I would never dream of buying this, but I absolutely love how phone companies are trying to innovate again beyond foldables.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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Welcome to the phone innovation center! We've got
- Foldable
- "AI"
- Way too big camera
- Phone, but oddly shaped
- Your OS but worse
Oh your new phone can fold in half and it's got a 600MP camera and it has a 37Ah battery that lasts for 3 days even when it's churning on its internal navel-gazing AI 24/7? That's greaaaaat.
But I want crazy shit!
I want a row of clicky buttons down one side as direct shortcuts to apps.
I want a TV tuner and a pull-out antenna so I can watch Judge Judy serve some proper smackdown to some entitled neighborhood dispute when I'm on the bus, nearly poking someone's eye out when we hit a pothole.
I want a phone with a laser pointer and an IR blaster (again).
I want a phone that looks like the palmtops of old, with a clamshell case and a little hardware chicklet keyboard and it runs on AA's, except it's also a phone.
I want a phone that slots into a boom box and fully controls and plays tapes with auto-reverse.
I want a phone that's a drone, throw it in the air and it takes group photos.
I want a phone that has gyros and can self-balance on one of it's corners, and do little party tricks, and can hop along behind you if you leave it behind somewhere.
I want a phone that's also a mini 1080p laser projector.
I want its calculator to also have an I Ching mode and print "a suffusion of yellow" instead of any answer greater than 4.
Where's all the FUN stuff?
I want a phone that's also a mini 1080p laser projector.
My phone is also a 720p projector. The new models project in 2K and have full ~~prism~~ ~~polygon~~ trapezoidal auto adjustment, not just keystone like my phone.
Also, there's an infrared camera and a 1200 lumen camping light. But only an 11Ah battery... But it's got the IR blaster! Only two clicky buttons, and one is dedicated to the camping light.
No pull out antenna, but it would be really weird to put a pull-out UHF antenna on anything when modern digital antennas are so much more compact and efficient.
This phone also has literally the worst camera I've seen on a phone since my Nexus 6 Shamu. But there's an active cooling fan built into the phone, and the whole thing is so heavy that my toes still hurt from when I dropped it on them over 3 hours ago.
Oh man that's sweeeeet. This is the kinda shit I want to see at trade shows , not yet another iteration of "world's thinnest phone with a chunky camera bulge".
let me guess, Ulefone, Doogee, or Oukitel?
Almost. My previous smart brick was the Ulefone Power Armor 13 with the endoscope. This one is the Unihertz 8849 Tank 4 Pro. The new Tank 5 has a 2K projector.
I just needed to get off of iPhone and couldn't afford the phone that I wanted, so I got something within my budget with the best gimmick so that I'd find some joy in it.
ah damn and i wanted to guess unihertz but decided not to lol. i was thinking about getting a brick like that but their custom ROM support (or lack thereof) puts me off. is the stock OS bearable on your unihertz?
Bearable, but only barely. It's still significantly better than iPhone, but I honestly nearly bricked my phone the first weekend I got it because I was trying to root it and put it into a red state boot loop. In the end, I had to run a full firmware upgrade and reformat the entire phone, manually add the IMEI/MEID, recalibrate the gyroscope, and refocus the projector.
When I have some more time, I'll probably try it again. If you decide to get a Unihertz and try rooting it but get stuck, send me a message. I documented everything that I tried and what eventually worked, so I might at least be able to help you restore functionality.
aye, thanks!
I miss my Xperia Play, slider with a controller built in was sick AF.
It's only Chinese companies though, everyone else only make incremental changes.
Clicks is quite promising. I believe there was also an interesting Korean phone not too long ago.
I think my point still stands, outside of China there's one company that's trying something different. I think the interesting phone you were talking about was the LG wing? LG has since exited the industry. The only Korean brand still making phones is Samsung.
Nevermind, it was a Chinese brand lol. I was thinking of iKKO's phone.
China is also more innovative at AI, the deepseek project releases the software for the models while american companies just sit on their models requiring that you pay them and only them to use them. The Open-Weight AIs, while inferior, are better for human development as a whole.
AI can fuck off
The AI industry can. AI has been used for decades and it has good use if used responsibly. The current applications of AI are really dumb.
That's kind of fun. I'm sure it will probably be a decent competitor to the DJI Pocket lineup in the Chinese market at least, but it looks a bit silly (which is good! more silly phones please!)
And of course, you have the buzzwords 200MP, titanium, and probably AI somewhere in there too
I just don't get how it's supposed to go in a pocket with that giant gimbal on it.
Yeah, there's probably a reason why they don't have any side-profile shots with the gimbal stored away.
Judging from the available pictures in the article, I assume it will be as thick as the ultra phones from vivo, oppo, etc with their camera mega island / stove top. So as thick as the phone's thinnest side.