“E-Ink technology is in service for obvious reasons” – Kommersant FM

Kommersant FM columnist Alexander Levi talks about how the creators see a gadget that is designed to help users concentrate on real communication.

Smartphones today are capable of a lot. Unfortunately, this often means that we spend too much time in contact with them, that is, we devote less of ourselves to truly important things, say the developers of the Minimal Phone gadget. The concept of this device is a movement towards the intelligent use of technology. Users are encouraged to simplify their interaction with the phone and concentrate on real communication.

What does the “pill” for digital addiction look like? Externally, Minimal Phone resembles the illegitimate child of Amazon Kindle and BlackBerry – it has a keyboard, not a virtual one on the display, but a separate block. It, according to the creators, is needed for accurate typing, for effective and convenient writing of email and ideal and fast communication without delays. And it’s not a joke.

Any of your arguments about the habit of virtual buttons or alternatives like the Swype keyboard will be crushed by the reinforced concrete argument of the Minimal Phone developers. A separate keyboard block is not needed for beauty or pretentiousness – the reason is purely practical. The fact is that the engineers chose an E-Ink display as the screen, and with the refresh rate of electronic paper, a virtual keyboard is more of a gamble than a proven solution.

In turn, E-Ink technology has found itself in service for obvious reasons. This is gentle on the user’s eyes, reduces strain on them and has a healthier effect on sleep when it comes to using the device at night. With such a screen, doomscrolling social networks is no longer so attractive, which clearly fits into the concept of the new product.

From the point of view of autonomy, e-ink solutions are the most attractive, especially since the Minimal Phone battery capacity is 4000 mAh. This is enough for about four days of work, the creators calculated. At the same time, you can charge the device up to 80% in just half an hour. After the same amount of time, the battery will be fully charged.

Minimal Phone runs on its own operating system, MnmlOS. Whether there will be an app store and how their compliance with the concepts of moderation and minimalism will be determined is unknown. On the renders, in addition to the obviously pre-installed system applications such as weather, calls, messages, notes, calendar and to-do list, there is the Uber service.

Sales of the Minimal Phone have not yet begun; its price is unknown. The vendor collects applications from those interested. My queue number, for example, is 14223.