Punkt MP01 Mobile Phone | Hacker News Reader

Punkt MP01 Mobile Phone

punkt.ch

23 pointsandor37 comments

Things like this interest me because I would like to see some diversity in the mobile phone design space ... in 2015, there is only one design, the design of the original iphone. It's iterated on and refined, but it's still just a monolithic touchscreen slab.

So this is interesting, but also frustrating - in the last few years there have been several successors to the MOTO FONE (or MOTO F3) which was the ultimate candybar phone.[1][2] There are the two Nokia phones (220 and 222) and Nokia 130.

And now there is this. And the question is, why are these so thick ? This (and the modern Nokia candybars) are basically phones that do nothing ... and yet they are 12, 13, and in the case of this punkt phone, 14.5 (!) mm thick.

If the F3 could do it in 9.1mm, and if modern smartphones can do everything they do in even less, then why aren't these "dumbphones" <9mm thick ?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone

[2] 114x47x9 mm in size

And (at least in my opinion) surprising expensive!

I kind of like the design for design sake, but definitely think it could use a diet. I would excuse the thickness and weight if this was a cheap phone. I would by this in a heartbeat for $100 USD but at almost $300 forget it.

For that size, they could have put in a much larger battery.

Or at least used the battery bit more efficiently. While I have very little trust in vendor-provided numbers, for example Nokia 222 is rated with 696 hours of standby and 20 hours of talk time. That's quite a jump from 500 hours standby and 5ish(!) hours of talk time.

And that 222 costs 40 bucks instead of 300 eur...

The Blackberry Passport is one of the more innovative modern phones IMO:

http://us.blackberry.com/smartphones/blackberry-passport/ove...

The physical keyboard is also a touch-screen, so you can make gestures across the surface of the keys (e.g. swipe right-to-left across the keyboard for "backspace a word"). I love the phone, and people comment on it everywhere I go.

However, it's not in stores in the U.S., and most tech-minded people are quick to laugh it off ("oh blackberry is dead"). Seems like the public only wants a very small number of equivalent players in the market.

They also have an upcoming Android QWERTY "Priv", http://www.cnet.com/products/blackberry-priv/

I'm happy to see a phone in 2015 with a QWERTY keyboard, I only wish it slid out the long side, like the original Motorola Droid series.

How well does the keyboard work when it's that low on the device? I could see the thing rotating away from your hands and falling to the floor if you loosen your grip even a little bit.

I've been using it for year, and never thought of that as a problem. My fingers are always holding it from behind (they're not just down low) so it's stable.

It did take some practice to get used to the keyboard -- same as my first Android phone did. And I won't say I'm that much faster typing on the Blackberry honestly... just that the experience is so much less painful, and I have much easier access to symbols/numbers which I use a lot. (Swipe down across the keyboard, and this brings up an extra 3 rows of on-screen keyboard with symbols/numbers (in addition to the 1 row of context-sensitive symbols that is normally available when typing... so when I'm actually writing I have an either 4 or when desired, 7-row keyboard I'm actually using). I write a lot of work emails this way!

I loved the F3 I had, and most people thought I was crazy when I used it. Alas, it was crippled by pretty terrible antenna design, and would drop calls all over regardless of coverage. The SMS capability was almost as entertaining to decipher as Google Voice voicemail transcriptions. One argument for slightly thicker devices is ergonomics. I found the F3 to be slightly tiring to hold on to, and I feel similarly about the Nexus 5 I currently use. At some point, thin becomes too thin and I feel like I am pinching the device instead of holding it comfortably. Obviously, these are subjective elements, but worth considering.

Which phone are you currently using? Did you find the terrible texting support on the F3 to be a problem?

I think the name "punkt" is a play on "punk'd" from the TV show that pranks people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk'd

Looking at their other products like the $185 alarm clock:

https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/ac01-alarm-clock/

... and ridiculous cordless phone:

https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/dp01-cordless-phone/

... I think this is a site/company set up as clever commentary about how the $10 items that have been around for decades already satisfy our needs.

(And many people here were "punk'd" by it.)

Even better, it looks like they actually took some of these ideas to market? http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004U5V7V2/

But I still suspect it's all a grand parody.

They have had a lot of press: https://www.punkt.ch/en/press/press-reviews/. If it's a gag, it's the mother of them all.

The real funny thing is that there's people out there that will really buy these things (i.e. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thelightphone/the-light...)

The more I look around their site, the more convinced I am that it's legitimate.

And I don't feel that it's outside of the realm of plausibility that these products would exist at these prices. Minimalists tend to take minimalism pretty seriously and are, paradoxically, generally wealthier than non-minimalists.

If any of these products don't actually exist, they probably should. I'm sure there's a market for them.

”Punkt” means ”point”, as in ”that’s it”. The prices certainly puts everything into question.

You realize of course that this is actually not unique in any way, right? Dumbphones still exist aplenty, you can practically buy them in bulk nowadays for a tenth what this costs.

Why can't someone make a phone exactly like this, but with an e-ink display, LTE support, and a wifi hotspot?

Still early, but it's being worked on: http://minium.co/

They're upfront about the only 2 features of this phone, so why would anyone pay $300 for the privilege of "distraction-free" telecommunication, which is available at 10% of the cost at any cell phone shop, anywhere in the world?

Aesthetics.

I'd pay that for a smartphone that was pure phone + Google Maps. Google Maps is the only reason I refuse to drop down to a dumbphone.

This looks like a $300 feature-phone.

Well, that's a step up from their (1-star reviewed) $300 cordless phone http://www.amazon.com/Punkt-Cordless-Telephone-Jasper-Morris...

So, we're all just acknowledging that these are Veblen phones.

Considering that service providers in developed countries are already starting to shut down their 2G networks (Optus and Telstra in Australia; Singtel, M1, and StarHub in Singapore; AT&T in the US) buying a 2G-only phone in 2015 does not seem like a good idea.

This doesn't look as good to me as the Light Phone[1] (which doesn't text) and is way more expensive than the Nokia 106[2] (which does text).

[1] http://www.thelightphone.com/

[2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HQS2MCS?psc=1&redirect=t...

I wonder how is the UX of this phone. Definitely it looks more lean and probably the UI is better streamlined, but smaller screen always makes it harder to provide good user experience.

Anyway this phone looks great and probably makes a good Christmas gift for some less techy member of your family.

That keypad layout looks bizarre. T9 offset from center, and navigation on one side only. I wonder how left-handed people fare with it...

I can't say that I'm a fan of the visual looks overall, but that might be partly because of the CG look.

Is this for real? Why not get yourself some old Nokia 8910 or a cheap 1100 or something?

Although, I guess there's always market for patsies

How did the same person submit this twice 20 hours apart? The two appear to have identical links.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10340573

We invited andor to repost it. This is an experiment we've been running to give good stories that fell through the cracks a second chance at getting attention on HN.

Allowing a small number of reposts if (but only if) a story hasn't had significant attention yet is the principal thing we can do to mitigate the problem that /newest moves so fast, most stories don't get seen.

> an experiment we've been running to give good stories that fell through the cracks a second chance at getting attention on HN.

Thanks for your efforts to improve HN. Some thoughts from a random user:

I'm much more interested in having consistently high quality in 99% of the stories (and especially discussions) and don't mind at all if 1% or even 5-10% are overlooked. There's not much cost to missing a story or two; HN doesn't have to be complete record of tech news.

I would greatly value a higher signal-to-noise ratio. That is HN's primary value to me now; while it's better than the competition, it's still low. A discussion forum with a high signal-to-noise ratio (informed, well thought through, rational, well-expressed, polite discussion) would win me over immediately; I'd pay $ hundreds a year to be a member.

Not just a story or two, but shockingly many good stories get overlooked by default. I wrote about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828818 if you're interested.

> I would greatly value a higher signal-to-noise ratio.

Fully agree! The question is how. It's a tough problem. Any ideas?

> Not just a story or two, but shockingly many good stories get overlooked by default

I didn't realize that. Like every reader, I thought only my good stories were being overlooked! :)

> Any ideas?

I agree that signal-to-noise is a tough problem and I have no specific expertise. I suspect part of the solution is less democracy and freedom of speech: They are absolutely necessary in government and public life, to protect rights and ensure voices are heard, and I think we instinctively apply those ideals to online forums. But those tools don't apply well here; there are few rights to protect and much less risk to an unheard voice; nobody is going to jail, dying, or paying taxes. Also, democracy is a poor method for creating great products. The content, the linked stories and discussion, are your company's product [1]; what company designs their product/content by public vote? Does the NY Times? Do game studios? (I don't want to be Reddit or Wikipedia.) Even community-based open source projects have benevolent dictators.

I suspect a good benevolent dictator (BD) editing/managing content, including front page links and discussions, could greatly improve signal-to-noise. Maybe the users and BD split votes 50/50, or the users control and the BD overrides them when it is valuable. Of course I might dislke that particular BD's judgement; as with strongmen/women in government, be careful what you wish for (though maybe the BD could reign and users vote up/down on the BD's overall performance). But I expect I'd much rather have the judgment of one or a few of the best HN members/admins than of the HN average.

A couple more thoughts: 1) It would significantly differentiate HN from a million 'democratic' competitors. 2) It could be implemented experimentally: Have both a BD-edited front page (and maybe some disucssions) and the normal front page; see which draws traffic; experiment with different BD formulas and arrangements.

I've talked more than enough. Thanks if you've read this far, and thanks for wrangling the community.

-----

[1] I realize YC's profits come from elsewhere but for the sake of discussion let's focus on HN. I also realize YC may feel that engagement, not content, is the priority for HN. That may be your choice, but this one user is interested in signal-to-noise of content, and that will drive my engagement.

What you describe isn't super far off from what HN does—it is a mixture of voting and curation. I wouldn't go so far as to call us a BD though.

For sure the goal of HN is to optimize for quality content, though, not engagement per se (though engagement is important to deciding what counts as high-quality), nor raw numbers. That's because the value of the site is intellectual curiosity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com