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when I heard we had a chance to look at this I had to come out of retirement

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from behind the camera and check it out this is the essential phone PH2 project

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gem I'm not quite sure but when it was announced in 2019 I had to have it and 6

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years later it's here in my hands and this moment is better than I ever

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could have imagined that's right this is a phone it may look like a remote but on

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the front here we have a 5.3 in OLED

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screen once it boots on you'll see it is crazy and on the back this weird

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iridescent pink it's definitely flashy

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but a little bit of a fingerprint magnet uh especially if you have gamer fingers

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like me but oh my goodness is this

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holdable it's definitely meant for one hand I can't see many people typing with

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two but this is the ultimate in

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portability in phones I don't know if that makes it usable but you can carry

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it with you getting right into design we have our side buttons here of course a

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power button and volume rocker nothing

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on the top or the left side other than our SIM tray and on the bottom a USBC

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Port it does have a earpiece speaker at the top here for talking on calls and it

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looks like maybe there's a speaker down at the bottom here but it doesn't have a great like the top it feels solid uh

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which does not bode well for good audio but we'll find out soon on the back we

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we have our main 12 megapix shooter and

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a divot which is where the fingerprint scanner would have gone but it's not

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there because this is not actually a real phone it's just a prototype it was

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announced in October of 2019 but unfortunately essential shut down in

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February of 2020 so this never actually got released so there are things just

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missing and though there are a lot on eBay shout out to Asha for sending this

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working one they didn't actually get a completed version which I think is a

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shame because this is one heck of a

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design Essentials always been known for their design I mean they released just

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one phone but it was known for its design it was actually the first phone

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with a notch which is cool I don't know it was pretty controversial at the time

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but I was actually an early adopter and got it on launch Day in Canada because I

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thought it was incredible and let me tell you I would have been here for day

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one too but this isn't just a crazy look for the sake of being crazy it is very

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comfortable in the hand I have meaty hands albeit kind of average size and I

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find it pretty comfortable of course reaching up to the top is not amazing

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but I mean I'm rocking the OnePlus open right now and it's larger uh and the

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corners are even harder to reach so this is not too bad of course you're going to

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be using this one-handed most of the time so what is the software like well

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let me show you after a word from our sponsor Nixie their flexi controller is

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not the kind of one you would want to pass off to a friend when they come over

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to game nope you'll want to keep this one all to yourself it's got hall effect

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joysticks Hall sensing analog triggers with less than 0.1 mm of sensing

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distance and a 6axis gyroscope but the

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most unique feature is that some of the buttons can actually be swapped around

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so you can use the layout that you're most familiar with it's also got near

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Universal compatibility with Bluetooth a 2.4 GHz dongle and wired connection

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options so don't wait pick one up for yourself today using our Link in the

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video description all right we're in and

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this is pretty crazy it looks a little bit like a wind Windows phone like it's

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kind of tile based a lot of these don't work so I can't click on them and show

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you but when you hold on these apps you can change the sizes to make it larger

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smaller or really customize it to look however you want and it's cool I really

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like how they use the space on such a thin phone there's no after or anything

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like that things just get plopped on your screen you scroll through them which isn't the most convenient but I'll

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go through the pain just to have it look cool if someone sits next to on the bus

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they're looking another kind of pain point is that since it's never released

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it doesn't have Google Play servic so even if this OS did work perfectly a lot

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of the apps don't run but we did load a couple things to see how they work

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including a different launcher so we have Niagara launcher on here if you

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don't know what Niagara launcher is it's just a third party launcher that you can

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install on pretty much any phone but on this one it looks pretty slick you can

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drag your finger out see all the different apps and launch them through here which is a little bit more

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convenient than just kind of searching by scrolling down your home screen it's

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pretty impressive how it can adjust to such a weird screen resolution and

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talking about that that let's talk about specs of the device there isn't a whole

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lot about this online because it never came out but I found an app that'll kind

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of tell us everything we need to know like I mentioned this is a 5.3 in Ultra

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tall OLED screen it's 2160 by 560 I

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don't know what aspect ratio that is but it's a weird one I'm sure and it's 90 HZ

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which you can't see but uh it does feel great and powering this we have the AR

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Arch 64 revision 14 and the GPU is at

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adreno 618 and in this little body is a

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1,000 Mah hour or 4.1 wat hour battery I

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haven't been using it a ton today I did some setting up beforehand but we're at

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67% battery nice thing about a small screen and an OLED you shouldn't need as

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big of a battery to last you all day you have 4 gigs of RAM in 64 gigs of storage

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and it's running Android 10 which was the latest at the time is it the most

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powerful thing not by these day standards but we do have some apps on

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here to test out later one weird thing I mentioned before is the name is this the

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PH2 or the phone 2 or is it project gem

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well it's not even really super clear in the uh Hardware info here it has the

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device name as PH2 but then says that the device is the jam uh I guess it was

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never really solidified and that's kind of a shame uh it would be great to have

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seen what they would have released had they stayed open I know that before they

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shut down completely they released a bunch of designs and reders for future

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phones including another PH2 and a ph3

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and this the project gem so it seems like they had some high Ambitions even

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though it ultimately didn't work it all right let's check out the camera I'm

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going to pull up the search here and you'll see the keyboard I don't know

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what to think of it honestly it's very pretty but I automatically want to start

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tilting the phone to have it be like a normal keyboard which this is uh uh not

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you're not meant to do that but it really shows that this is supposed to be a one-handed phone because everything's

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in reach of your thumb uh so if I search

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camera uhhuh uh not bad you can use

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Swipe but uh it's a little hard to get used to and it doesn't seem like it's

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finalized to give you the most accurate answers unless I really am trying to

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type Caterers or Cadets this is

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ridiculous I do like the uh kind of iPhone inspired layout but it's really

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hard to see what's going on here I haven't mentioned it yet but on the

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front is a whole punch camera that's 13 megapixels and this is video from it uh

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you know what in the little preview it doesn't look awful I do look maybe a

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little bit different uh color than normal but not not too bad the photo

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doesn't look awful though remembering that this phone is effectively 5 and A2

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years old it's not bad all right so you

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can't rotate The View when looking at photos in the photo app but maybe you

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can in YouTube uh you know maybe it'll take up this whole screen I don't know I

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got to say even getting to the video you can see a lot of different content here

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this is convenient but how about a video itself uh that's definitely a way to

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watch a video you know you can scroll it'd be convenient for going through the comments ments but can I rotate oh baby

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here we go oh yeah that's more like it you can hold it comfortably you're not

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covering the content and it looks pretty good it does have hdr10 and hlg support

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uh and it's 320 DPI so even though it's tiny it still looks really sharp which

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is impressive how does it sound it's super 35 which is very standard for

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Cinema that is rough it is only coming out of the earpiece not the bottom at

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all so it's very uneven I guess let's see what crab Rave sounds like but I am

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not hopeful that this has any sort of Base

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whatsoever it could be worse it would be challenging but it could be worse this

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is pretty bad but I don't have a butt it really just doesn't sound good and it

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doesn't have a headphone jack so you're you're really stuck with it I got to say this thing is light too it feels like an

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Apple TV remote or something like that but let's weigh it and see

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wow 101 G that compared to the OnePlus

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open that I use daily is probably a huge

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difference yeah 251 G this is a lot easier to carry and

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fits in your pocket way easier look at

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this it still might not fit in women's Pockets but it has a better chance as an

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in between and iPhone 16 weighs about 170 G so this thing is quite light but

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with a shape like this it's the ult timate Doom scroll phone so let's pull

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up uh Twitter and see what it actually looks like to scroll your life away oh

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yeah this this is life this is sweet you

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fit so much info on there and I'm somebody who loves setting their font to

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Tiny so it is perfect for me

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look I can almost read that LeBron James stat I would show you other social

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medias but Google Play services doesn't work and it's rooted so a lot of apps

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don't work but what does work is Kindle so if you're a big reader again maybe

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this is perfect for you a little small but surprisingly readable you know what

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it's not bad but I know why you're here you want me to game on it I've been

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playing a lot of batra recently so I had to load it up on here and see if it

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works as a card game that requires a bit of vertical space I don't know how it's

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going to work since it forces landscape on this phone already the fact that it

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somehow adapts to this is so cool oh oh

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man this is Tiny

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you can see that it is using the whole space but the actual play area clearly

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has some boundaries and I don't know if this going to be super

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playable here we

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go that's right my addiction is fed

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batro confirmed works on the project gem

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but what about a more vertical game Subway Surfers that's right the game

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that you always see on Tik toks while someone's talking on a podcast cast

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should be perfect for this I think I've never really played

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before Oh baby this is it just enough this is all

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you need either way this works

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great imagine you're in an Uber and you look and their phone is showing this as

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the map that is so

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tiny I guess all you need to know is what's in front of you right it should

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be fine okay you know what

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that's actually pretty good I don't know if this is the map that would have come

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on the phone out of the box or if this is a third party app that somehow

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adjusted to the screen size but this is

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sweet one thing I haven't tried yet is typing horizontally oh I don't think

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that's the way to do it I'm guessing the idea is that you would still use this

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one-handed cuz otherwise typing two-handed is kind of a

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nightmare yeah if you're left-handed though I guess don't buy this phone

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overall though I'm very very impressed for a phone that never released or

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probably got very far in development this works surprisingly well and as this

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new dumb phone Trend kind of surges on with things like the light phone the

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daylight computers even the remarkable tablets this could have been a great

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Contender for still having a smartphone while having your usage minimized I want

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more weird phones I've been an HTC Hero user which had a huge chin I had the

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iPhone 10 the day it launched I had the essential phone 1 and and I want this so

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badly and if entral could have just held it together a little bit longer I think

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they actually could have had a hit on their hands but as it is today it's just

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a cool relic of what could have been you know what else is a relic to the past

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the Nokia 3210 that line has checked out a while back so why don't you check out

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that video and before you go like comment and subscribe and let us know if

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we should try to get our hands on more prototypes and weird phones and let us

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know what you think would you have gotten this phone I had been waiting for

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this forever and I want to know if this is something that you would have considered