The Minimal Phone sucks...and that makes it GREAT! | Digital Minimalism Device
Okay guys, I have to tell you, uh, the minimal phone sucks and it is the best device I have used in a really long time. Stick around. How do I tell you all about the minimal phone? It is such a delightful surprise. I don't know what my expectations were coming in, but it has exceeded them tenfold. If you're like
me, you've gone through and watched a number of the reviews or first impression videos, unboxing videos that people have done that have the minimal phone. And I kind of found like people were reviewing the minimal phone coming from the world to use a to use a car metaphor or analogy or whatever the correct word is. They come from the world of the Lamborghinis and the Ferraris. And the minimal phone shows up and this is what they're comparing it to. This is what they are reviewing it coming from being so used to these super cars and the minimal phone isn't a super car. It's not even it's the minimal phone isn't even a car. It's a more like
a steamroller that Yeah. If you go into a race in a steamroller, it's going to suck. It is not going to be able to do what you need it to do in the race. However, there are certain situations in which you would certainly choose a steamroller over a Lamborghini or a Ferrari. And I find intentional tech
broadly, maybe digital minimalism. I would say broadly speaking, it's it's a great device for people who are looking to be more intentional in how they use their technology, being more deliberate in the apps that they use, the apps that they choose to spend a lot of time on or not a lot of time on. For me, it has been an excellent excellent fit for how I want to interact with my device, how I how much time I would want or don't want to spend online. So, this is my real world review. I like to go through and
talk about it from a realworld use perspective. The specs, you can find those on their website. You can find some of the more technical analyses, but I wanted to talk about what my use has been like with the minimal phone for the last couple of weeks. For those of you
that saw my first impression video, this one here, the the Panda edition one, I was able to find used. And so I am not the original owner. But it gave me the opportunity to get it in my hands much quicker. So, let's begin. I thought maybe what we could start with is well, actually, let's get the old TPU 3D printed case off of that little bad boy there and could do a little bit of a size comparison rundown.
And voila. You can see a bit of a scale in terms of where smartphones used to be compared to where they kind of are right now. Let's do another and show you guys a little bit more maybe comparison to the new Pixel 9a. You can see here the minimal phone there on the left, the Pixel 9a on the right. Can show you the
backs of them. Oh, one more. the big me highreak pro. So, another comparison there for you guys just so you can kind of see get an idea of size. I keep off centering
that. Sorry. Okay, so put that over there. And last but not least, Mr. Rubik's very own cube. There you go. One of the biggest questions I had coming into this was, what is the battery going to be like? I've used a couple of e- in devices in the past, but coming from those to the minimal phone with its generic e-aper display, I wasn't really sure what to expect. I used it in a couple of different ways. So, I used it in what I would call smartphone mode where I loaded up any app that I might load on any old smartphone, regardless of trying to be intentional about how I used it.
Just, you know, no filters, no limits. But I also used it in what I call Jake mode, which was I went in heavily restricted the background app um permissions. Uh the the battery I I went through and disabled as many ondevice apps as I could to try and stretch the battery life. And I limited myself to really four everyday apps. The phone app, calling obviously the um texting app, which I just left Google messages on there, works fine for me. I used one messaging app, which in my case is Telegram. That's what my family and I
use, and one ebook app, which you guys have heard me on the channel before. I'm a huge fan of Read Era. That's it. Those are the only apps that I had outside of some of the system apps that I couldn't disable without really messing up the device that I that I allowed myself to use. Jake mode lasted from 7:00 a.m. on
Monday until 10:49 a.m. on Thursday. So, 3 days, 3 hours, 49 minutes. Not bad, guys. Now, what that meant was I just unplugged it from the charger, fully charged 100% on that Monday and made it that long. So,
when I switched to smartphone mode and kind of anything that I could do on the phone, I would do on the phone instead of doing it on a computer or a tablet or anything else. And it didn't quite last me 24 hours at night. I just left it on standby. I didn't put it on airplane
mode. I didn't turn it off. I just left it on stand standby throughout the night. That was the case in Jake mode. That was also the case in smartphone mode. So, yeah, going from, you know, 3 days and a few hours to not even a full day of use. And so, how you use it is going to affect your battery life dramatically. But I will say if you use
it minimally, I was getting three plus days. If I would have gone into basic phone mode, which I would say was only calling and texting, I could really see this stretching into the four or the 5day mark. So, let's go through and do a little bit of a walk through of the device itself. So, it does have double tap to wake as you just saw there. We'll
go ahead and swipe up. Shows you the pin entrance screen. Over here on the right side is the power button fingerprint sensor combo. I find it to be very
responsive. As I mentioned in my first impressions, it does a great job. This right here is the home screen that I have set up with the minimal launcher. This is the built-in launcher, and it's okay. You swipe up from the bottom,
it'll take you to your app drawer. And the way they've done it is they've lumped things together in pages, which is actually kind of nice with this e-aper display. It makes it so that you can just scroll through and see a big snapshot of different apps all together alphabetically. Not everyone's cup of tea. And in fact, the minimal launcher is not the one that I have adopted as my daily launcher. I'll show you that in a minute. Spoiler alert, it's Niagara. But
let me show you some of the options that come with the minimal launcher here. I'm going to go ahead and do my screen refresh there over on the left. And just so you guys know, this is with the illumination turned off. So this you're
just seeing the the lighting I have around is what's showing the screen here. So status bar, you can turn that on to where it will show you up at the top your status bar. I actually don't mind that, but I also prefer a little bit more of a minimal approach as well.
So you can see here when we turn that off, it's gone. The only drawback to this is if you swipe from the top, if you do it once, it shows you the status bar and then you do it a second time to show you your tools and your active notifications. If you have that turned on, I can show you here. We go back. You
just have to swipe down once and it brings you what you want to see there. So, different preferences, different people. You can see here you can have it to show date or time or you can have it not show date and time. So, we'll turn that off. We'll turn show status bar
off. We'll have turn show battery indicator off. Why not? Let's change the alignment over to the left side and show you what that all looks like. Bam. Talk
about minimal. So, for some people that's great. Honestly, I could use it this way. Like I said, it just adds a
few too many steps for me getting to the information that I want to have. Let's go down and look at some of the other options. You can see the text size for the launcher. You can set different applications to turn on depending if you swipe from the left or the right side of the screen. Again, some pretty cool options. Also, in case anyone's
wondering, let's go into the quick controls or the quick settings, I think they call it. I have it set on the slow refresh speed. I like the crispness. I like the better picture quality of that. So, I use it 99% of the time. The only
time I switch over to ultra is if I am, for whatever reason, watching a video. I'll show you what that looks like here in a minute. Or using maps. But again, I have found that those are not great experiences. And so, I do that very,
very seldom. So, do a double swipe to get to my control panel here. Go to settings. And you might notice already that this is going to look very, very normal Android. It's because it is just
normal Android. and I I found it to be very great. It is the settings that I am used to. So, let's go down to right
here. We've got apps. Let's scroll down to default. And we're just going to go ahead and change the home app to Niagara. And just like that, here we are. So, for those of you that aren't
familiar with Niagara, you'll see it's very similar to the minimal launcher, which itself, I believe, I could be wrong, correct me in the comments if I am, is a fork or an altered version of O launcher, which is another popular minimal launcher that I like a lot. But Niagara, I have found just gives me really, really good performance on the minimal phone. Let's jump back into the quick settings. Let's do a a refresh. Over here on the lefth hand side, you can see we've got the volume buttons as well as the refresh button, which if you long hold it brings up your quick settings. So from here, you can see you've got different tuning options for the illumination. Right now I have it set on custom, which is just everything is turned off. Now, if we go into night
mode, I don't even know if you guys can tell on the video feed, but that added a little bit of of illumination. And then you can do the cool illumination or you can do the warm illumination. But yeah, at any time you can just come up here, tweak it as you like. Whatever setting fits your needs, you can do it custom that way. Now, one thing that is different between the Minimal Phone and the Hybreak Pro is when you change these quick settings, it does it systemwide as opposed or as compared to the Hybreak Pro. When you change these
presets, it does it on a per app basis, which I actually find is pretty cool. So, I don't usually use, in fact, I don't ever use the hybrid mode. I I've used this phone enough to know if I'm going to be using something that's going to perform better in ultra versus something that's going to perform better in slow. And like I said, most of the time I just use slow. I've gotten used to the way it, you know, the kind of the slow responsiveness, but that's okay. So, let's go and show you guys what an ebook looks like on this generic e-paper panel. This is not e- in though
sometimes it has been listed as such. It is not. It is an e paper display. Okay. So, Read Era Premium is the app that I like to use for all of my e-reading. Um, it has integrated the volume buttons as page turning. So, I can just and I usually do
I'll I'll hold it like this and then use one of my fingers on the other side. But let's zoom in a little bit just so you guys can kind of see the quality. I find it to be quite good and it refreshes quick enough for me reading it that I I haven't really found it to be a problem. Let's go change it to let's just turn it off. And even here you can see I mean the quality is really good. Very responsive. I'm I'm I'm pleasantly
surprised with with how well it does. The minimal phone does not do great when using it in full smartphone mode that I call it when you load all the apps that you would on any typical smartphone. But in my case, wanting an intentional device for using in a more intentional, deliberate way as opposed to giving into distractions or compulsively using it in ways that I don't necessarily want to. This does a great job. So, the fact that it crashes if I try to use a bunch of apps at once, I think is kind of cool and for my needs, it is great. So, let's get a video comparison side by side here. There's that. There's
that. We're on zero. We're on zero. Let's try that again. So you can see a noticeable difference in all of the refresh artifacts. E-aper display, e- in display. Now you might look at this and
think, hey, that's totally watchable. And it is. So if you have a tech addiction, if you are looking for something that isn't even capable of doing dynamic content of any kind, you might want to look away. But obviously
if you see here on the Hybreak Pro, I mean it it's it's almost like a monochrome LCD or OLED. It's it's a very very high quality e- in display. Going to the navigation buttons here. You've
got the back button that's here on the left. You've got the app switcher which is here on the right. And then you've got the home button which they are pretty responsive unless you have it connected to a wireless charger. I did go ahead and test uh from what we learned on Becca's video that she was having some issues of the the navigation buttons not being very super responsive if it was on a wireless charger. I had the same experience. So, something that maybe I mean it doesn't affect me really personally. One, I don't use wireless
chargers and two, when I do use them, I don't I don't use the nav buttons at all, but some people do. And so, take that for what it's worth. The hardware side, it's it's really great. I'll talk about the keyboard a little bit more.
Love the keyboard. I love the keyboard. It is so good. so much better than I expected it to be. Um, I I am a a former BlackBerry user. I I used them for years. I love the BlackBerry keyboard. I've experimented with the Clicks keyboard cases. I would put the keyboard
on the Minimal Phone better than the worst BlackBerry keyboards. Not as great as some of the best BlackBerry keyboards, but ahead of even clicks. I like Clicks. I'm not saying I don't like the Clicks keyboard case, but the minimal phone keyboard is, in my very subjective opinion, better. I I type faster with it. I type more accurately with it. It's needed a couple of tweaks.
Um I've I've put on instead of using the minimal keyboard software or even Gboard. I use the BlackBerry keyboard with a a modified um key mapping file as well. And that has has made for an an an exquisite uh experience. But the keyboard itself from a hardware standpoint, awesome. The built-in
keyboard software takes some getting used to. You you do have to you do have to mess with it a lot to understand all of the little nuances of is the cursor here, is there going to be a capital or not? How do I get symbols that I'm looking for? How do I put in emoji and stuff like that? But even with the built-in software, I f found after a couple of days of using it, I had gotten used to it and it was a joy. I don't know how they did it. I mean, the
buttons are pretty small and I have, you know, big meaty hands, you know, grew up on a cattle ranch. Um, but it the the webbing between it gives just enough space that I can type pretty fast on this. I I'm not going to embarrass myself and do a speed test on the video here, but I think I was able to get this above 50 words per minute just typing normally in in in a speed test. Not really trying to push myself. So, there you have it. I wasn't
expecting to do that, but with with no prep, uh 55 words per minute with a 93% accuracy, definitely not my best. But you can see what it's capable of when you really get going. The only issue that I ran into that I just couldn't get over with the built-in software was I would just outrun it. I would type faster than it could keep up.
With the screen on the e-paper panel, sometimes you would think that you were outpacing things, but it would be actually registering your touches. it was just not able to display it as quickly as you were touching it. The keyboard, however, with the stock software, I could outrun it very, very easily. So, I had to slow down and type
a little bit slower to make sure that every key press registered. Putting on the BlackBerry keyboard software, not an issue at all. So, the um you can see here the key cap geometry is flat. It it
doesn't have the BlackBerry um swoops. Let me see if I can show you here on this on this classic. If you if you look, you can kind of tell that there is a curve to each of the key caps to help you be able to better identify where each key is. You don't have that at all on the minimal phone. It is it is just flat as can be, which again, I thought maybe that would be a problem, but it really hasn't been, guys. It's It's been
a great typing experience from from start to finish for me. Going around, you can see you've got your microphones, you've got your single camera, LED flash, power button, fingerprint scanner. On the bottom, we have the single bottom firing speaker, which I would say good, not great. Not bad. It is good, but it is not great. It is It
does in a pinch, but it is not the loudest, nor is it the clearest I've ever heard, but it's also not the worst I've ever heard. Um, charging port. You've got your headphone jack, which works great. Over on the left here, like I mentioned, you have your volume buttons, as well as your screen refresh button and your shortcut to the quick settings. And then you have your hybrid
SIM card tray. So, I've used it with a SIM card and an SD card with great great results. No complaints there. Build quality is surprisingly great. I I had seen that some people had complained. I kind of had some reservations about it at first until I got it in my hands. It doesn't feel super heavy, but it's also not super light either. It doesn't feel
it. It's got a little bit of some sharp edges, but you get used to it. I don't necessarily think that that's a negative about the device. So, I think at this point, guys, let's talk about some of the issues that I've run into that may be concerning for some folks, and I think it's important for you to know about. I think all of them are fixable fixable with software updates. So, this right here is an example of, as I was explaining earlier, using in smartphone mode just not being a great experience.
You can see here scrolling back and forth, it is super super slow. And then for whatever reason, it won't even open Venmo. Which notably when I used it in Jake mode and I only had a couple of apps active and with everything else either uninstalled or disabled, I never ran into these problems. So, not really sure what's going on there. Another issue I ran into a couple of different times was the dreaded can't make a phone call glitch that you can see here. I
reached out to the Minimal company and they said airplane mode turned on and off should fix this. And if it doesn't, go ahead and buy service from Minimal, which they do have their own phone service, which I thought was an interesting response. Uh, also Google Fi evidently isn't supposed to have a ton of problems. Though, I did get Google Fi unrelated to this and I tested it and while it didn't happen nearly as often, it has happened to me once or twice with Google Fi. So, again, your mileage may
vary. And let's give you a look at the camera. So, here is an outside shot with natural lighting. What is even going on here?
And then a couple inside shots. These all being with the rearfacing camera. And then one just terrifying shot indoors with the front-facing camera of yours truly. So, final thoughts on the Minimal Phone MP01. I am baffled at how Minimal Company for for their debut device were able to create something so well-rounded, so functional, so awesome for people in the intentional tech realm or even all the way down to the digital minimal realm. I think it is a a great device and I found myself even as I've started testing some other devices I still just at at you know after testing a thing or two I find myself putting my SIM right back into the minimal phone.
It's the first time that I have found myself drawn to the more restrictive device and so I have to I really have to give credit to minimal company for designing and creating such a unique but also a uniquely appropriately designed device for me. someone who is wanting to be more intentional and deliberate with how I use technology. We talked about some of the concerns, you know, be be those what they may, I'm still using this as my my my daily driver device, my everyday carry in my pocket device. I've got a lot of exciting things coming for the channel. I've got some even more exciting things that I have planned for the channel. Hopefully, it all it all comes to fruition. But thank you so much
for being part of this adventure with me. Your your your comments, guys. You ask great questions and you leave really great comments and really great feedback. It means a lot to me. The whole point of returning retro is for me to not only document my own antics on this adventure, but having you along the ride with me has has really made a big difference and so I really have to thank you for that. If you're not, please subscribe. There's a lot of great stuff
coming. Um, head on over to Reddit. That's one of the best places to interact with myself and with the rest of the community. I try to post there daily um if not multiple times a day.
Um, not too far down the road, there will be some other opportunities or other ways to to interact with the community. And I'm really excited to to show you guys what that's going to look like. But yeah, thank you so much. We'll see you in the next one.
2025-06-05 07:11
