Years ago, when I got a feature phone at the age of 12 — my very first cellphone, a hefty little brick — I quickly developed the terrible habit of slamming it on the ground for dramatic effect. It was a cool way to punctuate very ordinary statements, I thought.

In reality, though, it was a ridiculous joke; a silly imitation of television drama that got old really fast, but was mostly inconsequential since the phone was a little black Nokia 2220, cheap but sturdy. Its only worthwhile feature was the single greatest game in mobile phone history — Pinball Club (sorry Snake fans). You could throw that thing off the second floor of your house at least half a dozen times before any real damage occurred, not exactly how I’d handle my current, delicate, shatter-prone smartphone — 80 per cent glass screen, 100pc pain in my clumsy neck.

Today, these small, stocky phones are making a resurgence. In the US, folks call them ‘dumbphones’ tied directly to their use case as tools for social media cleanses. In Pakistan, or more specifically, at the Saddar Mobile Market in Karachi, shopkeepers refer to these devices as ‘button phones’ and maintain a diverse collection of brand-new and second-hand options for potential customers to peruse, and — spoiler alert — they happen to be pretty popular around here.

Of the 12.05 million mobile phone units assembled during the first five months of 2025, 54pc or 6.53 million were 2G feature phones, according to data shared by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA). During the same period, 94pc of the mobile phone demand was met through local manufacturing and assembly, compared to the five-year (2020-2024) average of 77pc and the nine-year (2016-2024) average of 52pc, per media reports.

Hence proven: the button phone market in Pakistan is alive and pumping. But to learn more, I walked along the margins of the Saddar Mobile Market eyeing road-facing stores looking for stubby boxes of G’Five, Vivo, and the occasional second-hand Nokia —........

© Dawn Prism