Hong Kong

While the early adopters struggle to decide between buying a superphone or a phablet, there are still customers wanting less and less functionality, if one exhibitor at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair is to believed. While the cruel among us may saddle these ‘feature phones’ with the retconned handle ‘dumbphone’, perhaps a better moniker would be ‘smallphone’:

Feature phones on show at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair.
Feature phones on show at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair.

We’ve all seen form factors like most of these, in films from the 1990s, in our grandparents’ sideboards and in the hands of the most hip hipsters, but what of the handset on the far left? Not much bigger than a USB flash drive, this is a fully fledged mobile phone, with a 0-9 keypad, the old red and green phone buttons for picking up and rejecting calls and a 1.5 inch screen. It takes a Micro SIM card is intended to live lodged in the ear canal of the user.

The ultimate phone for the luddite or an ingenious conversation starter? You be the judge!

A close up look at the most featury of feature phones, with a traditional dumbphone next to it for scale.
A close up look at the most featurey of feature phones, with a traditional dumbphone next to it for scale.