If you’re a South African of a certain age, you might recall a time — before the iPhone — when cellular phones were more likely to shrink in size with each iteration, rather than the apprentice tablets we lug around today.
If you’ve ever thought about those days with longing, it is worth paying attention to a device being billed as the “world’s thinnest phone”. It’s also one of the smallest, taking up about the same area as a credit card. Meet the Kyocera KY-01L.
This little phone isn’t the best device you’re ever going to see in terms of smartphone specs. It eschews OLED and even LCD displays in favour of a monochrome e-paper screen, the panel is just 2.8in, and the whole device is just 91 x 55mm while it clocks in at just 5.3mm thick (the Moto Z is 0.1mm thinner but… camera bump). It could conceivably live in your wallet, provided you remember not to sit down on it, and its 47g weight means you probably wouldn’t notice if you did. If not for that sad crunching noise, like you just sat on a small bird.
But it has LTE and a web browser, as well as a mighty 380mAh battery. No, we haven’t forgotten a zero. It’s got the same sort of battery you might find in a smartwatch.
You can see the KY-01L in action in the video above, where it looks like a dinky little Kindle that also happens to make phone calls. And if you’re wondering about the chosen language for the device, that’s because the Kyocera KY-01L is only slated for launch in Japan for the moment. It’s set to cost around R4,300 when it debuts next month, which might be a lot to ask for a phone that can’t download apps and doesn’t have a camera. But that’s the price you pay for a phone that, again, could probably fit in your wallet.
Source: The Verge