Startup Minimal Company presented Try Minimal an unusual Minimal Phone smartphone. It was equipped with an E Ink screen, as in e-books, and access to entertainment content was minimized.
Unlike Light Phone and other similar antismartphones, the novelty supports a number of third—party applications necessary for modern life - for example, taxi and navigation services (including in conjunction with Android Auto). You can't watch YouTube on it, but you can stream music through YouTube Music. Music playback from the Plex server via PlexAmp and e-book reading are also supported.
The smartphone runs on MnmlOS, an Android—based firmware adapted for E Ink, from which distracting functions have been removed. Users will also have the opportunity to install a more "smart" version of MnmlOS with support for Google Play and all applications in it — you can choose this at the stage of configuring a new device. It is assumed that this option will be used to download applications that are important for life and work, which are not available in the limited version of the system.
The device is miniature: its dimensions are 72 × 120 × 10 mm, and about a third of the front panel is occupied by a QWERTY keyboard. Inside there is a 4,000 mAh battery, which will last for at least 4 days of battery life. A full charge is achieved in an hour.
So far, the smartphone's filling is still being finalized: at the final stage, only the design and the listed functions are now available. Now the creators are considering the possibility of adding 5G and contactless payments. Users are promised at least 5 years of software support.
It is not possible to buy a Minimal Phone yet. Crowdfunding starts in the first week of February to raise funds for mass production. At a price of about $ 400 (≈35,600 rubles) per smartphone, the creators expect that about 3 thousand pre-orders will be needed to implement the project.