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Commodore International announced its next hardware release earlier this week, and it's fair to say that it didn't go down all that well with everyone.
In our poll, which had over 540 votes, 82 percent of you said you wouldn't be buying the Callback 8020 phone – and it would seem that Commodore itself has noted the rather sceptical reception, as it has released a statement.
"The Commodore Callback is a full-spec phone that starts at $499," says the company. "And yes, we’ve seen the reactions."
To combat claims online that it had simply rebadged a cheap $25 AliExpress phone, Commodore asserts that the Callback is designed "from the ground up" and boasts "new tooling, created in 2026, just for us."
It adds:
"A completely bespoke Commodore PCB. A hinge rated to 200,000 openings. In-ear monitors tuned to audiophile-grade DAC chips built by partners with classic Commodore history (ESS created the Impossible Mission & Ghostbusters speech synthesis). A 48 megapixel Sony camera, so you can leave the iPhone at home. We’re bringing back dome LEDs for customisable ambient notifications, and the stub antenna for radio and extra charm (or charms). Those are all completely bespoke."
The company is keen to stress that this isn't some cheap Doro Phone knock-off, too:
"This isn’t your granny’s flip phone.... We’ve designed a custom Linux-based operating system with Sailfish OS, the torchbearers of the feature phone heritage, who are consulting with us on a custom PCB designed just for us, but a specialist maker, with a Commodore patent pending on unique elements of the codebase."
The recently resurrected firm admits that people might have a preconceived notion of how much a humble "flip phone" should cost in 2026, and it's fair to say that, for most of us, $500 is too much – especially for a device which aims to give us all a "digital detox" by stripping away functionality. However, it argues that the "economies of scale" associated with cheap phones don't apply here because the production run is so small.
"Tens of thousands of units may sound like a lot, but price breaks in manufacturing don’t kick in until hundreds of thousands, and millions," it says. "We’re not quite there. The truth is, we are still a hardware startup in a time when component costs are spiking across the world. And the price of your Callback isn’t even being subsidised by any service provider. Yet."
Commodore also insists that "nobody could sell this device for less. And anyone claiming the specs aren’t good enough for the price is drawing on something deeper — a cultural conditioning to desire the newest, fastest, latest, and greatest. That conditioning is worth examining. Because specs aren’t everything."
The claim is that, by purchasing a Callback, one is "building a boundary" to take back one's time and arrive at an "oasis halfway between dumb and smart. A price halfway between that $25 AliExpress phone with none of our features and a flagship Samsung. Value is one thing. Worth is entirely different."
I can't help but feel this is ultimately a noble gesture, as I personally feel the world has become addicted to smartphones, but I'm not entirely convinced I need to spend $500 to solve that when far cheaper options already exist.