I’ve noticed something over the last year or two, and I can’t quite decide whether it’s a genuine shift in technology or whether I’m simply noticing it more because of the products I spend my time reviewing.
A few weeks ago I reviewed the XTEINK X4, a tiny E Ink reader, and over the past few years I’ve spent plenty of time talking about Kindles and similar devices. What makes these products interesting isn’t complexity, but restraint. Their whole purpose is simply to help you read, and in some cases write, without all the usual digital clutter getting in the way. I’ve said much the same about E Ink note-taking devices like the reMarkable, which succeed not by piling on more features, but by stripping distractions away.
That’s why the latest thing to catch my eye felt oddly familiar. This week, Commodore — the legendary computer brand recently revived by YouTuber Christian Simpson of Retro Recipes — announced the Callback 8020. In a world where everyone seems determined to make smartphones even smarter, Commodore has gone in almost the opposite direction. The Callback 8020 is an old school designed flip phone that deliberately blocks social media, web browsers and email, while still giving you the essentials like calling, messaging, maps and music. It isn’t trying to replace your laptop, your camera, or every other gadget you own, like most modern smartphones. It’s a product that’s intentionally less distracting.
And that got me thinking.
After decades of companies trying to cram more and more into every device they make, why does it suddenly feel as though some of the most interesting products are the ones that deliberately do less?
A different kind of progress
Before going any further, I should probably say what I’m not arguing.
This isn’t going to be one of those pieces about how smartphones are ruining society. They’re not. They’re one of the most remarkable pieces of consumer technology ever invented. I use mine constantly and, frankly, I couldn’t do what I do without it.
Neither is this a misty-eyed ‘technology was better in the old days’ argument. I don’t think that’s true either. AI is going to become an even bigger part of our lives over the next few years and, in many cases, I think that will be a genuinely good thing.
But alongside all of that, I can’t help feeling that something else is happening too.
If you think about the last thirty years of consumer technology, the direction has usually been obvious. Every new generation of products tried to do more than the one before it. Our mobile phones became cameras. Then they became sat navs. They replaced MP3 players, diaries, calculators, notebooks, alarm clocks and, eventually, even our wallets. We reached a point where one slab of glass in our pocket could do the job of half a dozen devices that used to fill a bag.
That wasn’t a bad thing. It was revolutionary, and most of us wouldn’t want to go back.
But I do wonder whether, somewhere along the way, we accidentally created a new problem. Not because our phones became too clever, and not because technology advanced too quickly, but because the more capable our devices became, the more they started competing for our attention.
And I don’t mean that in some grand, dramatic, ‘technology is ruining us’ sense. I mean it in the ordinary everyday sense that one device now carries almost every distraction we could possibly reach for.
The problem isn’t capability. It’s attention.
I’ve been thinking recently about how that affects my relationship with my iPhone. I’ll pick it up to check one thing, and a few moments later I’m somewhere completely different. Messages, emails, news alerts, WhatsApp groups, browser tabs, a quick look at the weather, and then somehow I’m reading about something utterly unrelated that I didn’t care about thirty seconds earlier. None of it is terrible on its own, but together it creates this constant pull away from whatever I meant to do in the first place.
As someone who makes YouTube videos, it’s incredibly easy to find yourself opening YouTube Studio without even thinking about it. You refresh to see whether you’ve gained another subscriber. Then you check again ten minutes later. Then again half an hour after that. You can go from feeling encouraged to slightly deflated in the space of two or three refreshes, and eventually I realised I wasn’t checking because I needed to. I was checking because I’d got into the habit.
I noticed it elsewhere too. Kathi, my wife, and I would sit down to watch the telly and before long I’d have my phone in my hand. Nothing urgent. No important email. No crisis that needed solving. I’d just absent-mindedly started scrolling while trying to watch the programme at the same time.
Five minutes later I’d ask, ‘What just happened?’
More often than not, we’d end up rewinding because I hadn’t really been watching it at all. I suspect I’m not the only person who’s done that.
That’s when I started wondering whether products like Kindles, dedicated writing devices and tiny E Ink readers are becoming popular for a reason that has very little to do with raw specs.
Why focused devices still matter
For years the message was always the same from the big tech companies: more features, more apps, more power, more connectivity. If your latest gadget didn’t do more than the one before it, what was the point of upgrading?
Today my iPhone can do things I could barely imagine twenty years ago. It can translate languages on the fly, edit 4K video, navigate me across the country, identify plants and animals in just a few taps, pay for my shopping and, increasingly, act as an AI assistant too. It’s an astonishing piece of engineering.
So why would anybody willingly spend hundreds of pounds on a device that does less?
Take a Kindle, for example. Whenever I review one, there are always people who ask, ‘Why not just read on your phone?’ It’s a perfectly reasonable question because, technically, you can. The Kindle app is excellent. Your phone is almost certainly with you all the time. In terms of convenience, the phone wins.
And yet hundreds of thousands of people still buy Kindles every year.
I reading books were simply about getting words onto a screen, Kindles probably wouldn’t exist. But reading isn’t just about getting words onto a screen. It’s about the experience.
When I pick up my Kindle, I’m not wondering whether I’ve got an email waiting for me. I’m not tempted to check YouTube Studio. Instagram isn’t asking for my attention, and neither is WhatsApp. The Kindle has one job, and it quietly gets on with it.
The same thing applies to that little XTEINK X4. When I first looked at it, I kept asking myself, ‘Who is this actually for?’ It’s tiny. It doesn’t have a touchscreen. It isn’t trying to compete with a Kindle Paperwhite feature for feature. And yet, after living with it for a while, I started to understand the appeal. Not because it was the most capable reader I’d ever used, but because it knew exactly what it wanted to be.
That got me thinking about another product I’ve reviewed over the last couple of years: the Qwerkywriter Typewriter. When I first reviewed that keyboard I assumed it would appeal to a fairly small group of people. Modern keyboards are faster, quieter and significantly cheaper. Yet those videos are still being watched years later, and people are still buying them. I know this because every now and then I get a little affiliate kickback, which is always a nice surprise.
That’s interesting, because if this were simply about getting words onto a screen as quickly as possible, nobody would buy one. Clearly something else is going on.
Then there’s vinyl. Streaming is obviously more convenient. I can ask a smart speaker to play almost any song ever recorded within seconds, and yet vinyl records continue to sell in impressive numbers. My 17-year-old son, Nathanael, even released his latest homemade album on vinyl and was delighted to hold his own copy. None of that makes much sense if convenience is the only thing people care about.
Perhaps convenience isn’t the only thing people care about any more.
Maybe what we’re actually looking for are experiences that feel more intentional. Experiences where we choose one thing and give it our focus for a while.
Not anti-tech. Just pro-intention.
That brings me back to the Commodore flip phone. What caught my attention wasn’t the fact that it folds (though I used to like a good ol’ flip phone). It wasn’t even the Commodore name. It was the thinking behind it.
Its creators aren’t saying smartphones are bad. They’re saying there are moments when perhaps we don’t need social media, endless notifications and the entire internet sitting in our pocket. That’s quite a different argument.
It’s not anti-technology. It’s simply asking whether technology should always demand our attention, or whether sometimes it should help us do one thing well before quietly stepping back.
There is always the possibility that I’m reading too much into all of this. Maybe all the tech I’ve just mentioned are simply niche products directly aimed at enthusiasts like me. But when I look across everything I’ve reviewed over the last few years, I don’t think that’s the whole story. There’s a common thread running through almost all of them.
Whether it’s a Kindle, an E Ink notebook, a digital typewriter or a tiny e-reader, they’re all asking the same question: what if doing less isn’t actually a weakness? What if, when almost everything is competing for our attention, it has become one of the biggest strengths a product can have?
I also think it’s important to be clear about what I’m not saying. I’m not suggesting we should all ditch our smartphones and go back to carrying separate devices for everything. I certainly won’t be doing that. I’m not saying AI is a mistake either. If anything, I think AI is only going to become more deeply woven into the products we use every day. In five or ten years, it will probably feel so normal that we barely think about it.
Neither do I think this is simply about nostalgia.
Yes, nostalgia plays a part. The Qwerkywriter typewriter is deliberately designed to remind us of old mechanical typewriters. Vinyl records obviously have a nostalgic pull, and the Commodore name will mean something to plenty of people who grew up in the 1980s and 90s. But nostalgia doesn’t explain everything.
There’s nothing nostalgic about a Kindle. There’s nothing nostalgic about a BOOX tablet or a reMarkable. There’s nothing nostalgic about a tiny E Ink reader like the XTEINK X4. These are modern products trying to solve a very modern problem.
And perhaps that’s the real point.
For years we’ve judged technology by asking, ‘What else can it do?’ Maybe we’re starting to ask a different question: ‘What helps me focus?’
Those are very different ways of looking at technology. One celebrates capability. The other values clarity.
The appeal of tech that knows its place
When I pick up my Kindle, I know exactly why I’ve picked it up: to read. When somebody buys a dedicated note-taking device, they know exactly why they’ve bought it: to write.
There’s something oddly refreshing about products that know exactly what they are and don’t spend all day trying to persuade you to do something else instead.
Maybe that’s why I’ve found myself leaving my phone upstairs on an evening every now and again. Not because I dislike it. Not because I’m trying to disconnect from the modern world. Simply because I occasionally want to be fully present in whatever I’m doing, whether that’s watching a show with Kathi, reading a book or just enjoying an evening without feeling the urge to check whether another subscriber has appeared in YouTube Studio!
Perhaps that’s what all of these products have in common. They’re not asking us to abandon technology. They’re giving us permission to use technology more intentionally.
And I do wonder whether that’s where the next chapter of consumer technology is heading. We’ll continue to see incredible advances in AI. Phones will become smarter. Computers will become smarter. Our homes will become smarter. But alongside all of that, I wouldn’t be surprised if we also saw more products that deliberately create moments of disconnect.
Moments where technology isn’t trying to be the centre of our attention, but is simply helping us do one thing really well before quietly getting out of the way.
Maybe we’re witnessing the start of a genuine shift in what people value.
After decades of asking technology to do more and more, perhaps we’re beginning to appreciate products that know when enough is enough.
I’d be interested to know what you think. Have you noticed this shift as well, or do you think I’m reading far too much into it? Let me know in the comments. I do read them, and they often shape what I write about next.
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