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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

One of the confusing things to me about the apparently competitive smartphone market is how little creativity there is in smartphone design. Why do we only get thin rounded rectangles? Seems like there would be a market everywhere for big thick indestructible smartphones.

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Caterpillar sells some purportedly hardened android phones:

http://www.catphones.com/phones/b15-smartphone/

http://www.catphones.com/phones/s50-smartphone/

Because it didn't really work out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7600

http://www.slipperybrick.com/2009/12/starfish-diamond-cell-p...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3600/3650

http://www.gsmarena.com/toshiba_g450-2237.php

It's shocking that none of these forms ever caught on.

I worked on Siemens' Xelibri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xelibri) brand of phones. The problem was the lack of usability studies or real technical innovation. We basically chopped up existing Siemens models and tried to squeeze them in a "cool" looking housing without causing to much retooling for the manufacturing people.

Many of the examples you listed did the same. Different for the sake of being different doesn't work out.

I think it's because the thin rounded rectangle is the base model and then almost everybody gets a case to customize it to their needs. There's a half dozen options at every point on the ruggedness, battery life (I'm thinking of things like the Morphie power case), water resistance and price spectrum.

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