I bought a Positivo KaiOS dumbphone before the pandemic for outdoor use, but never got around to using it. I remember there being a lot of buzz around it being so cheap and jailbreaking it at the time to use FOSS apps, but I can’t find anything recent on it. Is the project dead?
Last meaningful updates were 2019, hasn’t had any sessions at Google I/O for a couple of years.
Google lost interest in it much like the “Android Go” project. I think it was because it challenged developers to try and use less RAM and Java devs have forgotten how to do that. Also, it requires a lot of bloat to run their advertising engine and the idea of writing apps to perform functions rather than generate telemetry or monetizable content is illegal in The Chocolate Factory.
It always struck me as odd that people were praising google for investing in what was essentially a competitor, and adding google features to it (like that bizarre Google Assistant button). Now I see why they did it.