{"video_id":"fp_qLuUMMFriK","title":"This Phone Will Fix You - Minimal Phone","channel":"ShortCircuit","show":"ShortCircuit","published_at":"2025-06-21T19:48:00.034Z","duration_s":1033,"segments":[{"start_s":0.0,"end_s":6.32,"text":"Bad news gamers. Brain rot is real. Social media and their funky algorithms have screwed everything up,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":6.32,"end_s":12.72,"text":"but thankfully some people are starting to realize this and that's why all of these non-smart phones,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":12.72,"end_s":19.76,"text":"dumb phones if you will, minimalist phones have sprouted up with what they say might be a solution","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":19.76,"end_s":25.52,"text":"to that problem. A phone you don't like using. It's counter-intuitive. We've covered a couple","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":25.6,"end_s":30.88,"text":"of these on the channel. I think Linus did the light phone 3 which had a OLED display,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":30.88,"end_s":36.56,"text":"but it made a mistake that a lot of these dumb phone makers are making, which is thinking that in","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":36.56,"end_s":42.88,"text":"order to get people to use their phones less, you need to take away functionality from the actual","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":42.88,"end_s":48.8,"text":"phone. The minimal phone, MP01, takes a different approach. You can do almost everything on this","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":48.8,"end_s":55.12,"text":"phone that you do on a regular smartphone. It just kind of sucks, which might be what you want","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":55.12,"end_s":59.44,"text":"if you're going for a product like this. So let's take a look at it before we take the look at the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":59.44,"end_s":66.48,"text":"phone itself. Let's see what's in the box. We've got a SIM card tool, a only 10 watt charger.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":66.48,"end_s":71.28,"text":"This thing is probably not going to suck up a lot of battery with an e-ink display. I think it's","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":71.28,"end_s":77.52,"text":"only got a 3000 mAh battery, which is pretty small, but also 10 watts is pretty slow these days.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":77.52,"end_s":85.76,"text":"We'll see what the lab's data says about that. Also a USB-C cord about four feet as they tend to be.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":85.76,"end_s":93.6,"text":"And is that it? This is what? There's a skin in the box. Dbrand. This is a Dbrand skin because","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":93.6,"end_s":100.56,"text":"Minimal, they did a collaboration with Dbrand to offer Dbrand skins. Right now, these are only","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":100.56,"end_s":106.32,"text":"available on Minimal's website and not on Dbrand's website. And that is all that's in the box.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":106.8,"end_s":112.8,"text":"Let's move to the device itself. Now you may have noticed this thing has a physical keyboard on the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":112.8,"end_s":117.28,"text":"front. That's because with an e-ink display, you're probably not going to have a great typing","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":117.28,"end_s":121.44,"text":"experience. They're not known for their fast refresh rates and like responsive touch screens.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":121.44,"end_s":128.16,"text":"So having an included hardware keyboard is pretty nice. But let's look at the actual","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":128.16,"end_s":136.72,"text":"rest of the device. So on the front here, we got a 4.3-inch 4x3 aspect ratio e-paper display,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":136.72,"end_s":142.64,"text":"600x800 resolution. We've got a home button, back button, multitasking button. We'll get into that.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":142.64,"end_s":147.44,"text":"On this side, we have the power button, which also doubles as a fingerprint reader. I haven't","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":148.08,"end_s":154.16,"text":"set that up yet, but we will. On the top, we have nothing else except for the mic. One of the mics,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":154.16,"end_s":158.24,"text":"anyway. On the right side of the phone, we have kind of an interesting arrangement here. We have","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":158.24,"end_s":165.28,"text":"the volume up, volume down, and in the middle is a refresh button for the screen. So as we're using","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":165.28,"end_s":171.28,"text":"the screen, it's going to be ghosting a little bit, e-ink, and that'll just do a manual refresh,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":171.28,"end_s":175.52,"text":"like shaking an etch-a-sketch to like clear it or whatever. And then up at the top here,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":175.52,"end_s":182.32,"text":"we have a dual SIM card tray that doubles as a micro SD card slot. You don't see that anymore.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":182.32,"end_s":188.64,"text":"On the bottom, another interesting assortment of ports. We got a USB-C port, speaker, the other mic,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":188.64,"end_s":197.2,"text":"and a headphone jack, 3.5mm. We got micro SD card slots, dual SIM cards, 3.5mm jack, like what?","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":197.2,"end_s":202.24,"text":"This is why it's so nice to cover hardware made by passionate people who are like creating a very","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":202.24,"end_s":206.88,"text":"intentional device instead of just like the big stuff from the big giant tech conglomerates.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":206.88,"end_s":212.16,"text":"They don't care about you. They're trying to rot your brain. On the back, we have a plastic","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":212.72,"end_s":218.88,"text":"pretty fingerprint-magnity surface there, which is kind of too bad, but there's a camera there","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":218.88,"end_s":224.16,"text":"and flash. And also, you can't see it, but I happen to know there's wireless charging support","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":224.16,"end_s":228.0,"text":"in the back here as well. So that's nice to see. And one thing I totally forgot to mention while","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":228.0,"end_s":233.12,"text":"I was looking at the front here is that the selfie camera is way down in the corner here. So it's","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":233.12,"end_s":237.36,"text":"nice to see it has a selfie camera on a like a e-ink phone like this. You might even expect","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":237.36,"end_s":242.96,"text":"that they would just drop that. A strange placement for it. We'll find out if that feels weird.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":242.96,"end_s":246.08,"text":"Okay, let's find out what it's like to use this thing. Let's get","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":246.88,"end_s":253.76,"text":"minimal and do a minimally intrusive segue to our sponsor. All right, let the minimalizing","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":254.48,"end_s":260.48,"text":"begin. Interacting with this is, you know, based on normal kind of swipe gestures like","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":260.48,"end_s":265.44,"text":"any other Android phone. I mean, the difference is that it's running a custom Android scan on","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":265.44,"end_s":273.04,"text":"top of Android 14. We have our home screen here with just words instead of icons, but all of those","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":273.04,"end_s":278.48,"text":"lead to the actual apps. I know that some of the other phones have like custom versions of all","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":278.48,"end_s":282.24,"text":"these apps. Like the light phone three has restrictions. They didn't have Google Maps.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":282.24,"end_s":288.08,"text":"They had their own kind of map service, but this has Maps messages and notes, but notes is Google","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":288.08,"end_s":296.4,"text":"Keep. Maps is Google Maps. And what screen refresh rate am I in? This is, I can barely see anything.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":297.52,"end_s":303.68,"text":"And right away, I feel like we are running into the issue here. You need maps. Quick settings,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":303.68,"end_s":308.0,"text":"though, is something different. So this is, let's familiarize ourselves with these before we get","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":308.0,"end_s":312.48,"text":"too deep, because this is how you're going to customize your experience with this display.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":312.48,"end_s":317.28,"text":"There's a brightness slider up top. LAMPS measured the max brightness on this top slider,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":317.28,"end_s":322.64,"text":"which is like the blue backlight. That goes up to 124 nits. And then you can get with the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":322.64,"end_s":329.84,"text":"orange backlight, it gets even brighter up to 351. That's important. You can customize the kind of","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":329.84,"end_s":335.52,"text":"color and brightness of the display. You can have a max blue backlight and then you can change how","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":335.52,"end_s":340.8,"text":"warm it is. Oh, and this slider down here is the keyboard backlight. And then on here, you got","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":340.8,"end_s":348.88,"text":"some presets. So if you want to quickly make it fire hot, hot, or cold, cold, or more of a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":348.88,"end_s":355.28,"text":"nighttime sleepy mode, I made this custom mode. So you can select custom, move things around,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":355.28,"end_s":359.2,"text":"and then hold. Actually, if I want to make that brighter, and then you hold the wrench,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":359.2,"end_s":364.24,"text":"and that locks in that custom preset. So then you can switch to that again quickly.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":364.24,"end_s":369.04,"text":"And then down at the bottom, we got refresh speed. So each of these sections has this handy little","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":369.04,"end_s":374.8,"text":"info thing you can bring up. You got slow, ultra. And in the middle, you got hybrid,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":374.8,"end_s":380.72,"text":"which tries to adapt to the content you're looking at on screen. Because yes, it's Android.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":380.72,"end_s":387.12,"text":"You can play videos. You can play games if you really want to. You shouldn't want to. But,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":387.12,"end_s":391.68,"text":"you know, I'm not going to judge. I'm going to leave it on slow for now. We can get back to this","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":391.68,"end_s":398.0,"text":"screen by holding the refresh, the manual refresh button, that'll bring it back at any time. So","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":398.0,"end_s":403.28,"text":"that's handy. That's our home screen. Swiping up gets you your full list of apps, which again is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":403.28,"end_s":409.28,"text":"just a regular list. It's not like a grid or anything. And, you know, you got all the apps","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":409.28,"end_s":414.56,"text":"that you could want on here. If you really, really, really, really need a fix for something","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":414.56,"end_s":418.48,"text":"that you can only get on a normal Android phone, you can get it through Google Play. And as you","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":418.48,"end_s":424.08,"text":"can see, you know, even in the slow mode, just scrolling through stuff isn't the worst. Like","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":424.08,"end_s":428.8,"text":"this is more than usable. If you scroll super fast, that might get a little bit confusing.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":428.8,"end_s":435.76,"text":"But if you're reading or reading, it should be fine. Okay, so that's the basics of the display.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":435.76,"end_s":440.64,"text":"Let's check out this keyboard. I'm going to write a little note here. So open Google Keep,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":440.64,"end_s":447.36,"text":"which is called Notes. And wait, what is the part of the plus sign is missing? I wonder what","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":447.36,"end_s":452.72,"text":"that's about. While doing some research on this phone, I saw some people complaining about the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":452.72,"end_s":458.8,"text":"pixel density of this display. It's only 800 by 600. And it's e-paper. It's not even like","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":458.8,"end_s":464.88,"text":"e-ink branded. Like his e-ink is like an entity. It's a third party thing. And they had some","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":464.88,"end_s":472.08,"text":"complaints about how, you know, really small stuff can be kind of hard to see on this display.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":472.08,"end_s":477.28,"text":"But I'm confused about this. Like, why is it just taking out, as I clicked on it, it appeared.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":477.28,"end_s":484.32,"text":"Can I, I can't zoom in on it. So I guess be aware that some UI elements might just not be there,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":484.32,"end_s":489.76,"text":"I guess. That's kind of strange. But anyways, let's type something. Can I do a haiku? Makes","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":491.36,"end_s":500.24,"text":"me love phones. Typing is bliss. Typing is bliss. Yeah, I like that better.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":501.2,"end_s":508.08,"text":"What? That wasn't fun. But that's because I think I just haven't had enough time like getting used","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":508.08,"end_s":513.52,"text":"to this. I will say that the keys are nice and clicky. I did, like if I, if I just like button","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":513.52,"end_s":520.48,"text":"mash for a second and pretend I know how to type. Yeah, that feels good. From what I can see,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":520.48,"end_s":524.8,"text":"people who have been using this phone do like the keyboard. It just will, it'll take some getting","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":524.8,"end_s":529.76,"text":"used to if you haven't used a physical keyboard in a while. I can't stop focusing on this camera","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":529.76,"end_s":535.68,"text":"down there. I need to find out. I need to find out what that's about. Camera. Activate. Okay. Okay,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":535.68,"end_s":540.0,"text":"interesting. We're in the slow refresh rate mode right now because it's like, oh no, we're in the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":540.0,"end_s":546.56,"text":"fast mode. Oh, okay. What does it look like in slow mode? I hit the multitasking button. It's got","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":546.56,"end_s":552.56,"text":"the same old Android, it's got the same old Android multitasking interface, but you can see,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":553.76,"end_s":559.28,"text":"in slow refresh rate mode, this is not, it doesn't want you to do this. It's stopping you.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":559.28,"end_s":563.6,"text":"It's stopping you from, from wanting to use your phone. It's not stopping you from doing the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":563.6,"end_s":569.76,"text":"things you need to do. It's just making you not want to do anything else. Oh, wow. Look at that.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":569.76,"end_s":574.08,"text":"Okay, wait, I'll try to hold this as still as I can. Well, let's take a camera. Let's take a picture","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":574.08,"end_s":579.12,"text":"there. So this is a 16 megapixel camera. It does take in full color. It doesn't take full like","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":579.12,"end_s":585.84,"text":"monochrome pictures or anything. 16 megapixels. It's not going to be amazing. This front selfie","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":585.84,"end_s":591.36,"text":"camera is five megapixels. Does it have the camera shortcut? It does. Okay, double clicking power goes","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":591.36,"end_s":597.28,"text":"to the camera. So that's nice now. And we're back to doing this crazy thing. Sometimes slow mode can't","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":597.28,"end_s":603.52,"text":"handle, you know, high refresh rate in the camera app, but sometimes it can. Okay, in high, in high","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":603.52,"end_s":609.84,"text":"refresh rate mode, yes. It's, it's keeping up. You can, you can use the viewfinder well enough","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":609.84,"end_s":614.56,"text":"to figure out what you're looking at. Okay, let's do a selfie. See, like, I'm, it's funny. I'm","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":614.56,"end_s":622.4,"text":"expecting the camera to be up here, but the camera is down in the corner. Oh, that's a horrible photo.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":622.4,"end_s":626.4,"text":"And I'm sure it'll look even worse in the full color version. But like, you see, like,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":626.4,"end_s":631.68,"text":"that's kind of a fun, like, effect. Maybe I want to look at all my photos like this. Wow. It's a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":631.68,"end_s":636.0,"text":"camera. If you really need to snap a photo of something, you know, they have a camera on there,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":636.0,"end_s":640.4,"text":"but don't pretend like you're going to be posting those to Instagram. Taking a video. This is me","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":640.4,"end_s":648.24,"text":"taking a video. And I guess we can hear what the mic is like on this guy. What do you guys think? Does","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":648.24,"end_s":658.24,"text":"it sound good? And this is what video is like on the other side. Stop that. Wow. This is actually","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":658.24,"end_s":664.8,"text":"looking pretty nice on the actual camera display. I could vlog like this. Let's go to YouTube. I","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":664.8,"end_s":671.2,"text":"opened YouTube and it goes to the shorts right away. Oh, it's an ad for TikTok. What? How ironic.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":671.2,"end_s":676.56,"text":"Hello. You can't hold it. You can't hold the button to go up. You have to manually click it all the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":676.56,"end_s":682.56,"text":"way up. Also, when I hit the volume, the slider is in the middle of the screen. You can't see the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":682.56,"end_s":688.16,"text":"UI properly. How do I? Okay. I can just guess where the playhead was.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":695.04,"end_s":699.36,"text":"You don't need anything more than that. Invite some friends over. Gather around the minimal phone.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":700.08,"end_s":704.0,"text":"But anyways, the speakers are bad. I don't know what you want me to say. They were going to be","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":704.0,"end_s":711.52,"text":"bad always. But again, same theme. You can do it. It's going to suck. You should only use it for a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":711.52,"end_s":716.0,"text":"calculator, calendar, all of these things. You know, it is kind of weird. I didn't talk much at","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":716.0,"end_s":721.2,"text":"the beginning about like the kind of a wonky design of this thing, like in general, like it's got these","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":721.2,"end_s":726.16,"text":"thick bezels and these like really flat sides and it's pretty thick for like a smartphone. That's","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":726.16,"end_s":732.56,"text":"something to consider. It's probably not wider than most phones are these days, but it is kind of","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":732.56,"end_s":739.52,"text":"like a strange design. I think it still fits in your pocket pretty nice. Like it doesn't feel","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":739.52,"end_s":743.28,"text":"weird in your pocket. It feels like a normal phone. But there is a certain element of like when you","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":743.28,"end_s":748.08,"text":"buy a phone like this, you know, you kind of need to know what you're getting into. And what you're","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":748.08,"end_s":757.2,"text":"getting into in terms of performance is not a lot of it. It's got a MediaTek Helio G99. It's a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":757.2,"end_s":762.4,"text":"six nanometer processor that, you know, no one's ever heard of probably, except for you, the person","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":762.4,"end_s":768.64,"text":"who recognized it, you got it. And the base model is 128 gigs of storage with six gigs of memory.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":768.64,"end_s":775.44,"text":"You can upgrade that to eight gigs of memory with 256 gigs of storage. Or like I pointed out earlier,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":775.44,"end_s":779.84,"text":"there's an micro SD card slot. You can just put in a giant micro SD card if you're ever worried","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":779.84,"end_s":786.64,"text":"about storage space on here. And because this does run normal Android and you can do the normal","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":786.64,"end_s":791.52,"text":"Android things on it, we had Labs do their normal testing with it. So unsurprisingly, Labs found","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":791.52,"end_s":797.52,"text":"that the minimal phone, you know, it's just the performance isn't that impressive on Geekbench","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":797.52,"end_s":805.52,"text":"6 multicore. We've got 2000 score compared to 10,000 with the Samsung S25 Ultra and 4500 with","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":805.52,"end_s":810.72,"text":"Pixel 9a. I'm not sure whether they put a weak processor in because they're like, ah, it's an","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":810.72,"end_s":814.4,"text":"ink display, you know, you don't need that many resources or whether that was part of their sort","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":814.4,"end_s":820.8,"text":"of like willful impedance of your ability to use the product. You know, it's a feature, not a bug.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":820.8,"end_s":826.48,"text":"I don't know. Labs did our normal stress test with a gaming benchmark and they wrote no thermal","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":826.48,"end_s":831.92,"text":"throttling, but this device doesn't perform enough compute to generate enough heat to throttle. So","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":831.92,"end_s":836.72,"text":"gotcha, gotcha good. So we've got a bit of an interesting result here with the battery discharge","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":836.72,"end_s":842.16,"text":"test. Typical performance of modern phones in this test. According to Labs, they get usually","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":842.16,"end_s":848.48,"text":"around 16 to 24 hours. This phone, however, on their website, they say that it has a four day","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":848.48,"end_s":854.48,"text":"battery life. But with our battery discharge, which was playing 1080p video streaming from a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":854.48,"end_s":860.64,"text":"Plex server, it lasted four hours and 22 minutes. The whole idea is that you're not going to be","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":860.64,"end_s":865.92,"text":"using this for video playback. From what I've seen, people are using this and it lasts, you know,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":865.92,"end_s":871.28,"text":"like a day or more, which is like, you know, that's what you can expect from modern smartphones.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":871.28,"end_s":875.52,"text":"Charging was also an interesting situation. With the 45 watt charger, it took 144 minutes","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":875.52,"end_s":880.24,"text":"to charge. With the 20 watt charger, it took 107 minutes to charge. You're not going to get like","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":880.24,"end_s":885.2,"text":"the most crazy super quick charging performance out of this thing. One more note from Labs that I","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":885.2,"end_s":889.68,"text":"want to make sure that I get to here. They signed in with their Google account and then when they","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":889.68,"end_s":895.36,"text":"were typing, the password for the Labs account showed up in the auto fill. That's something to maybe","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":895.36,"end_s":902.0,"text":"fix. Minimal phone. Oh, I didn't do the fingerprint reader real quick. What? It won't let me do a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":902.0,"end_s":906.64,"text":"pattern. Oh, it'll let me start from the top. There's just little janky things like that. You","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":906.64,"end_s":911.84,"text":"know, it's not refreshing. So I can't tell whether I'm making progress or not. It's doing little","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":911.84,"end_s":916.88,"text":"vibrates, but normally with this graphic, like it's a fingerprint and it'll like fill out as you","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":916.88,"end_s":923.68,"text":"add more to it. Oh, it worked. Okay. Let's unlock it. Okay. I feel like that was a great little","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":923.68,"end_s":931.2,"text":"microcosm for this phone. You can do the things. Parts of it are going to suck and then other parts","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":931.2,"end_s":935.12,"text":"will be just fine. This situation is just so fascinating to me because here we have these","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":935.12,"end_s":940.08,"text":"like amazing devices in our pockets that can literally do everything. They're Swiss Army knives","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":940.08,"end_s":947.28,"text":"times a million. We have calculators, cameras, sensors, wallets like NFC. This thing has NFC","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":947.28,"end_s":952.32,"text":"is by the way, you can use it like that. We have so many different tools in our phones. What comes","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":952.32,"end_s":958.08,"text":"along with that is like being hooked into these apps that are literally melting our brain and","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":958.16,"end_s":963.92,"text":"especially melting kids brains. We have people kind of trying to address that on like the other side.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":963.92,"end_s":967.76,"text":"They're trying to change social media platforms. They're trying to change regulations, trying to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":967.76,"end_s":972.8,"text":"ban phones and schools. And then the other side, we have people trying to attack it from this","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":972.8,"end_s":978.64,"text":"dimension where they're like, okay, the portals that you use to get to that brain rot stuff.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":978.64,"end_s":983.6,"text":"We have to take this pipe that you go through and shrink it so you can only get your ARM through a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":983.6,"end_s":988.48,"text":"little bit and swipe tic-tac with one finger. It's an analogy. It works. So at the end of the day,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":988.48,"end_s":993.68,"text":"I like that the minimal phone exists and it's actually not as expensive as like a more premium","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":993.68,"end_s":998.4,"text":"kind of device like the light phone 3. I think that goes for around like 600 bucks. This thing is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":998.4,"end_s":1006.32,"text":"starting at $400. I think that's like an early bird price. The upper tier is $500. At $500,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":1006.32,"end_s":1010.96,"text":"you're kind of getting into like, okay, at what point do you decide you can just have some self","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":1010.96,"end_s":1015.2,"text":"control and turn on monochrome on your regular Android device and delete apps that you don't","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":1015.2,"end_s":1019.52,"text":"want, you don't think you should be using all that stuff. So overall, I'm happy that it exists.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":1020.4,"end_s":1025.36,"text":"And I'm happy that you watched this whole video. I like the time that we spend together. How about","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":1025.36,"end_s":1030.16,"text":"we spend some more time? Go check out some of the e-paper, e-ing tablets I've done. I don't know","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":1030.16,"end_s":1032.88,"text":"which one I've done more recently, but they're all good.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0}],"full_text":"Bad news gamers. Brain rot is real. Social media and their funky algorithms have screwed everything up, but thankfully some people are starting to realize this and that's why all of these non-smart phones, dumb phones if you will, minimalist phones have sprouted up with what they say might be a solution to that problem. A phone you don't like using. It's counter-intuitive. We've covered a couple of these on the channel. I think Linus did the light phone 3 which had a OLED display, but it made a mistake that a lot of these dumb phone makers are making, which is thinking that in order to get people to use their phones less, you need to take away functionality from the actual phone. The minimal phone, MP01, takes a different approach. You can do almost everything on this phone that you do on a regular smartphone. It just kind of sucks, which might be what you want if you're going for a product like this. So let's take a look at it before we take the look at the phone itself. Let's see what's in the box. We've got a SIM card tool, a only 10 watt charger. This thing is probably not going to suck up a lot of battery with an e-ink display. I think it's only got a 3000 mAh battery, which is pretty small, but also 10 watts is pretty slow these days. We'll see what the lab's data says about that. Also a USB-C cord about four feet as they tend to be. And is that it? This is what? There's a skin in the box. Dbrand. This is a Dbrand skin because Minimal, they did a collaboration with Dbrand to offer Dbrand skins. Right now, these are only available on Minimal's website and not on Dbrand's website. And that is all that's in the box. Let's move to the device itself. Now you may have noticed this thing has a physical keyboard on the front. That's because with an e-ink display, you're probably not going to have a great typing experience. They're not known for their fast refresh rates and like responsive touch screens. So having an included hardware keyboard is pretty nice. But let's look at the actual rest of the device. So on the front here, we got a 4.3-inch 4x3 aspect ratio e-paper display, 600x800 resolution. We've got a home button, back button, multitasking button. We'll get into that. On this side, we have the power button, which also doubles as a fingerprint reader. I haven't set that up yet, but we will. On the top, we have nothing else except for the mic. One of the mics, anyway. On the right side of the phone, we have kind of an interesting arrangement here. We have the volume up, volume down, and in the middle is a refresh button for the screen. So as we're using the screen, it's going to be ghosting a little bit, e-ink, and that'll just do a manual refresh, like shaking an etch-a-sketch to like clear it or whatever. And then up at the top here, we have a dual SIM card tray that doubles as a micro SD card slot. You don't see that anymore. On the bottom, another interesting assortment of ports. We got a USB-C port, speaker, the other mic, and a headphone jack, 3.5mm. We got micro SD card slots, dual SIM cards, 3.5mm jack, like what? This is why it's so nice to cover hardware made by passionate people who are like creating a very intentional device instead of just like the big stuff from the big giant tech conglomerates. They don't care about you. They're trying to rot your brain. On the back, we have a plastic pretty fingerprint-magnity surface there, which is kind of too bad, but there's a camera there and flash. And also, you can't see it, but I happen to know there's wireless charging support in the back here as well. So that's nice to see. And one thing I totally forgot to mention while I was looking at the front here is that the selfie camera is way down in the corner here. So it's nice to see it has a selfie camera on a like a e-ink phone like this. You might even expect that they would just drop that. A strange placement for it. We'll find out if that feels weird. Okay, let's find out what it's like to use this thing. Let's get minimal and do a minimally intrusive segue to our sponsor. All right, let the minimalizing begin. Interacting with this is, you know, based on normal kind of swipe gestures like any other Android phone. I mean, the difference is that it's running a custom Android scan on top of Android 14. We have our home screen here with just words instead of icons, but all of those lead to the actual apps. I know that some of the other phones have like custom versions of all these apps. Like the light phone three has restrictions. They didn't have Google Maps. They had their own kind of map service, but this has Maps messages and notes, but notes is Google Keep. Maps is Google Maps. And what screen refresh rate am I in? This is, I can barely see anything. And right away, I feel like we are running into the issue here. You need maps. Quick settings, though, is something different. So this is, let's familiarize ourselves with these before we get too deep, because this is how you're going to customize your experience with this display. There's a brightness slider up top. LAMPS measured the max brightness on this top slider, which is like the blue backlight. That goes up to 124 nits. And then you can get with the orange backlight, it gets even brighter up to 351. That's important. You can customize the kind of color and brightness of the display. You can have a max blue backlight and then you can change how warm it is. Oh, and this slider down here is the keyboard backlight. And then on here, you got some presets. So if you want to quickly make it fire hot, hot, or cold, cold, or more of a nighttime sleepy mode, I made this custom mode. So you can select custom, move things around, and then hold. Actually, if I want to make that brighter, and then you hold the wrench, and that locks in that custom preset. So then you can switch to that again quickly. And then down at the bottom, we got refresh speed. So each of these sections has this handy little info thing you can bring up. You got slow, ultra. And in the middle, you got hybrid, which tries to adapt to the content you're looking at on screen. Because yes, it's Android. You can play videos. You can play games if you really want to. You shouldn't want to. But, you know, I'm not going to judge. I'm going to leave it on slow for now. We can get back to this screen by holding the refresh, the manual refresh button, that'll bring it back at any time. So that's handy. That's our home screen. Swiping up gets you your full list of apps, which again is just a regular list. It's not like a grid or anything. And, you know, you got all the apps that you could want on here. If you really, really, really, really need a fix for something that you can only get on a normal Android phone, you can get it through Google Play. And as you can see, you know, even in the slow mode, just scrolling through stuff isn't the worst. Like this is more than usable. If you scroll super fast, that might get a little bit confusing. But if you're reading or reading, it should be fine. Okay, so that's the basics of the display. Let's check out this keyboard. I'm going to write a little note here. So open Google Keep, which is called Notes. And wait, what is the part of the plus sign is missing? I wonder what that's about. While doing some research on this phone, I saw some people complaining about the pixel density of this display. It's only 800 by 600. And it's e-paper. It's not even like e-ink branded. Like his e-ink is like an entity. It's a third party thing. And they had some complaints about how, you know, really small stuff can be kind of hard to see on this display. But I'm confused about this. Like, why is it just taking out, as I clicked on it, it appeared. Can I, I can't zoom in on it. So I guess be aware that some UI elements might just not be there, I guess. That's kind of strange. But anyways, let's type something. Can I do a haiku? Makes me love phones. Typing is bliss. Typing is bliss. Yeah, I like that better. What? That wasn't fun. But that's because I think I just haven't had enough time like getting used to this. I will say that the keys are nice and clicky. I did, like if I, if I just like button mash for a second and pretend I know how to type. Yeah, that feels good. From what I can see, people who have been using this phone do like the keyboard. It just will, it'll take some getting used to if you haven't used a physical keyboard in a while. I can't stop focusing on this camera down there. I need to find out. I need to find out what that's about. Camera. Activate. Okay. Okay, interesting. We're in the slow refresh rate mode right now because it's like, oh no, we're in the fast mode. Oh, okay. What does it look like in slow mode? I hit the multitasking button. It's got the same old Android, it's got the same old Android multitasking interface, but you can see, in slow refresh rate mode, this is not, it doesn't want you to do this. It's stopping you. It's stopping you from, from wanting to use your phone. It's not stopping you from doing the things you need to do. It's just making you not want to do anything else. Oh, wow. Look at that. Okay, wait, I'll try to hold this as still as I can. Well, let's take a camera. Let's take a picture there. So this is a 16 megapixel camera. It does take in full color. It doesn't take full like monochrome pictures or anything. 16 megapixels. It's not going to be amazing. This front selfie camera is five megapixels. Does it have the camera shortcut? It does. Okay, double clicking power goes to the camera. So that's nice now. And we're back to doing this crazy thing. Sometimes slow mode can't handle, you know, high refresh rate in the camera app, but sometimes it can. Okay, in high, in high refresh rate mode, yes. It's, it's keeping up. You can, you can use the viewfinder well enough to figure out what you're looking at. Okay, let's do a selfie. See, like, I'm, it's funny. I'm expecting the camera to be up here, but the camera is down in the corner. Oh, that's a horrible photo. And I'm sure it'll look even worse in the full color version. But like, you see, like, that's kind of a fun, like, effect. Maybe I want to look at all my photos like this. Wow. It's a camera. If you really need to snap a photo of something, you know, they have a camera on there, but don't pretend like you're going to be posting those to Instagram. Taking a video. This is me taking a video. And I guess we can hear what the mic is like on this guy. What do you guys think? Does it sound good? And this is what video is like on the other side. Stop that. Wow. This is actually looking pretty nice on the actual camera display. I could vlog like this. Let's go to YouTube. I opened YouTube and it goes to the shorts right away. Oh, it's an ad for TikTok. What? How ironic. Hello. You can't hold it. You can't hold the button to go up. You have to manually click it all the way up. Also, when I hit the volume, the slider is in the middle of the screen. You can't see the UI properly. How do I? Okay. I can just guess where the playhead was. You don't need anything more than that. Invite some friends over. Gather around the minimal phone. But anyways, the speakers are bad. I don't know what you want me to say. They were going to be bad always. But again, same theme. You can do it. It's going to suck. You should only use it for a calculator, calendar, all of these things. You know, it is kind of weird. I didn't talk much at the beginning about like the kind of a wonky design of this thing, like in general, like it's got these thick bezels and these like really flat sides and it's pretty thick for like a smartphone. That's something to consider. It's probably not wider than most phones are these days, but it is kind of like a strange design. I think it still fits in your pocket pretty nice. Like it doesn't feel weird in your pocket. It feels like a normal phone. But there is a certain element of like when you buy a phone like this, you know, you kind of need to know what you're getting into. And what you're getting into in terms of performance is not a lot of it. It's got a MediaTek Helio G99. It's a six nanometer processor that, you know, no one's ever heard of probably, except for you, the person who recognized it, you got it. And the base model is 128 gigs of storage with six gigs of memory. You can upgrade that to eight gigs of memory with 256 gigs of storage. Or like I pointed out earlier, there's an micro SD card slot. You can just put in a giant micro SD card if you're ever worried about storage space on here. And because this does run normal Android and you can do the normal Android things on it, we had Labs do their normal testing with it. So unsurprisingly, Labs found that the minimal phone, you know, it's just the performance isn't that impressive on Geekbench 6 multicore. We've got 2000 score compared to 10,000 with the Samsung S25 Ultra and 4500 with Pixel 9a. I'm not sure whether they put a weak processor in because they're like, ah, it's an ink display, you know, you don't need that many resources or whether that was part of their sort of like willful impedance of your ability to use the product. You know, it's a feature, not a bug. I don't know. Labs did our normal stress test with a gaming benchmark and they wrote no thermal throttling, but this device doesn't perform enough compute to generate enough heat to throttle. So gotcha, gotcha good. So we've got a bit of an interesting result here with the battery discharge test. Typical performance of modern phones in this test. According to Labs, they get usually around 16 to 24 hours. This phone, however, on their website, they say that it has a four day battery life. But with our battery discharge, which was playing 1080p video streaming from a Plex server, it lasted four hours and 22 minutes. The whole idea is that you're not going to be using this for video playback. From what I've seen, people are using this and it lasts, you know, like a day or more, which is like, you know, that's what you can expect from modern smartphones. Charging was also an interesting situation. With the 45 watt charger, it took 144 minutes to charge. With the 20 watt charger, it took 107 minutes to charge. You're not going to get like the most crazy super quick charging performance out of this thing. One more note from Labs that I want to make sure that I get to here. They signed in with their Google account and then when they were typing, the password for the Labs account showed up in the auto fill. That's something to maybe fix. Minimal phone. Oh, I didn't do the fingerprint reader real quick. What? It won't let me do a pattern. Oh, it'll let me start from the top. There's just little janky things like that. You know, it's not refreshing. So I can't tell whether I'm making progress or not. It's doing little vibrates, but normally with this graphic, like it's a fingerprint and it'll like fill out as you add more to it. Oh, it worked. Okay. Let's unlock it. Okay. I feel like that was a great little microcosm for this phone. You can do the things. Parts of it are going to suck and then other parts will be just fine. This situation is just so fascinating to me because here we have these like amazing devices in our pockets that can literally do everything. They're Swiss Army knives times a million. We have calculators, cameras, sensors, wallets like NFC. This thing has NFC is by the way, you can use it like that. We have so many different tools in our phones. What comes along with that is like being hooked into these apps that are literally melting our brain and especially melting kids brains. We have people kind of trying to address that on like the other side. They're trying to change social media platforms. They're trying to change regulations, trying to ban phones and schools. And then the other side, we have people trying to attack it from this dimension where they're like, okay, the portals that you use to get to that brain rot stuff. We have to take this pipe that you go through and shrink it so you can only get your ARM through a little bit and swipe tic-tac with one finger. It's an analogy. It works. So at the end of the day, I like that the minimal phone exists and it's actually not as expensive as like a more premium kind of device like the light phone 3. I think that goes for around like 600 bucks. This thing is starting at $400. I think that's like an early bird price. The upper tier is $500. At $500, you're kind of getting into like, okay, at what point do you decide you can just have some self control and turn on monochrome on your regular Android device and delete apps that you don't want, you don't think you should be using all that stuff. So overall, I'm happy that it exists. And I'm happy that you watched this whole video. I like the time that we spend together. How about we spend some more time? Go check out some of the e-paper, e-ing tablets I've done. I don't know which one I've done more recently, but they're all good."}