Okay this one’s a bit of ridiculousness coming out of CES 2020, but there’s a tech startup Cyrcle, who’s developing a smartphone which is… a circle? Yeah well apparently that’s a thing. They showed off their new circular phone at CES, and said they’d be launching the product later this year or in 2021. Keep in mind this has been in development for five years already, so they should be pretty far along at this point. They showed it off to the BBC, and honestly, it looks like trash. I’m sorry, I know it’s still in development, but I can’t get my mind off how bad it looks, and the fact that the form factor is indeed very peculiar.
It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.
But the problem doesn’t seem to be with Cyrcle’s hardware, but rather the software needed to support such a form factor. But with Android 9 and 10, Google has been supporting softwares for non-rectangular phone form factors to support foldables. Even so, I don’t think Google were so accommodating to give in to a circular phone form factor. It’s just weird.
On their site, they have this to say:
A non-rectangular phone for non-rectangular people, the new Cyrcle Phone exists to inspire a world where you can be you — whatever shape you are.
#BeNonRectangular
This is basically no information on why people would even want this, and I can already see this failing. It’s only ‘merit’ if any, is the fact that it’s circle. Oh and It has two headphone jacks, two SIM card trays, and some pretty outdated internals, even if it is running Android 9. What’s up with that ancient ass search bar on the prototype? Sigh, this just looks bad. Am I wrong? Would you buy a circular phone? It doesn’t look practical at all.
I can see this fitting to a very niche, hipster market, but not much else.
