Dumbphones are back, but what about pagers?

“If the apocalypse comes, beep me,” Buffy Summers said in 1997, asserting that she could both fight the forces of evil and go on a date.

Though it was 1997 when “smartphone” was coined by Sweden’s Ericsson in reference to its GS88, which could make calls and browse the internet, Buffy only had a pager — so no Snaps of suspicious sigils or voice memos about their teacher who’s a giant praying mantis (an actual episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”).

And yet, despite those limitations, could the humble pager ever be part of the “dumbphones” renaissance?

Sega’s Emojam…

… launches Dec. 10. It’s a ‘90s-era pager that allows users to send emoji over WiFi by tapping devices together. That’s it.

Emojam is geared toward youth and Japan hasn’t had operational pager service since 2018, per Gizmodo, but there are adults who still actively use pagers:

• Though a far cry from its 6.6m subscribers in 2004, paging company Spok still has ~750k subscribers, 80%+ of which are used by hospital systems, where thick walls and basements can make cell service patchy.
• That same issue makes pagers common for workers in remote locations, like mines or oil rigs.
• Birders like them as a way to quickly share bird sightings with many people simultaneously, per The Wall Street Journal.

While dumbphones remain niche compared to smartphones, there is a market for devices with limited functionality — e.g., calls, texts, maybe a weather app — amid concerns around data harvesting, social media addiction, and the stress of always being available, especially among Gen Z.

And of those pager users who have smartphone apps that could replace their pagers, many prefer the latter for the lack of distractions and the separation of work and personal devices — much like Gen Z and their dumb phones.

So it wouldn’t be entirely surprising if devices similar to pagers made a resurgence among people who only want to be bothered in the event of an emergency… like the Apocalypse.

BTW: If Buffy’s friends used Emojam, they’d send: 🧛😱🆘