3w ago

Review: The Minimal Phone wants you to hate phones, and it works

9to5google.com

Hardware @lemmy.world

Alphane Moon @lemmy.world

3w ago

Review: The Minimal Phone wants you to hate phones, and it works

9to5google.com /2025/06/04/minimal-phone-review/

41 comments

I really like the idea but why the fuck is it $400
- What do you expect a low-volume phone with an alternative e-paper display to cost?
- Because of economies of scale
Really sketchy company so far. My order hasnt come after 4 months
- They seem to spend a lot on magazine coverage and little on fulfilling orders in time!
- This one seems better: https://mudita.com/products/phones/mudita-kompakt/
  Example of setup: https://old.reddit.com/r/dumbphones/comments/1kszt14/my_current_set_of_minimalist_apps_on_the_mudita/
  
  Thanks for the idea! But I need my open source apps
I just want an acceptable phone with a keyboard god damn it, not some gimmicky shit with a crap screen!
- You mean a physical keyboard?
  
  Yes. Unihertz have a couple I'm aware of but their software is dog shit, fx tec pro is out dated and over priced. The blackberry keytwo was the absolute best phone I have ever owned but that is now too old for security updates too so really isnt the best thing to have as your main phone.
  Would be happy to hear of some others I may have missed. I backed the planet computers astro slide on indiegogo and they only delivered around 2000 units before stealing everyone elses money. Fucking cunts they are.
I was looking into getting one of these. Saw a clickbait thumbnail along the lines of 'black and white mode for free?' and I realised, I can make my current phone less addicting for free with monochrome mode. And it works. (My screen time has no moved to my PC, but no more endless scrolling.)
Nah. I love my palma 2 and can do plenty with it if you accept no cell phone capabilities it's great. I don't see the appeal of a device with worse refresh rate, a keyboard that needlessly eats screen space, and UI that doesn't trust you as a user.
Edit: I suspect people are reacting without knowing wtf a palma 2 is, lol.
- What all do you use your Palma for? Can you get any third party apps on it? I have a Boox tablet from a few years ago and it's great for taking notes, but a palm sized eReader has been pretty alluring to me for a while.
  
  I use Aurora store and Fdroid on it. Funny considering direct play store is a selling point of theirs. I mostly use it as an ereader but it's also my work phone since intune doesn't play nice with grapheneos. Being able to fit my ereader in a pocket has been amazing. I rarely leave home without it
I think the general idea of these phones has legs but the addition of a physical keyboard on the Minimal Phone puts it into an extreme niche. It feels more like a passion project designed specifically for the use of the company founder than something tailored to the market, and is stuck between the practicality of the smaller Mudita Kompakt and the performance of the Bigme HiBreak Pro. If the Minimal Company makes a Minimal Phone 2 I'll be interested to see how different the design is.
- I mean, when Blackberry existed, it seemed like everyone had one, and the physical keyboard was what people loved about it.
  
  You could say that for any piece of old and irrelevant technology. I'm sure people thought rotary dial telephones were amazing too before something better came along.
Lots of down votes here, but not a lot of discussion... Bots?
- I could downvote because we've seen this a lot: underpowered phone that does nothing and costs as much as my Pixel that does everything. Its not technically a scam, but it feels like those magical paper notebooks that supposedly boost your productivity for some reason.
  I read the article: $500 and the same battery as my phone. Definitely a scam. I would get one at $100 though.
  
  I meant in the comments. At the time I posted there were only two other comments and both in the negatives, but nothing else. The post was, and still is, decently upvoted.
  
  That's not what the Downvote button is for
Still runs shitty android. I will still with my Windows Mobile phones thank you.
- Final release: June 2, 2015; 10 years ago
  Bruh
  
  On the plus side, they can't put AI on that!
- People don't seem to get sarcasm here, huh
  
  That would require "/s"

41 comments