Since the times of the unique Motorola DynaTAC, cell telephones have taken on many bureaucracy with diverse combos of fashion and characteristic. Some novel thoughts integrated into handset designs have modified the manner we engage with era, at the same time as others basically modified our conduct in daily lifestyles. Along the manner we’ve visible a few masterpieces, a few duds, and an entire bunch of oddities in-between. Today we’re taking a examine the ten strangest Android telephones of all time.
After a number of the earliest cell telephones added us to communications through textual content (SMS, this is), the subsequent maximum big sport-changer in cell telecellsmartphone era got here with the touchscreen. The creation of contact-display screen-primarily based totally working systems, which includes Android, laid naked the perception that a telecellsmartphone is only a tool used to make telecellsmartphone calls. It spread out an entire new territory of possibilities. However, there’s fact to the adage that simply due to the fact you may do some thing does now no longer imply you ought to. Over the pretty quick time humanity’s been making cell telephones, a few makers of those pocket-sized marvels have overlooked the mark.
Sometimes a normally stellar telecellsmartphone maker drops a large stinker in our lap and has their PR branch try to spin a dud right into a Christmas want listing topper. While we can also additionally want to consider a few ill-fated tries to fill a gap that didn’t exist to be a factor of the past, a pair of those are nevertheless on sale today. Regardless in their starting place or marketplace fulfillment, right here we’ve got a group of the maximum peculiar Android telecellsmartphone oddities ever made.
LG Wing
Many improvements in era come alongside as a reaction to the wishes of clients, regularly advanced due to patron feedback. And then there’s the LG Wing. In a reaction to precisely no person, the powers that be at LG determined to feature a unusual rotating display screen to certainly considered one among its flagship telephones. While many corporations during the last numerous years clamored to create monitors with greater actual property at the same time as perfecting the foldable display screen to provide tablet-sized presentations that suit in a pocket, LG determined to create a very new shape component instead.
Functionally, that is an outstanding phone, in line with the SlashGear evaluation, and it boasts the state-of-the-art era and specifications congruent with a flagship version. However, the rotating 2nd display screen of the LG Wing comes off greater like a gimmick than a beneficial top-tier phone for ordinary use. It is positive to elevate an eyebrow throughout the morning commute.
Samsung Galaxy Beam
Samsung arguably policies the roost withinside the commercial enterprise of phone manufacturing, at the least as some distance as innovation goes. Many of its merchandise set the bar for the complete enterprise, and those novel improvements can emerge as not unusual from excessive-give up telephones down the road to finances options. By 2012, the fundamental capability of the phone turned into firmly established, and producers had been toying with new capabilities to feature and increase the functionality in their gadgets. With DLP projector era additionally advancing and turning into greater compact, Samsung determined it might be the subsequent large factor for its Galaxy line of smartphones. While it seems that there can be lots of sensible packages of this characteristic, it had its pitfalls as properly.
The projector used a bargain of strength and shortened battery lifestyles significantly, and the imagegraph exceptional turned into relatively lacking. While it truly seemed to be a a laugh and beneficial manner to apply your telecellsmartphone, customers located, as SlashGear’s Galaxy Beam evaluation notes, real situations wherein it turned into the best piece of era to be some distance fewer in reality. Being that it’s far a Samsung product, the exceptional and layout had been in no way in question, however its real usefulness wasn’t obvious sufficient to fulfill the cost, and this is in all likelihood the purpose it did not be persevered for greater than more than one years.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom
With the persevering with evolution of cell telephones, every yr more recent and higher capabilities come alongside. We had been blessed with Snake, Nokia’s unique killer of place of job productivity, and T9 predictive textual content, the maximum irritating and time-eating manner to ship a message that would without problems be conveyed in a quick call. With the abundance of idle processing strength held in our pockets, it turned into best a rely of time earlier than an real, usable virtual digital digicam turned into delivered to the bundle. In its preference to transport ahead from the tiny, grainy, pixelated pictures of early telecellsmartphone cameras, Samsung mis-stepped with the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom through trying to do matters properly and failing at each.
With the Galaxy telecellsmartphone collection launched, Samsung had an amazing foothold withinside the era arena. Being an digital producer of a big type of virtual gizmos, Samsung had a positive knowledge in each smartphones and devoted cell virtual cameras and determined they may integrate the 2 withinside the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom. As is so regularly the case while combining technology into one, the Zoom turned into a first rate telecellsmartphone with an OK digital digicam. It turned into now no longer a notable telecellsmartphone nor turned into it a notable digital digicam. It failed at being a telecellsmartphone, being a digital digicam, and as mentioned in GSM Arena, those disasters avoided it from being a income fulfillment.
SIDENOTE: The Samsung Galaxy Camera, launched a half-yr earlier than the Galaxy S4 Zoom, surely regarded to hit the nail a chunk greater squarely on the pinnacle with its mixture of higher-exceptional digital digicam and some distance much less recognition at the phone a part of the equation. The Galaxy Camera may be visible withinside the image above at the wooden floor at the same time as the Galaxy S4 Zoom is in motion and in-hand.
YotaPhone
When maximum human beings consider excessive era, Russia isn’t always the primary to return back to mind. However, the Soviets despatched the primary guy to space, and that they maintain to construct a number of the maximum superior fighter jets on Earth. Still, the Russian Federation isn’t always in particular widely known for electronics. Enter the YotaPhone in 2012, a Russian-designed and now no longer-so-Russian-constructed cell telecellsmartphone with maximum of the usual capabilities and features located on any telecellsmartphone, and a pair that weren’t. The YotaPhone’s declare to reputation is its dual-display screen setup. It wasn’t foldable, and didn’t have some other peculiar sliding or transferring show just like the LG Wing.
The YotaPhone has monitors: one up the front, some other at the returned (through GSM Arena). Even higher, the the front is a standard LCD display screen, and the rear is a monochrome e-ink display screen like that of a Kindle. As representatives of YotaFone advised throughout our unique hands-on revel in, the capability of the rear display screen (the e-ink panel), turned into supposed for use a lot similar to one could with a Kindle – usually for reading.
While it appears to characteristic flawlessly properly as a Kindle does, YotaPhone couldn’t triumph over the hurdle this is the much less than pleasant revel in of looking to examine substantial quantities of content material on a display screen that suits in a pocket. The Russians broke into the marketplace with a tool that no person turned into asking for, trying to resolve a trouble no person had. It turned into abnormal. And it’s far no greater, as its maker declared financial disaster in 2019.
Palm 2018
Scores of human beings appearance returned at the predecessors to today’s phone fondly as they consider the times of bodily keyboards and the interesting new frontier of cell hand held net browsing. Many wax poetic approximately their Palm Treo and all of its superior and smart features wrapped up right into a tidy, transportable bundle with its personal working gadget: Palm OS. But that isn’t always the Palm tool for this listing.
The Palm tool kicking off the 2020s is a brand new piece of hardware from a producer that resurrected the Palm logo for one greater move at glory. Gone are the times of pleasingly tactile and ergonomic tiny keyboards – now they’re changed through an unbelievably tiny contact display screen. This time round, the Palm telecellsmartphone eschewed the unique groundbreaking Palm OS for the Android gadget.
The selection to make the 2018 Palm telecellsmartphone run Android turned into in all likelihood because of the truth that the tool calls for an real grown-up Android telecellsmartphone for any sort of usable capability. Yes, this isn’t always definitely a telecellsmartphone a lot as it’s far a “telecellsmartphone companion.”
The proper cost of a telecellsmartphone that calls for some other telecellsmartphone to characteristic has but to be honestly located – particularly at a beginning charge of nearly $350. The Palm telecellsmartphone (2018) is a excellent instance of but some other product advanced to meet the call for of none, to resolve a trouble that did now no longer exist withinside the first region. Our complete Palm telecellsmartphone evaluation explains why this gadget nevertheless ahs a unique region in our hearts, in spite of its closing loss of actual-international cost.
Motorola Flipout
Motorola’s records spans returned to the early 1900s (through Brittanica), and alongside the manner, it has produced dozens of modern and groundbreaking communique gadgets. With a agency generating such a lot of superior communique merchandise on the equal time because it makes mundane, ordinary merchandise, it’s far sure to launch the occasional oddball. And in an enterprise with era speedy accelerating with an regularly off-song experience of direction, the cell telecellsmartphone is the best car for turning in a product that puzzles.
Motorola added the Flipout in 2010, a time while phone bureaucracy had been nevertheless very a lot in a kingdom of flux. While a few corporations, which includes Apple, went all-in on contact monitors, others held onto their bodily keyboards, searching for novel strategies to contain them into new models. The Flipout attempted to be the nice of each worlds in a abnormal new manner. The display screen turned into small, however as it sat atop the keyboard while closed, it turned into cumbersome. The hardware turned into first rate for the time, supplying Android 2.1, GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1, however the shape component turned into simply peculiar. In the give up, cell telecellsmartphone makers went some other direction, and this version hit a lifeless give up and turned into discontinued.
LG DoublePlay
In the persevering with improvement of cell telephones, one factor that appears to be clean is producers’ preference for clients to undertake gadgets with more than one monitors. They have provide you with monitors that turn, monitors that flop, double-sided monitors, fold-out monitors, and now, to create obvious monitors. LG has created lots of funky designs for smartphones in addition to characteristic telephones, and the DoublePlay sits squarely withinside the quarter of telecellsmartphone funk. On the floor, it turned into a handsome concept, with the principle display screen of similar length to its modern-day competitors. But the characteristic that set it other than a “ordinary” telecellsmartphone turned into its break up keyboard divided through a smaller secondary display screen. It simply had a Nintendo DS feel, however greater T-Mobile sidekick capability.
The tool covered all of the capabilities predicted from a tool strolling Android 2.three Gingerbread at launch, and the precise hardware allowed (or turned into alleged to allow) a few way of multi-tasking. For instance, the decrease display screen should have a textual content messaging app open at the same time as a web browser turned into open up top. The telecellsmartphone additionally featured some DoublePlay one of a kind apps, which includes a notepad, to utilize the show with local apps. In the give up, the usefulness withinside the actual international turned into dubious, at nice.
Motorola Backflip
The first Android telecellsmartphone entered the marketplace in 2008 and speedy commenced gaining floor on its rivals. With the open-supply nature of Android, producers had been loose to broaden telephones and customise the OS to their liking. They had been additionally loose to discover a large number of setup and hardware arrangements, and it seems this is precisely what Motorola did once they added the Backflip in 2010.
The bodily keyboard turned into nevertheless en fashion in 2010, and make contact with makers attempted steadily to hold them round through the use of precise integrations and location of keys of all sorts. It regarded that Motorola, seeing the sliding mechanism different producers used on the time, determined attempting some thing precise will be the manner to move – they went with a hinge.
With a conventional hinge, the telecellsmartphone could open up like a book – this, too, might’ve been a chunk too easy for Motorola. So Motorola took the wild technique of setting the keyboard at the returned of the telecellsmartphone and making it open… a distinct manner. Adding to this definitely ordinary layout preference turned into some other concept to region a touchpad at the returned of the display screen to transport a pointer round like a mouse on a laptop. The loss of any telephones with this shape component in today’s marketplace is evidence sufficient that this precise layout turned into simply too abnormal for a 2nd-generation.
Kyocera Echo
Smartphones that turn out and increase are are nevertheless being launched right here in 2022, simply as they had been returned while the primary essential single-version fulfillment took the cell international through typhoon with the primary Motorola RAZR (beginning in 2005). The new line of Motorola RAZR gadgets and (to a bigger extent) machines just like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold three have visible a few pretty essential fulfillment in latest years.
Between the pre-clever telecellsmartphone fulfillment of the primary RAZR and the brand new sunrise of the foldable got here a gadget out of its element: the Kyocera Echo. As we skilled with our unique Kyocera Echo hands-on, this tool made use of inferior hardware, a clunky hinge layout, and a loss of optimized software program to create a telecellsmartphone that would best be defined as “meh.”
While the telecellsmartphone can be used just like another cumbersome Android handset with an oddly offset display screen, the Kyocera Echo had one essential failing: the large black bar strolling via its pair of presentations. If Kyocera hadn’t promoted the tool love it turned into supposed to increase right into a single, large show, clients might’ve reacted differently… however alas. This tool didn’t pretty supply the futuristic revel in it promised.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
Since the appearance of video games, there was a chronic push to place them into greater compact and available bureaucracy. From the unique Nintendo Game and Watch handhelds to the Sony PSP, hand held online game gadgets have lengthy been an imperative a part of the online game marketplace. Therefore, it ought to come as no marvel that a agency could combine bodily gaming controls right into a tool that might be located withinside the pocket of maximum human beings anyway. It ought to additionally come as no marvel that Sony, the agency answerable for one of the maximum a success gaming consoles ever made, could be in the back of it.
The Xperia Play, at the start rumored to be known as the “PlayStation Phone”, turned into a barely peculiar conglomeration of cell telecellsmartphone and hand held online game console elements. Given that this got here from Sony, the resemblance to the PSP ought to be no marvel. What turned into unexpected turned into the selection to eschew the PSP or PlayStation moniker and launch this tool with out a sequence of incredible PlayStation sport classics proper out the gate.
Perhaps that’s what avoided higher income fulfillment. However, it can be this peculiar pairing of telecellsmartphone and sport gadget that has fees at the used marketplace inching up because it movements in addition into antique gaming territory with every passing yr, and permits it to stay on with hobbyist aid lengthy after it’s been deserted through its makers. The spirit of the “gaming telecellsmartphone” that turned into born with this conventional weirdo lives on with gadgets just like the Xiaomi Black Shark, the ASUS ROG Phone, a sequence of Red Magic gadgets, and the Razer Phone.