Commodore announced its $499 Callback 8020 flip phone a couple of weeks ago, and apparently people didn’t like the price. So now the device has gone up for pre-order as promised, but it starts at $399. That’s some magic trick – making the product 20% cheaper before even launching it.
Part of this is explained by the fact that the $399 price includes “eco-validated” RAM and storage, which means they’re “remanufactured”, aka reused, aka recycled, whatever you want to call it. If you want your RAM and storage to be new, you need to pay an extra $50 and then you’re up to $449.

Anyway, you can have the Callback 8020 in Basic Beige, SX Silver, ProtoPET White, or Founders Edition and Starlight Edition. The Founders edition starts at $640 because it has a 24K gold-plated “C=” button. The current shipping estimate is October to November, but keep in mind that despite the name this is a new company that hasn’t shipped anything before. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will miss these deadlines, but if it does you probably shouldn’t be very surprised.
The Callback 8020 has a 3.25-inch 480×640 internal display, a 1.77″ external screen, the MediaTek Helio G81 SoC at the helm, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of expandable storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, LTE, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a 1,550 mAh removable battery. The software prevents social media apps, browsers, work apps, and email apps from running at the system level. The company also promises it won’t sell your data to anyone.