Minimal Phone 2

Minimal Phone 2 minimalcompany.com

Explore the harmony of technology and simplicity with Minimal. Our innovative approach strips away the unnecessary, focusing on what truly matters in your digital experience.

328 points•nashashmi•13 days ago•262 comments•

#minimal #phone #minimal phone #harmony #innovative #technology #explore #simplicity

262 comments

dash212 days ago

The Adam Smith Institute once added up all the govt spending demands made in a single news program and it came to like 10% of GDP.

Similarly the comments here: if only it could do all this and

* On/off button round the back

* More LTE bands

* An open bootloader (note to normies this is like saying "have a quantum multiplexer")

* Different screen ratio

* Different keyboard layouts

* Eink screen

* Bigger battery

* Be easier to use for someone with long fingernails (hello Nosferatu https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49751114)

* Be lighter

* Be smaller

* Have a website without javascript (really)

* Be cheaper (this one is satire) (no it's not)

Sure guys, why can't someone just build you your personal phone at the same price as the iPhone whose development costs are amortized over seval billions consumers :-/

tom_12 days ago

Yeah, all of that would be great. Good ideas all round, and thank you for gathering all these sensible requests into one centralized list.

Slight problem, and it's not clear whether you've realised this: everybody else in the world knows that we can't have everything! Still, it's good to have goals, even if they can't be met, and it'd be monstrous to mock the ambition on display - which I do declare we should in fact salute. Good on you sir/madam, for not being a cynical jaded asshole like the rest of us.

calcifer12 days ago

> it'd be monstrous to mock the ambition on display

It's not "ambition" when it's what other people should do for you.

antoniojtorres12 days ago

Would it really be monstrous?

ssl-312 days ago

* Headphone jack for special music

* SD card slot to store that special music

* Multiple physical SIMs because eSIMs can't be trusted

* Multiple eSIMs because physical SIMs are dumb

* LoRa for meshtastic because the network can't be trusted

* Drug scale for weighing drugs

(Actually, just put the drug scale on there and great teaming throngs of people will immediately forget that they ever owned an iPhone.)

dotancohen12 days ago

  > Headphone jack for special music

Actually, this phone does have a headphone jack.

tosapple12 days ago

drug scale for drugs?

you've got it wrong,

that scale is for measuring transactions in Au.

1vuio0pswjnm712 days ago

"Have a website without javascript (really)"

Their website also requires a User-Agent headeer

Given the low level of traffic, IME this is unusual

1vuio0pswjnm712 days ago

*header

c0balt12 days ago

> Be easier to use for someone with long fingernails (hello Nosferatu)

Long nails are somewhat common as an aesthetic/cosmetic choice usually for women (ime). No need to make a joke around accessible design.

luipugs12 days ago

Aren't long nails difficult for anything that requires finger dexterity, like in touch screen phones?

Also the parent comment reminded me of this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VjpcLplkMUs

iterance12 days ago

A phone that works with long nails is also likely to be far more accessible to people with all sorts of hand mobility or motor control problems.

dash212 days ago

I feel no need not to make a joke around it.

miladyincontrol12 days ago

Even with short nails, keys that are too shallow or without contour be rather jarring to use.

theendisney11 days ago

I have one keyboard worn to the point the (now blank) keys have nail shaped holes in them in just the right shape and angle.

One could extrude keys to be softer so that they errode faster and have the symbol all the way though.

ksec11 days ago

Making one isn't "that" hard once you factor in China's production capabilities. The problem isn't even making it, the hardware part. ( Ignoring IP for a second )

Once you have all that, it is how do you sell it, and sell enough unit to even have a ROI. And that is ignoring UI / software.

I don't think people on HN understand, hardware business is brutal.

ocd12 days ago

I just want BlackBerry back.

Every single time one of these new "minimal", "dumb", "lightweight" phones comes up today it's just marketing wrapped around a kneecapped Android device. I am in the market for something simpler that does nothing more or little else than play local media/audio, read common document/text formats, ordinary SMS, current standard of telephony, and a different OS than Android. I have not seen anything like this yet.

miguel-muniz12 days ago

The problem is everyone has a different list of deal breakers that they need in a "dumb" device. It starts off simple, such as calls and texts, but some people want to play music, or get directions from maps, or maybe contact relatives with Whatsapp... Eventually you just end up with a smart phone.

Ideally everyone would just have the discipline to just keep what they need on their phone without trying to fix their problem with an overpriced gimmick that they will give up on after a few months.

cgriswald12 days ago

Those people don’t actually want a dumb phone. They just don’t want to be spied on. That’s not actually that complicated it just makes other people less rich.

d3Xt3r12 days ago

> Every single time one of these new "minimal", "dumb", "lightweight" phones comes up today it's just marketing wrapped around a kneecapped Android device.

Except the Commodore Callback[1], which is based on Linux (SailfishOS). It's pretty minimal and should meet your requirements, in theory.

[1] https://commodore.net/callback/

what12 days ago

The size of this thing really puts me off. It’s like two iPhone minis stacked on top of each other, which seems massive for a flip phone.

bch12 days ago

I spent way, way, way too much time at that site (Partly because it’s a 1990s GeoCities mess).

Compelling, but still wanting a Nokia 33xx brick recall.

walrus0112 days ago

Fun Blackberry trivia:

For a while Research in Motion (RIM) / Blackberry had a hiring website at https://rim.jobs , until somebody told them what it meant.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=%22rim.jo...

stordoff12 days ago

It was a 302 redirect to http://www.rim.com/careers/ around 2008-2010, according to the Wayback Machine. It could have been around for longer unarchived, of course.

usef-12 days ago

For a lot of people there's one app that is a non-negotiable, even for a minimalist phone.

For instance: their bank, or 2 factor for their work. Or a parking app for their building. Society now often assumes you can use an app.

It's hard to cover those cases without using one of the two major OSes.

What's the advantage of blackberry over a stripped-down/limited android?

Moldoteck12 days ago

probably because in these days it's hard to get by without some apps like maps, common messengers, delivery, bank transactions and so on

TomGarden12 days ago

Agreed. Banking is the killer app imo

fuzzythinker12 days ago

Is this what HN has became? 22 hours, 200 comments and not a single positive one. I love it. Great classy look and feel. Well throughout keys for swipe. This is likely my next phone. Only wish is a better camera. Maybe MP03 will improve on that.

olwmc12 days ago

Not to shill but if you're struggling with apps on your (i)phone, I can't recommend https://www.foqos.app/ enough. My weekly screentime (as measured by my iphone, not true screen time) is <1hr. NFC tag is optional you can literally buy a candy bar and tape the barcode to an index card and that will work. The physical layer is massive. Now my problem is just limited to desktop which is easier to control.

jleehn12 days ago

+1 on physical layer being the game changer. I've been using getbrick.com with amazing results.

yauneyz12 days ago

talysman.app does the same thing as Brick but for desktop. So you can code/etc with a physical layer of protection

Definitely a game changer, maybe even more than Brick because the desktop is where I do all my work

dsr_12 days ago

What I learned from carrying a phone with "2.5d" screen edges:

They make the screen effectively narrower in terms of usable area, while making the phone physically wider.

Do not want.

Please go back to 9:16 or 10:16 screen ratios. If you need more space for the battery, gently round the back. It feels nicer in the hand even when it's 50% thicker than your competitors.

Also, a fingerprint reader / power button on the back is superior to all other placements, and cutouts of any kind are distracting and wasteful. OnePlus managed a motorized pop-out selfie-cam and it's still working for me seven years later.

belowavgiq12 days ago

Huawei was this close to making the perfect 16:9 phone, now, in 2026. I would have gladly used all my apps in a half broken Android VM (they no longer use Android themselves).

It's too bad they had to be extreme about it and ruin it with a huge screen and a 5:3 aspect ratio. it's almost a cube.

https://m.gsmarena.com/huawei_pura_x_view-14887.php

jazzyjackson12 days ago

Personally I like the 21:9 ratio of Sony’s Xperia 1. Big but skinny enough to reach my thumb across.

geokon12 days ago

Isn't HarmonyOS a fork of Android? I've never seen anything about the apps being half broken - do you have more info?

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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