Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Cool smartphones that never got released!”.
In 2021, we’re becoming used to seeing funky smartphones with new innovative designs. Foldables, for example, look awesome and are changing the way we think about smartphone design. But these things can take a lot of time to develop and there’s a lot that goes on before the public gets to see the finished product. Part of this process is the prototyping stage where phone makers will create models, sometimes working ones, to evaluate their efforts and see if they need to make any changes going forward. Some of these models never actually make it past the prototyping stage. Today, we’re going to have a look at them, so here are some intriguing smartphones that never got released essential phone 2. essential only released a single phone, the 2017 ph-1. It was a really cool design with titanium and polished ceramic build materials and minimal bezels. With a tiny display notch, in fact, it was one of the first display notches ever beating even apple to it.
On the software side, it was pretty buggy early on, especially in the camera department, but the company showed promise by delivering many software updates to try and improve the device. There were at least two follow-up devices in the pipeline after the original, but of course, we never saw them on the market, the first of which was seemingly a second gen, ph one with some tweaks, but mostly similar design language. The second, though, looked very intriguing. It was a very tall and narrow device with metallic colors and a very strange form factor.
It looked a bit like a tv remote if anything, whether the form factor worked, ergonomically or even with software, will likely never be known. However, carl pays nothing company just bought essential, which includes trademarks and the logo. We don’t know if this means that nothing will be entering the smartphone game and possibly bringing back the essential name to create a successor to the ph1, but it seems like a possibility. Maybe we will, after all, see a ph2 google’s project aura.
I’M sure you all remember this. One google’s 2013 project ira was a simplistic modular smartphone that seemed to use generic looking at modules that you’d swap out on your smartphone to match your needs. This could be a more powerful camera, a bigger battery or a bigger speaker. Something like that.
The hugely ambitious project was unfortunately canned by google in 2016.. Reuters reported at the time that it was due to google’s desire to streamline its hardware efforts, which actually makes a lot of sense, because it would be around this time that google’s pixel brand would start to develop, which is of course, a huge brand. Today, modular smartphones did become a thing, but they weren’t quite the same. You know we had lg’s g5 with its weird battery compartment modules and, of course, we got motorola’s moto mod system. Sure, with that system, you could put on a different camera, a bigger battery and a speaker module, but it wasn’t quite the same simplicity that project are kind of promised htc pixel 2 xl.
For those who don’t know the pixel 2 and the 2xl were originally made by htc and lg respectively in 2017, but as it turns out, htc was actually meant to develop both phones. A video on youtube surfaced just a couple of weeks ago, showing the supposed htc pixel 2 xl prototype. It doesn’t look that far off what we got, at least from the back, the camera, the visor and the fingerprint scanner all resided where they would on the smaller pixel 2 anyway. But seeing this thing from the front yeah, i’m rather glad we didn’t actually get this one, because those bezels are huge and would not have worked nearly as well as the nice sleek design that we got on the pixel 2 xl microsoft, lumia mclaren. You might laugh now, but in 2014 microsoft’s windows phone actually looked like a platform that could compete with ios and google’s android.
There were plenty of great devices like the lumia 930 and the 1520. There was, however, an intriguing cancelled device that was meant to be revealed in the second half of 2014 codenamed mclaren, michael fisher and windows. Central did a hands-on with a near final unit back in 2016. That actually did show some promise. The phone featured hover touch functionality, which enabled you to preview items on the screen by moving your finger over them, it’s kind of like what we got with apple’s 3d touch with the iphone 6s only that was a hard press instead of a hover. There was also grip detection like what we saw with the pixel 2 3 and 4 devices, where you could squeeze to activate google assistant pretty ahead of the curve.
Nokia n95 reboot. There’S no denying that the nokia n95 was an iconic mobile phone. It came with a then huge, eight gigabytes of storage, a two-way sliding design and a selfie camera. It was stacked hmd.
The nokia licensee did toy with a few slider designs to create a few prototypes of a potential reboot of the legendary device, but ultimately decided against it. Michael fisher again went hands on with this one, with a design that had a slightly different sliding mechanism. With a couple of selfie cameras, which would allow for the uninterrupted display in a way kind of like what we got with the meme mix, 3, eventually samsung project valley, samsung’s, project valley, smartphone, seemed to follow a similar form factor to zte’s axon m, which did actually Launch back in 2017 with a front main display and a rear display that could be unfolded to create a dual screen layout for added screen. Real estate and productivity. Images of the prototype were uploaded to weibo by a twitter user in 2018, which showed the project value device in the flesh. It didn’t look the most ergonomic, nor pretty thanks to the chunky profile and large bezels by today’s standards. Samsung’S recent foldables are a far cry from this beast, though, saying that there are devices like the microsoft surface, geo and lg’s velvet case setup to kind of mimic. The project valley layout, sony ericsson, xperia, play 2.
in 2011. Sony launched the xperia play, which even these days is still regarded as a gaming smartphone that got things right. It had slide out controls with shoulder buttons and then huge screen to body ratio. We never got a follow-up to the xperia play, but it turns out. There was actually one in development. In september 2020, an xda member based in shenzhen posted images showing the xperia play 2 prototype. The device seems to be similar in form factor to the original, but with a slightly tweaked control allow and a mysterious 3d button towards the middle of the controller we’d love to see a remake of the xperia play, if only to spice up the gaming phone market. A little more xiaomi mix alpha. This is definitely the most high profile sort of cancelled smartphone on this list, mainly because xiaomi actually gave it to a couple of youtubers to make youtube. Videos on xiaomi revealed the device in 2019, which featured an almost full wrap-around display with a strip along the back being reserved for the cameras. It wasn’t just extremely pretty. The internals were beastly with a then flagship chipset 512 gigs of storage, 108 megapixel camera and 40 watt fast charging.
The device was an absolute unit, however, like with all the other devices on this list, there was an internal motion to cancel the project. The ceo confirmed in 2020 that it abandoned plans to mass produce the me mix alpha owing to manufacturing complexities. You don’t say it’s probably for the best that we didn’t get this device.
I mean ergonomically. It didn’t look all that sound and trying to keep the thing from smashing and getting scratches all over. It looks like it would be a complete nightmare. So then that’s our list of fascinating smartphones that never actually made it to the mainstream. I want to thank hadley simons for writing the original article.
If you want to check that out, there will be a link in the top of the video description where you can check out the article and read the original whilst you’re down there. Please do hit like and subscribe to never miss a video like this one and in the comments. Let us know if there are any smartphones we missed and which of these smartphones. You would actually have liked to use, because personally, i kind of like that xperia play too idea.
Anyway, i’ve been ryan thomas with android authority and i’ll catch. You later .