split the difference between a feature phone and a smartphone.

If your idea of progress is deleting half the apps on your phone, Callback may be for you. Commodore has removed email, social media, web browsing, workplace chat apps, and AI assistants, while bringing back physical controls and T9-style texting.

Instead, buyers get a flip phone with a 48 MP Sony camera, FM radio, HD audio support, a selection of Commodore-themed games, and enough Android compatibility to run "99 percent" of Android applications through Sailfish OS's compatibility layer.

"Phones were fun. Then they got too smart for their own good, and ours," said Commodore chief executive Peri Fractic, who said the idea grew out of his own efforts to reduce screen time before becoming a father.

The company leans heavily on privacy as a selling point, promising no hidden data collection, no account sign-ins, encrypted storage, and what it describes as a "private not profit" business model.

For many tech veterans, however, the real selling point may simply be the badge on the front. Long before smartphones, app stores, and algorithmic feeds, Commodore systems occupied bedrooms, classrooms, and living rooms around the world. For a generation of geeks, the brand still evokes cassette tape loading screens, SID-chip soundtracks, and countless hours spent typing programs from magazine listings.

That's also why the company keeps getting resurrected. Commodore International collapsed in 1994, but the brand has spent much of the intervening decades bouncing between various owners eager to capitalize on the affection still attached to the name.

MORE CONTEXT

Trump phone has HTC guts. Tremendous guts. The best guts

Trump phone has HTC guts. Tremendous guts. The best guts

The Y2K bug is back! Dutch dev digs up untimely flaw in old BSD build

The Y2K bug is back! Dutch dev digs up untimely flaw in old BSD build

Blockbuster new Raspberry Pi project turns any screen into old-school VCR

Blockbuster new Raspberry Pi project turns any screen into old-school VCR

That an app 'Fits on a Floppy' is still a useful measure in 2026

That an app 'Fits on a Floppy' is still a useful measure in 2026

Callback will initially launch in five versions, ranging from a $500 BASIC Beige model to a $640 Founders Edition complete with a 24-carat gold Commodore button.

Whether nostalgia translates into sales remains another matter. Privacy-focused and minimalist phones have appeared regularly over the past decade, such as Punkt, usually attracting plenty of headlines and relatively few customers compared with the hundreds of millions of mainstream smartphones sold each year.

Still, for anyone nostalgic for the days when hanging up the phone actually ended the conversation, Commodore has an answer: snap it shut and walk away. ®

 

 

 

After threatening AI export bans, China allows DeepSeek to keep selling

PLUS: AI datacenter bubble wobbles in Australia; E-commerce app suggests it can detect diseases; India’s top telco to IPO amid investor frenzy; and more!

Reg readers land on 'Binface' as name for UK space cleanup mission

Intergalactic Space Warrior, or a bin in orbit?

Why the immediate future of liquid cooling is hybrid

PARTNER CONTENT: AI is driving liquid cooling adoption, but hybrid architectures will help operators balance density, flexibility, and operational realities

Autonomous attack agent in 'Skynet mode' hijacks other models to carry out its evil deeds

Designed to carry out 100,000 steps without human approval

Torvalds: AI is fine for competent devs, but spare us the 'drive-by' patches

Kernel maintainers stop asking who used AI, as long as the code is good

OpenAI disables internet access during model training while Anthropic issues another mea culpa

We've totally got things under control

TOP STORIES

Indian certification authority eMudhra’s private keys compromised – one of them was the number ‘4’

OpenClaw creator says he spent $10 million in tokens last month

PHP devs publish critical bug fix as site owners warned: Pull 'em offline if you're unpatched

PHP blames supply chain security biz Chainguard for putting huge chunks of the web at risk

PHP2Shell exploit bypasses protections designed to stop remote code execution

Google Cloud's London zones takes a nap, multiple services disrupted

AI

Torvalds: AI is fine for competent devs, but spare us the 'drive-by' patches

Kernel maintainers stop asking who used AI, as long as the code is good

Kernel maintainers stop asking who used AI, as long as the code is good

Nvidia woos wary Europeans with more open weights models

New embedding, parsing, and reranking models promise smarter agentic RAG workflows

New embedding, parsing, and reranking models promise smarter agentic RAG workflows

Jensen Huang sends in the robot ducks to sell Nvidia's AI-everywhere vision

Containerized datacenters, androids, and telecoms all feature in Berlin keynote interrupted by environmental protesters

Containerized datacenters, androids, and telecoms all feature in Berlin keynote interrupted by environmental protesters

Nvidia's grand plan for speeding up datacenter deployments: AI trailer parks

GPUzilla boasts modular bit barns could speed up deployments from six months to just two weeks

GPUzilla boasts modular bit barns could speed up deployments from six months to just two weeks

The spec is the new code, so brush up on your prose, says Kaseya CTO

Domain expertise and clear writing will matter more than syntax, and yes, that means documentation

Domain expertise and clear writing will matter more than syntax, and yes, that means documentation

Infosec

Security

Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacks

PLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more!

Security

PLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more!

Security

Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attack

PLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more

Security

PLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more

Black Hat and DEF CON

DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructure

Voting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included

Black Hat and DEF CON

Voting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included

Security

EQT buys majority share in Swiss cybersecurity biz Acronis

Went at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified

Security

Went at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified

Malware Month

Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sight

On the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career

Malware Month

On the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career

FOSS

SparkyOS: Lightweight general-purpose Arch, on a pendrive

Interesting new project from the minds behind SparkyLinux

Interesting new project from the minds behind SparkyLinux

Red Hat helps teach about tech writing

But learns tough lessons about AI in the process

But learns tough lessons about AI in the process

NetBSD may have found a new role: The AI-free FOSS OS

Increasing awareness and adoption, followed by increasing donations

Increasing awareness and adoption, followed by increasing donations

OpenAI dots inspire open source imitators amid technical difficulties

Persistent agents appeal to AI companies, but demand isn't obvious

Persistent agents appeal to AI companies, but demand isn't obvious

Ubuntu 'Stonking Stingray' beta swims out: Deeper Rust 'oxidization' plus LLM speech-to-text

GNOME 51 is here, and Ubuntu interim releases are getting interesting again

GNOME 51 is here, and Ubuntu interim releases are getting interesting again

Revive Raskin's 3 laws of software with humane work that considers a dev's duty of care

All this, and angry NeoVim users

All this, and angry NeoVim users