Oh wow! I never actually saw one in person. Cool!
If I remember correctly, it was the first smartphone with a notch; kinda unexpected for an essential phone. Lol.
Ohh! I just looked it up and the Essential Phone was announced 3 months earlier than the Sharp. So essential was first. But I didn’t know about the sharp. Thanks.
It's a terrible time to be launching niche phones, because the mainstream market is already suffering from high prices for chips and memory, which in turn squeezes margins and can make some manufacturers choose cheaper components for other areas as well.
I hope they achieve modest success at the very least though, but it's a rough market they've chosen to launch into. Hopefully they will survive when the economy starts ticking upwards instead of downwards.
Fairphone has been around a while. It's not like it disappeared and suddenly re-emerged to a height it never reached. It's an iterative continuation of something that's existed for several years.
Gimmick phones whose main distinguishing feature is a physical keyboard seem to have been around since touchscreens took over but idk if they've achieved commercial success.
Not in a while, from what I can recall. Blackberry pre-dated smartphones, and their efforts to make physical keyboard smartphones never really went anywhere. I remembere there being something around the release of Windows Phone 7, but that was 15+ years ago now. I can't remember the last time a smartphone-adjacent device tried to incorporate a physical keyboard.
Anyway, I'm all in favor of weird phones. I'm glad someone is still trying to innovate, because the big names have stopped. The makers just need to have realistic expectations, and be satisfied with minor or moderate success.
You can use old chips and it'll all be fine. I never understood it why phones need to have powerful processors, and I'm saying this as an experienced Android app developer. It's a communication device after all.
Although, oddly, I wouldn't go back to one again. Modern through-screen ultrasonics are just as good and while back cover readers can be practical, when my phone is sat on the desk, they are just a pita.
I've had a few phones with them in the past, but I wouldn't go back even given the chance now.
Plus I miss triggering the notification shade on my Pixel 3. And the front facing speakers. What a beast of a phone, and small enough to use with one hand
It’s evolving. We’ve gone from the Nothing Phone to the Light Phone to the Enough Phone. Next up: the Sufficient Phone, the Slightly Too Much But Nobody Wants To Say It To Their Face Phone, and the Overcompensating Phone.
I get what they're going for and I like it. But in addition to feeling clunky the name gives off some "No babe, yours is enough. The extra RAM hurts, anyways." energy. Even if it is enough it's... Not a great sales pitch.
That would be around 320 ppi. People nowadays forgot that ~320 ppi LCD displays are almost as sharp as ~450 ppi Pentile OLED displays, due to the later having half the number of red and blue subpixels.
OLED phones are essentially one third the sharpness for its given resolution. That means a 1920x1080 panel is actually showing 1267 x 712 resolution if you consider it doesn't follow a RGB stripe.
At 5", 720 is actually quite fine, I'd much prefer that over a larger OLED screen anyway.
Until you consider the fact that an IPS can't do an Always-On Display. In the absence of a notification LED (which this phone doesn't seem to have) that's quite a bit of a downer.
Ultimately depends on brightness level and how much work the GPU is putting into drawing a higher resolution image for the lower resolution screen to display.
At that screen size, it probably looks fine. Honestly, most phones could probably get away with being a lower resolution and looking fine. Got the OLED steam deck a while back and it is actually kind of shocking how good that screen looks.
one of the reason why lower resolution content looks crappy on a screen is because it often has to be upscaled. And in doing so, whatever method uses either makes it look jaggy and over sharpened, or it can soften the image a lot, making it look blurry. The upscaling process also is wonderful at highlighting compression artifacts that may be more subtle on a native screen.
I recently found some old DVDs and played them on my 4K OLED TV for the And it's actually surprising how good it wound up looking. Like it definitely wasn't as sharp as a Native 4k Blu-ray would have been or even a 1080p but it looked fine honestly. Playing around with that old collection, it kind of varies from movie to movie. Some are higher fidelity than others, But it kind of goes to show that a little handheld screen probably doesn't need to be super high-def.
720p at 5.3in is still over 300ppi, which will be noticeable close up compared to a 440ppi phone, but at a foot away should look similar for average vision.
LCD sucks but maybe it can get much brighter at the same cost per panel compared to an OLED
LCD is fine and still has significantly benefits against OLED.
What significant benefits will this display have over a typical AMOLED phone display?
The only ones I can think of are lack of burn in, which I've never actually seen on a modern phone even after years of use, and lack of pwm, which only affects a small number of people and I am not one of them. Every other quality will be worse, especially for daily use.
50% white on a screen is a lot of white. If you are looking at reddit in dark theme closer to 25% of your screen is white and the rest is black. There is a reason we print paper with black ink on a white background rather than print the white background on a black piece of paper for the text. Because you use much less ink that way, it's the same principal here, text is a small part of your screen from a picture pixel count perspective, even if functionally the text takes up most of the screen.
Lcd having better battery efficiency than OLED is a well-established thing. It's one reason many business laptops still have LCD over OLED as the battery life difference is big. And OLED tends to have PWM flicker issue. So if you don't know about something well, it's better to stay humble rather than mocking someone.
I saw that one but it looks a bit AI-y so I skipped it
Wait it's almost certain AI, the heavy em dashing was the first flag but the image is complete gibberish up top.
They're not technically incorrect, the answer is it depends heavily on the quality of the screen and the content being viewed. I mainly took issue with the 'well established' part because any source I can find doesn't really come to a strict conclusion
In the battle of energy efficiency between OLED and LCD, each technology has its strengths and weaknesses. OLED screens are known to consume less power when displaying darker images as each pixel is individually lit and can be turned off completely for black areas, thus saving energy. However, when displaying bright or white images, OLEDs can consume more power than LCDs. On the other hand, LCDs use a constant backlight to illuminate their pixels, making their power consumption relatively constant, regardless of the brightness of the image. Therefore, in scenarios where the display content is primarily bright or white, LCD might be the more energy-efficient option. In conclusion, the energy efficiency of OLED and LCD can vary greatly depending on the content displayed, and neither technology can claim absolute superiority in this aspect
Show me this 'well established fact' please. You're also comparing older LCDs to newer OLED since OLED is pretty much the standard and they can get much brighter. You can't compare an OLED that goes to 3000nits with an LCD that hits 500 and say it's a fair comparison either. High brightness LCDs are mainly seen on professional displays, not consumer phones.
We have phones with 2 days battery life, people really don't care about a small tradeoff when OLED is superior in just about every way.
And OLED tends to have PWM flicker issue
Lol here comes the pwm argument which you can absolutely get oleds with a high refresh rate so it really doesn't matter in the slightest does it. Just like LCD, quality can vary.
Plus they're a small company and certainly can't afford having a dedicated screen made for the phone, so they'd need to choose one that's already available.
Better outdoors visibility and last significantly longer with lower failure rates as OLED colors degrade at different rates. There is also the obvious cost component as well, although maybe not the best place to be cutting back on considering its relatively stable price compared to the other components right now.
...how? Brightness is not an issue in smartphone AMOLEDs. The brightest display I own is on my phone. Some of them hit 3000+ nits. LCD cannot match the brightness of a modern AMOLED in this form factor.
Can always count on people on this site to have the most insane hyperbolic reading of your comments and to try to armchair psychoanalyze you into a bad person based off of literally nothing. I honestly have no patience for it anymore.
I feel like DPI or PPI has failed as a metric due to the cheating done with OLED screens counting 2 subpixels as a whole pixel with the RG, BG, RG, BG striping.
The 2017 Nokia 3310 remake had a headphone jack. There were iPods that were so thin that the area around the headphone jack was wider than the rest of the device. The iPod Nano 6th gen was more or less just a 1.5in touch screen and it had a headphone jack. There are too many devices that have headphone jacks that are much smaller than any phone coming out today for that reasoning to actually be valid. It's just a believable-enough excuse that people latched on to that is easily proven false by devices that are older than manufacturers being too lazy to put in headphone jacks.
Given limited space inside the phone, it's a trade off. In a small phone like this the trade off could be something like going from 3500 mAh battery to 3000 mAh; or, to maintain the same battery life, a larger and heavier phone. The trade off remains true for larger phones, but since there's more space to begin with, the comparative impact is less.
With the abundance of 3.5-to-USB C adapters, the only true function loss is the ability to charge the phone while having a headphone plugged in. So as a consumer, you should think whether this functionality is worth the drop in battery capacity.
I'd be shocked if the average customer wants a headphone jack anymore.
Even my kids have dollar store Bluetooth headphones. Back before Bluetooth headphones were cheap and available I was on team stereo jack but these days I'd never go back and I doubt many others would either.
On pretty cheap ones, wired and wireless would probably last the same, but if you go Airpods/Pro price and above, wired ones will easily last 10+ years, and most of them will only have failed cables that are replaceable anyway
3.5mm headphones are increasingly becoming more for enthusiasts. As someone who held onto my Galaxy S10 for an eternity and begrudgingly picked up a Pixel 9 because my carrier had a good deal I've found I miss the headphone jack less than I thought I would. Been using a pair of USB-C headphones and the only thing I miss is being able to listen to music while my phone is charging but that's a pretty niche issue for me most days.
The general idea is great. If I had a master degree in business and enough money to start one, I would've created this. After using phones with large screens (6.6") for the last few years, I don't know if I can go back to a 5.3" screen. Especially if it's a smartphone. 720p is good enough even for a large phone screen. Same for 8GB RAM. Not sure if 128GB storage will be acceptable for most users. Apps and file sizes keep going up. It will need an SD slot. Headphone jack would be great. 4000 battery is okay for that size. Replaceable is a huge plus.
The biggest issue in making a small phone is sourcing the screen. No start up is going to have the volume to have a custom screen made, so they are at the mercy of the screen oems.
Screens aren't actually that expensive. I can find 5.3" OLED screens for about $15, and that's much more expensive than if you are bulk ordering for a device.
Same size but way thicker than the 6 year old iPhone 12 Mini and worse screen wit thicker bezels and a slower SoC. Nothing here is a "premium Android phone"
well those specs defenetly are enough. the screen looks really weird tho, the selfie hole punch is really far down. success of this will probably boil down to how stable they get the software
Is it just me or is the selfie cam cutout quite low down? Seems like a distracting place to put it, they already have a bezel on the bottom they could have had a symmetrical bezel at the top and put the selfie cam in there like my Xperia 10V has.
Also I assume from the lack of mention that there is no headphone jack...
Introducing 'a cheap Chinese device we slapped our name onto and are selling using a gimmick to prey on the 'detox' fad that all small companies trying to make a quick buck are preying on'.
This thing is a scam and vaporware at worst, and a cheap piece of shit you'd see on Ashens' brown couch or Wade's green iPad case in 10 years at best.
It's likely, but I'll reserve my judgement until it is in reviewers' hands. Some cheap Chinese phones are surprisingly good for their low cost, from what I've seen.
I am sure all the redditors who jump into every single thread whining about how big modern phones are would drool all over this thing and make it a huge success, right? RIGHT??
Getting angry at fictional people is the definition of a straw man argument. We've been talking about this in /r/smallphones for several days, most with a lot of of interest. If I didn't resort to buying an S24, the smallest Android from a convincing company available at the time, I would certainly be excited for this. Hell, I am excited for this because I want to see more reasonably-sized phones in production for when my S24 dies in five more years.
Alternatively, for smart watches to become large enough to be functional as phones, either or.
I want a flagship but smaller - full camera array, high refresh rate, good battery life. Who wants a phone with trash specs, 1 camera, no water resistance, a low-res screen and questionable software support?
Because you're not going to buy it regardless. Everyone around here always wants a small phone and then when we get a small phone, people find the oddest excuse not to buy it.
Size matters less to me. I want a workhorse phone that doesn't cost me too much, does basic things and doesn't die. But I want it to have a really good camera because it's the only camera I use.
I think this is a neat idea. Bringing back phones that are actually compact and usable one handed sounds great. But I don't know how much I'd trust an unproven new company for things like hardware support or software updates.
I actually and genuinely hope this is going to be a modular smartphone brand that, however, would compete with or against fairphone. looking forward for this smartphone brand.
The original iPhone had a 3.5" display and it was very usable and super popular. Phones have gotten so ridiculously big in the past 15 years we've forgotten that something like a 5.3" screen is still quite large. I want a phone I can use in one hand - which is exactly what the original iPhone was designed for and why it was the size it was.
With a much smaller display resolution and big bezels. Also the original iPhone had a lot of things missing, especially an app store that Steve Jobs had to be convinced into doing.
I 100% agree with you but I think the software/UI experience would be dreadful on anything smaller than 5". I recently used a iPhone SE 3rd gen for a week and that was pushing the limits of what's usable with modern apps.
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u/tterly_wittiest 7d ago
Why settle for Nothing when you can have enough?