Waited weeks for this and was so excited it finally arrived today. Unboxed it, put it on charge, and…nothing. Won’t boot up, no signs of life. He’s dead, Jim.
Now I have to send it back and wait who knows how long if I want a replacement. Probably just going to ask for a refund; I can’t wait another 4-6 weeks or wait for one to ship from the September batch. Ugh!
Mildly infuriating, highly disappointing.
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You got the extra minimal version at no additional cost, how lucky.
I think they accidentally sent him the NoPhone /s
Not sure if it will help but sometimes charging overnight on a 5W charger can get it going if the battery is just really dead. Probably the easiest way to ensure you’re getting 5W is a USB A to C cable connected to a PC or laptop. If you have an older wallwart with a USB A port it’s probably 5W charging as well. Could be worth a shot before sending it back.
Sounds pretty minimal to me
The Minimal Phone features a tactile QWERTY keyboard, expertly designed for efficient typing and ease of use; making it ideal for productivity and everyday Communication.
😅 Should we enlighten them about other layouts?
Yeah! Where’s my Dvorak mobile tactile keyboard?
I will say, as a Dvorak user, I think it would be awful for mobile. I don’t know the mathematics for calculating it but Dvorak assumes four fingers per hand spread evenly across the keyboard.
I wonder what the most efficient layout would be for single digit letter pecking. I can imagine it would be different to both Dvorak and Qwerty, but what exactly it would be I don’t know. Maybe separating most likely next letters by side and having some consistency of vowels on one side, consonants on the other, but all of the stuff about rolls and sequences would be completely changed. Maybe differently sized buttons for more common letters, or reducing the number of shown letters to have a few flick letters that you swipe in a direction to get them? Maybe just having the top ten most common letters displayed as single buttons and then the remaining 16 as four swipe keys?
I’m a colemak typer and I switched my phone to it to help when I was learning and it actually works really well since it emphasizes alternating hands it makes thumb typing pretty fluid. It does also tend to have some finger rolls which really just feels like tapping as you move your fingers back to the middle of the keyboard.
Not to say there aren’t better, I was just surprised how well it worked
Sangaline/DGHP and NALMY come to mind. The first tries to optimise for uniqueness of gestures and the second for distance travelled, both meant for hand gliding typing
The sangaline article was great! I really liked their approach.
As someone who uses Dvorak on my phone, I would be super keen for this alternative
AFAIK FlorisBoard will support gesture typing with it soon (they already support normal typing with it) and it’s FOSS!
MessagEase is a nice keyboard built for mobile devices, using 9 keys for typing with swiping to access some of the letters.
Numbers and special characters can also be accessed without having to switch mode.
gboard and heliboard both have it. been using it for years. it’s awful for glide typing since you’re mostly just bouncing around the home row.
8vim (8pen), thumboard.
I gotta say, at first glance it looks terribly inefficient compared to glide typing on even regular QWERTY.
You are mostly correct. These are trying to get touchtyping on mobile, not necessarily quick typing, but blind typing.
Oh I see, yeah that makes sense, thanks.
Out of the loop here. Is this that new trump phone?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the use case of this phone. Like, what’s the benefit of this phone as compared to another smartphone, if used in a restrictive manner? Besides the eink, which, for me, is a huge seller.
Mostly the e-ink display and the QWERTY keyboard.
By its nature, it’s not great for doom scrolling, TikTok, or videos (the major time sinks with most phones). Those aren’t my use-cases anyway; I’m more of a reader than a watcher so I figured this would be like a supercharged version of my Kobo (which I love) that has a physical keyboard (which I have missed terribly in smartphones).
Edit: Plus, its 4:3 e-ink display and keyboard just scream “install Termux on me!” Also planned to use it as a nice portable SSH terminal like I used to have back when smartphones had slide-out keyboards.
I’m rocking an aging Cat S22 Flip right now and have been trying to figure out what to replace it with. The Minimal Phone seemed like exactly what I wanted. Sad that it arrived DOA and am probably not going to bother replacing it; waiting weeks for something that arrives DOA is a hard thing to recover from.
Oh your use case is awesome, actually. I bet there are good epub readers on Android, which would make this phone perfect for that use case. It is super sad it was doa. Hopefully they’ll honor a replacement (faster than your original order), and you can start truly enjoying it.
I have a Hisense A5 that’s a crap phone, but Cantook side loaded and it’s the best e-reader I’ve ever owned, bar none. I can use it for podcasts too, although I usually just use my regular phone for that these days.
Cantook has 2/5 stars, but it actually looks really great
Cantook used to be called Aldiko, and it was literally the first ebook Reader I ever got for Android. I don’t know if it’s the best, but it opens epubs and lets me set dark mode and use the volume buttons as page turn, and doesn’t gum up e-ink with animations, so it’s ideal for the Hisense. I don’t know why it only has 2/5.
Yeah, I have a ticket in with support but haven’t heard back yet. I did ask specifically about the turnaround time for a replacement. Hopefully that’s a reasonable amount of time. I definitely don’t want $400+ tied up until the next batch ships in September.
Oof. September? I really hope you get it before then! I wonder how many people had this doa issue with this batch. Maybe there’s an issue with that manufacturer. Not really something you can control or probably find out, but it would be interesting to know.
I honestly don’t think they’d tell me, but I’d also be interested to know. Fingers crossed they have some stock on hand for the occasional replacement.
The e-ink display and expandable storage set it apart, but “minimal” can be achieved with some small effort by the end user of any smartphone. The idea that this phone will work magic for you and free up time in your day is just marketing. If you want your current phone to do less, then just uninstall the apps that are sucking up your time.
It does have a physical keyboard, too. Sadly can’t give it much of a review given the circumstances, but it does have a good feel and seems like it would be pleasant to type on.
That’s true, and I overlooked that. I miss having a physical keyboard. I don’t want to shit on your purchase, if it does what you want, then great, it just doesn’t bring anything to the table for me.
If you want your current phone to do less, then just uninstall the apps that are sucking up your time.
Yeah, that was my thought, too, and why I missed the phones point. But OP pointed out that they wanted to use it as an ereader (like their current Kobo), and that use case seems absolutely perfect for this phone. As a magical device that gives you back time, this device looks to be nothing but marketing. But as a combination true eink ereader and smart-enough phone, this device seems perfect.
You missed the physical keyboard. I’d sell my left kidney for a physical keyboard. I’ve just had to correct three words in the previous sentence because my keyboard “corrected” them even though autocorrect is switched off.
I didn’t miss it, it’s just not something I would give up other needed functionality over. It also has a 3.5mm audio jack, which I also terribly miss, but, again, not something I would add if I had to give up a good camera, for example (bad example, since I know phones can have both, but the manufacturers just choose not to). Your soft keyboard sounds hellish, honestly. Not sure if it’s a possibility for you, but you may want to look at others (obviously, none will be as good as a physical keyboard, but maybe you can get something better than you have now).
Yeah, I have a Boox color tablet that I use for reading books and comics, but I also take A LOT of notes on it since I can use handwriting. This phone doesn’t bring anything to the table for me, but if there is a use for OP I’m not going to say it’s a bad purchase. I just don’t like the marketing behind it.
That Boox color looks amazing!
The marketing behind the minimalist phone is shady at best.
Yeah, I got the note air 4c and I can confirm it is amazing. However, it’s expensive. I don’t really have money to throw around like that, but I did some extra work and grabbed it. It’s phenomenal and I have no regrets. Great for reading, great for note taking, horrible for watching videos :) If its something that you’ll use, its worth every penny.
Yeah the marketing for it was lost on me. I already digitally detoxed last year when I switched to the flip phone I’m currently using, so I ignored the sales pitch and just looked at it from the cool hardware perspective and mostly reasonable price.
Credit where it’s due, though: I tried unsuccessfully to just uninstall the time sink apps from my regular smartphone and always ended up just reinstalling them. It took using a device that couldn’t feasibly run those (plus a weaning-off period) for me to fully let go. Seems like that is what the marketing is trying to target.
I think the selling point is that it is less distracting because the black and white eink display does not support videos or social media doom scrolling.
Ah ok, so instead of minimizing your own usage by uninstalling apps and such, you’re getting help from the device’s physical inability to use those apps and, thus, remove the temptations. Ok, cool! That’s actually a pretty nice use of the tech!
I’m kind of considering getting one, probably as a second phone to swap my sim card into for occasional use
The e ink is a big draw for me, as is the physical keyboard, not to mention the headphone jack and expandable storage.
With the e-ink comes good battery life, they’re claiming potentially 4 days from what I can see. I like the idea of that for travel, where I might be spending long hours on a bus, train, plane, car, walking around town all day, maybe even camping somewhere where it may not always be convenient to charge my phone.
E-ink is also easier to read in direct sunlight without a glare, as someone with a lot of outdoor hobbies that appeals to me. (Although for the same reason I do also wish it had a higher IP rating, and maybe an impact resistance rating as well)
I dont tend to play a lot of games or watch movies on my phone to begin with, so I’m not so much interested in that aspect of it encouraging mindfulness, but for people who do struggle with that temptation to spend too much time on tiktok forget hooked on stupid games, I can see this helping them to kick that habit since e ink isn’t really great for those kinds of uses, while not needing to totally unplug from the more utilitarian uses for a smartphone like navigation, different messaging apps, email, 2 factor authenticator apps, etc.
I’m not rushing out to buy one, but I might consider grabbing one if I get a good deal somewhere, or if it has some staying power I might consider picking up the next gen version of it.
I’d buy a Kobo or other dedicated e-ink reader before getting one of these, if that’s your use case.
E readers don’t generally make calls, texts, do navigation, or fit comfortably in the zippered hip pockets of my hiking pack
It sounds like you’ll be using a regular phone for that though.
Or, you know, the device we’re discussing
You bring up really, really points, and have piqued my interest in the device. The thing holding me back (besides OP’s DOA :( ) is the security updates. How long will their OS truly be supported? They claim 5 years, but they’re a young company and can’t actually promise that. Is their bootloader unlocked? Because if so, I can try and load a custom OS, once their security updates are done. This last bit is what’s held me back from most of these eink devices, actually. Maybe the display will become cheap enough that I can buy one, and outfit my own device… one day.
Yeah, security updates are a big sticking point for me too.
That’s another reason I’m not rushing out to buy one. If they actually stick to their 5 year plan, that’s pretty solid, but that’s a big unknown right now.
And with almost anything there’s some 1st generation bugs that will probably need to be worked out. If they stick around for a couple years and keep up with their updates I’ll give them a little more consideration.
Also we’re now starting to see some brands come out with color e-ink devices, I wouldn’t mind one of these with a color e-ink screen.
So maybe I’ll be getting a minimal phone 2 or 3.
I haven’t personally played around with rooting and custom ROMs and such in honestly probably a decade, but an unlockable bootloader would be nice, even if I don’t necessarily see myself using that feature at this point in my life.
And not for nothing, since a flagship smartphone can pretty easily cost $1000+ these days, $500-ish for this phone sounds oddly reasonable. Not that it’s got flagship specs, but for something that’s filling a specific niche with some (for many) desirable features, that’s not a bad price IMO.
I completely agree. 5 year support is plenty of time, but I just don’t know if I can trust their longevity yet. $500 for this device is definitely not excessive, but there are still unknowns.
I haven’t done modding since the CyanogenMod days, but I’d want the option.
What a “use case” when it’s at home?
Anyhoo, touch screen keyboards suck.
What a “use case” when it’s at home?
I don’t understand what you’re asking. Can you elaborate?
Well, I don’t even know what to say to that. Except that in Puerto Rico, a McFlurry it’s called a Señor Flurry.
What about “minimal” made you think Trump?
The part where it was a scam that was dead on arrival.
Everything Trump does is a scam, but not all scams are from Trump.
touché
Kaley Cuoco has put on some weight since the big bang theory ended.
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Has one of the worst repairability indexes ever. Get another phone.Edit: my bad, that’s the Nothing Phone.
