I want a phone where I can’t go on the internet or read the news, just communicate with people I actually know in real life. Is there any way I can make this happen?
Just grab a cheap current gen smartphone or a second hand smartphone and only install those apps?
You might need to flash a custom rom to delete certain apps that come pre-installed and you might want to find the right launcher so you can customise your app drawer to throw a few apps necessary for installation or handling links (e.g. when you get the inevitable hyperlink via Signal that you need to be able to browse) into the oubliette so that you only have a dialler, SMS, Signal and Telegram visible.
Install only what you want and have someone you know lock down the ability to install anything else. Should be possible with parental controls
An “internet browser” is not a thing. The web is not the same thing as the internet.
And wanting to not have a web browser is a silly thing to want anyway.
Can you really not understand what the OP and I are trying to say or do you just want everyone to know that you know the right terminology and we don’t?
You cannot have signal and telegram but also no web browser or anything else.
First you’re looking at flashing a phone with a stripped down custom android OS like lineage but even those come with a browser installed as a bare minimum of functionality. Then your looking at side loading those two apps without installing google play services, which you might be able to do with telegram, but not with signal. IIRC signal requires google play services installed. You can try to flash the pico version of google but I think you dont want to go that far.
You want a dumbphone - of which your options are going to be like phones that specifically lack browsing/internet features like Tracphones or Nokia phones. (Another alternative is like the Sunbeam F1 or various Japanese dumbphones)
Alternatively, you could just buy a cheap Android phone and use ADB to remove those features (like the built-in browser and wifi) you don’t want.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dumbphones/comments/zpw77o/state_of_the_dumbphone_2023_read_this_first/
