NB, there are sub-$100 feature (and even Android) phones available, though there are compromises to be made. Jose Briones's Dumbphone Finder lists about 45, sorted by price, and that's just what he's reviewed. Going to $250 there are about 65 options.

<https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-finder>

Once you're into the Android or Android-adjacent OS territory (LineageOS, SailfishOS (the Callback runs this), /e/OS, iodeOS, etc.), prices approach flagship mainstream Android or iOS devices ($600+ generally), and LineageOS specifically requires Google Pixel, at least until the Motorola partnership bears fruit.

And yes, scale of production and the need to be self-supporting rather than relying on business partnerships, advertising, and surveillance capitalism does tend to incur some price premium, though it's still quite possible to find affordable options.

I'd strongly recommend taking a look at Jose Briones's Dumbphone Finder (mentioned and linked above), his website (<https://josebriones.org/>), Substack (<https://josebriones.substack.com/>), and YouTube phone-review channel (<https://inv.nadeko.net/channel/UCFtVwG0NFd6gT3TXfMCU7oA>) in general, and /r/dumbphones on Reddit for more information. I'm going to write a longer top-level comment summarising the current state of my own research into this topic.

There is a larger community oriented around alternative mobile devices including more reviews and technical information. Given that manufacturers often obscure rather than clarify features and capabilities, this is often a preferred source.

I have always been surprised that "Nokia"/HMD haven't opened up more. The have really affordable Android phones (at some point the line-up was also pretty nice) and near-stock Android. So, they seem to have the volume to make reasonably cheap phones without to much spyware/adware. Sadly, they are only supported for a very brief period and even at release they often have outdated versions.

If they collab'ed with some AOSP-based alternatives and/or Jolla, they could build up a really nice alternative market. Especially because these niche phones generally have worse quality than what HMD can offer and being a Finish company, they could play well into the European tech sovereignty story.

That unihertz "Jelly Star" with it's small size and rounded corners looks like a good prison phone choice, but still a bit of a "stretch".

Yeah, I'm actually excited about the Jolla phone supposed to launch in September. It's a bit on the expensive side but hopefully it will pave the way to a proper consumer friendly phone. Most of these phones comes with a gimmick too to make them more enticing but so far Sailfish OS is THE gimmick I'm actually excited about.

Wonder why pine can't do this? Not dissing on commodore. With hallucinated apps, the gap is going to be really small with play store

Ok, so you raise the price so the manufacturers will make it. This creates a bigger problem: users won't buy it now.

No one designs a product to get manufacturers, all they need is to make a profit.