[gaazoh]

I tried using a Nokia 6300 4G for a while a few years ago, because I don't use phones for much else than phone, SMS and a bit of Wikipedia.

I had a terrible experience, nothing worked correctly, basic, fundamental apps such as phone, contact, alarms, had lag spikes of over a second for any action and randomly crashed, it had no CJK support (kind of a big deal for me, and like 20% of the world)...

Some apps worked remarkably well, but having Youtube work better than messages is kind of pointless given the sVGA screen size. And the app ecosystem was basically dead. I tried developing a bit for it (apps are a simple html+css+js package), but at the time publishing to their app store required integration of their advertising solution, which absolutely sucked (in 6 month of use, I was never served any other ad than "hot MILFs in my area"), which meant that neither commercial nor OSS apps would target the platfom. IIRC side-loading sort-of worked depending on phones, which means it doesn't work for the average user.

Oh and sometimes the Kai Store app would send advertisement through push notifications.

I loved KaiOS on paper, but using it was a chore. A 2010-era "dumb" phone could do most of what a KaiOS phone can, but better, except for connecting to 3g/4g networks, and older networks are deprecated in many regions, which means they're not an option anymore.

Maybe they got better over time, but what a huge disappointment that was.