device
Feature phone
The industry term for keypad phones with basic capabilities — the hardware category most dumbphones belong to.
Feature phone is the telecom industry's term for a keypad phone with basic capabilities: calls, SMS, an FM radio, simple games, sometimes a lightweight app platform like KaiOS. Before smartphones, every phone was a feature phone; today they survive as a deliberate alternative.
The distinction from "dumbphone" is mostly cultural: feature phone describes the hardware class, while dumbphone describes the intention — choosing less. Most feature phones sold today are 4G devices, since 2G/3G networks have been shut down in the US and much of Europe.
Related Terms
View all →Dumbphone
A mobile phone deliberately limited to essentials — calls, texts, maybe maps — with no social media, feeds, or app store.
KaiOS
A lightweight operating system for keypad phones that adds a small curated app layer — WhatsApp, Google Maps — to feature phones.
T9 (predictive text)
The classic predictive-text system for 9-key keypads — press each key once and T9 guesses the word.
VoLTE (Voice over LTE)
The technology that carries voice calls over 4G — and the certification a phone must have to place calls on modern US networks.