I live in south France, and I have zero idea where to find something like a Nokia 3310... Now, and not for now, I only see smartphones of various (crappy) kind or phone for old people that mimic classic phone but with a crappiness of '90s-style dot-com era business software...

Of course 3310 was proprietary but simple enough to have fable means for spying me and the level of centralization is far, far less than now. Banally yes, my carrier can spy on me. But only my carrier, not a super-giant multinational data-mining company. And my carrier is subject of my country's law I know a bit about so I have a certain protection. With Android&c devices there are tons of different subjects that can spy on me from any country of the world. I have essentially ZERO protection. And modern devices can do far more than mere audio recording at carrier level...

> Infotainment systems have been becoming too invasive

Oh but I do not really care about infotainment I do care about being unable to switch ABS off when on snow so to have chances to brake the car under my own control, I do care about the ability to switch on the engine without any possible software crash interference (a friend of mine remain locked inside it's top-of-the-line Audi because of a software fault, for instance). I do care about NOT having the ability of power on my car via a smartphone witch means having a remote control device that connect my car with it's vendor and me via internet, all on proprietary software I do not know nor control.

I can't really use a Nissan Micra, I normally use a car for 30-60Km to 300+Km trips, not distances nor environments to be done with a citycar...

And even on simplest citycars: a friend of mine few days ago ask me if I can help because he left light on and shes car's battery is drained. I came, it was evening with not good light and it's raining. I see a big red plate aside a pole of the battery and a black cable on the opposite pole. My cable nipper start sparking fire suddenly when I connect what I'm thinking it was the + pole... With sound imprecations I grab a headlight and see: TWO damn battery poles are without a fucing +/- sign, TWO have black big cables and the damn big red plate have a rigid connection UNDER the plate, black painted as the battery, that attach it to the farthermost* pole. I do not know how an mechanical engineer can be so dumb to design such a thing.

20€ with free shipping: https://www.boulanger.com/c/telephone-portable-sans-abonneme...

And this year they even released a model with 4G support, reducing the fear of network support shutdown.

Regarding cars, fair enough, I don't even drive, so I don't have a good knowledge of what's available. I do doubt you'll find any car built in the last 30 years without any software, but if it's running fully locally, I don't see how it's that different from any other custom part. If the locks in your friend's car used a simple electrical system, and it broke, he would have been just as stuck.

I talked about infotainment because they often come with Internet connection and such, which is different than just replacing parts with software, but as far as I know, you can still find many models without it.

On car's being softwareless is not exactly a thing I'm look for at least if software is free, community accessible and well peer reviewed and I can modify it without need super-complex and expensive stuff. The problem "modern" design: for instance ABS really save life in some conditions, like on dry od rain-wet roads. However kill's you on icy roads. In "ancient" cars there is a button to deactivate ABS when you want. Now it disappear. Modern cars have small stereocam and other sensors that try to look around and eventually act on brakes, for instance if you fall asleep driving and you are about to crush into an obstacle the start to shake steering wheel and soft break, if you still not react strongly brake the car, light up 4-way directions etc. Really useful however if you deliberately choose to crush on an object, for instance to avoid a group of children you simply can't. If you deliberately choose to go offroad because you see a big trailer full of kerosene or other combustible about to crash and explode at your side you can't. For that kind of driving aids, for now, we have normally a button to disable them. But it's probably the same story for ABS, at first deactivable after always on.

I here nth time the story that on planes and ships you can deactivate autopilots and pretty any feature because pilots, maritime personnel etc are properly trained while drivers tend to be not much but that's an absurdity the correct, logic, acceptable answer is "add training". Not much difficult. Thinking that a software can be better than a human is a thing we already heard in the past with Microsoft and I think we all agree that's not a good idea...

How are they different with regards to the stuff we were talking about - specifically, the centralized spying and such?

I've used a Wiko Lubi for a year. It seems to have the architecture as a 3310: it has a basic burned-in OS, without any apps or updates, and has a few basic tools like a calculator and calendar, besides the phone calls and SMSs. In what way does it not fit with a classic model?

If your complaint is the exact same models don't keep getting produced, then sure, but that wasn't the discussion I thought we were having.

Regarding cars I won't comment any further, since I don't know the market well.

If you still have ancient Nokia try only the feeling of their physical keys, the simplicity of their classic menu compared to those modern "devices"...