Unihertz’s booth at MWC was a bit far away, but people who found it all wanted to pick up the Titan Elite 2. Of course, the cosmic orange color drew attention, and the QWERTY keyboard reminded a showgoer of his old BlackBerry. But once I picked it up I could see why it was so popular. It’s thin, light, and pocketable, and the physical keys just beg to be pressed. I felt unresponsive, which I can’t say about the phone I’m currently using. I didn’t want to put it down, and judging by the steady stream of visitors I saw at the booth, I wasn’t alone.
As always, MWC offered a bunch of weird and delightful ideas about phones that aren’t just slabs of glass and aluminum. This year, I saw a phone with an electric igniter (it wasn’t working when I tried to see it in action), a phone with a DJI Osmo-looking gimbal cam attached, even a phone for pets. Will any of these ideas prove to be winners in the long run? Probably not, but it’s nice to imagine something different.
Among the oddball phones, another trend emerged at places like the Unihertz booth: phones that aren’t your main phone. It’s not exactly a new idea, but the concept of a convenient device that provides a better typing experience, or gives you a little respite from the constant panicking of your phone, seems to be gaining momentum.
In almost every case, these are the phones that can do Be your main phone, and Unihertz in particular has plenty of fans using the company’s existing devices as such. The Titan Elite 2 runs Android 16, and Unihertz has promised to upgrade the OS to Android 20. Watching vertical videos on a squarish 4-inch screen won’t be the best experience, but there’s nothing stopping you from doing so. But the Elite 2 might be most appealing as a device when you don’t plan to watch a lot of TikTok videos — maybe even if you actively want to discourage yourself from doing so.
There are some overlapping intentions behind the concept of a secondary phone, but they have one principle in common: to create some space between you and your main phone. If you want to spend less time scrolling and more time reading a book on the weekend, you can put your regular phone away and use a secondary phone for texting and calling while keeping it away from social media apps. Better yet, it’s fine for secondary phones. If scrolling through TikTok on your secondary phone is a terrible experience, you might not be tempted to do so.
The Titan Elite 2 will probably remind QWERTY phone fans of the Clicks Communicator, which debuted at CES earlier this year. The concept is nearly identical, though the two devices offer different typing experiences: the Unihertz keys are square and located right next to each other, shoulder-to-shoulder, and the Clicks keys are separate and oval-shaped. Clicks clearly advertises the communicator’s potential as a second device, better suited for typing emails and messages than scrolling through social media. Like the Elite 2, it’s a full-featured Android phone (complete with headphone jack and microSD slot!), so it can be your daily driver.
The Litephone III is a very different device from the Communicator and the Titan 2 Elite. Texting, calling, and a few connected functions like calendar and navigation can basically do it all. At the show, I spoke with Kaiwei Tang, cofounder and CEO of Light, who has been focused on making minimalist phones for the past decade. They say 50 percent of Lite customers use the base phone as their primary device, while the other half see it as a complement to their full-featured smartphone. Tang also sees an increase in demand. “For the last 10 years we’ve grown every year, even though we have zero marketing budget,” he says.
Is the answer to “I want a break from my phone” really… another phone?
But there’s a huge elephant in the room: Is the answer to “I want a break from my phone” really… another phone? Is there a day when that thing is a pair of glasses, or a smartwatch, or some earbuds that you control by voice? Tang sees the appeal of a screen-free device, but doesn’t see it as realistic in the short term. “I love the UI of the voice,” he says. “I think that could be the future, but we’re not there yet.” He says we still need wiser methods of input. A small screen that you carry around seems to be the way we’ve all landed.
Another way is to make the minimal phone part of your main phone. It has obvious flaws; If it’s Focus mode or the app, there’s definitely an easy way for you to quickly turn it off and get back to your social media scrolling habits. Fairphone’s latest device has an interesting take on the idea: a physical switch on the side of the phone that triggers a custom “moment,” with access to only the apps you specify—and only a few people who can block you. The physical slider adds a little more friction than turning focus mode on and off in quick settings.
At least this growing interest in minimalist phones comes at an unfortunate time. You’ve heard about the RAM crisis, and how bad it is for phone makers. It’s all but inevitable that phone prices will rise, and when one The higher the price of the phone, the more likely you’ll think long and hard about buying two. The situation is undoubtedly making it difficult for smaller brands trying to break into the market with something new, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better anytime soon.
Still, people at companies I spoke to this week weren’t deterred. For Tang, it’s his customers that keep him going. “I’m optimistic because my customers are mostly young,” he says. “My generation — we’re doomed,” he says with a laugh. “The next generation, I feel like they have a better understanding of managing, or making decisions that change the tools they use.” If he can be somewhat optimistic given the challenges facing his business, I think it’s reasonable to hope for more good things to come – however strange that may take.
