Blloc – A Minimalist Smartphone

Blloc – A Minimalist Smartphone(blloc.com)

60 points by state 6 years ago | 23 comments

petee 6 years ago |

Minimalist smartphone, so I find it ironic that they decided to go 180 degrees opposite with the website-- another way too animated frustration fest.

Scrolling three times only made the words smaller, and the links don't go to the phone itself...took a minute to figure out that i need to scroll furiously to make any headway and actually see the phone

thecrumb 6 years ago | |

And after scrolling for 5 minutes discover it isn't supported on my carrier anyway :(

isubasinghe 6 years ago | |

Technically it is pretty impressive, I would love to learn how to build pages like this, but it is horrible UX.

robotbikes 6 years ago |

So this is a Android phone with a monochrome minimalist skin and its setup to work by defaukt without Google services setup. I think it is a cool concept but I wish it was smaller, the 5.8" screen seems overly large for a phone focusing on minimalism. I wonder if the code for the theme is being shared anywhere.

JohnJamesRambo 6 years ago |

The phone is too big. A 5.8 inch screen is way too big for this minimalist. iPhone SE size would have been perfect.

dicknuckle 6 years ago | |

The battery size doesn't make up for the size either. My Pixel 1 XL is 5" with a 3450mah battery while the Blloc is 5.8" with a 3000mah battery.

knubie 6 years ago | |

Even the very first photo of it in-hand looks incredibly uncomfortable.

gqcwwjtg 6 years ago |

If you like the greyscale and use an iPhone, you can set it up with color filters and toggle it with the power button in accessibility shortcuts.

dang 6 years ago |

A thread from 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16914772

farisjarrah 6 years ago |

Maintaining an operating system is hard, like real hard. Monumentally hard. Them trying to roll their own android distribution does not inspire much confidence in the project. I'm really hoping a company can just come out with like... just a basic phone with hardware kill switches on the radios and ships with LineageOS as a default. Seems like there would be a decently sized niche for that market.

harshalizee 6 years ago | |

Wouldn't LineageOS suffer from the same problem ?

farisjarrah 6 years ago | | |

That's the point though, the device manufacturer wouldn't have to maintain their own Android fork. They could rely on and work with the the LineageOS team to get a consistent version of AOSP on their devices and then the hardware manufacturer could just focus on making the hardware as good as they can(which is also a monumentally difficult problem, even for Google and Samsung). LineageOS is already made and kept up to date by community maintainers, adding new device support for LineageOS would be orders of magnitude cheaper and easier then developing their own Android fork.

Mathnerd314 6 years ago |

https://shop.blloc.com/pages/networks

In the US it has 1 Sprint LTE band and a few 3G bands with AT&T / T-Mobile.

In Germany where the company is based all networks are supported, and in consequence most/all of Europe since the bands are standardized.

Perhaps it's interesting to someone in the US with Project Fi but the target is primarily Germany/Europe. Also it doesn't ship to the US: https://shop.blloc.com/pages/faq

kerkeslager 6 years ago |

The comments in this thread highlight the risks of using the word "minimalist" for marketing.

Minimalism means so many things. Just looking at clocks as an example, it could be:

1. A lack of lines: https://imgur.com/JLHhp8Y

2. A lack of material: https://imgur.com/kfF2lb9

3. A lack of branding: https://imgur.com/ZkuuICZ

4. A lack of size: https://imgur.com/TLgrf5v

5. A lack of structure: https://imgur.com/LoGBK5x

6. A lack of possessions: https://imgur.com/WSuR1Hg

7: A lack of technology: https://imgur.com/KDOmoTl

...and many more. Each of these types of minimalism has a community built around it which disagree if you say something is minimalist that doesn't fit their ideology. Examples:

1. A lack of size: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21289101

2. A lack of possessions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21290867

I'd argue this phone obviously fits some definition of minimalist, though it's a bit hard to describe what's been removed (a lack of noise or visual complexity, perhaps?). But because it doesn't fit some people's definition, they get alienated and defensive.

Minimalism is obviously a highly-effective design strategy, but marketing yourself as minimalist explicitly opens you up to a lot of criticism. The criticism actually doesn't make much sense, but it's pretty hard to explain why.

Imagine if this guy: https://imgur.com/BRCJlIB had marketed the iPhone as being minimalist. The hypocrisy of a minimalist selling a consumerist object! But, the iPhone actually was minimalist in a lot of ways, just not that one.

jonathanwall 6 years ago |

There's a bigger UI here that that I've been thinking about for a while that seems very interesting to me - and that's putting all the apps UI into a single timeline view. That teamed up with some helpful AI / ML to surface what you need at the right times would be super interesting.

axolttl88 6 years ago | |

Sounds a bit like what Apple are doing with the Siri face on watchOS. It surfaces what it believes are relevant tiles/cards in a timeline based on your interests, appointments, interactions, current location, and daily activities.

dkatri 6 years ago | |

Blackberry used to be able to do something similar. Obviously without any of the smarts, but you could view all of the conversations that you'd had with a contact across multiple services all in one place. It was handy to have.

kerkeslager 6 years ago |

When is this slated to be available in the US?

chenzhekl 6 years ago |

That reminds me of Windows Phone.

amac 6 years ago |

Smartphones help people do more. Why would anyone buy one to do less is not that clear to me.

m-p-3 6 years ago | |

Not necessarily do less, but focus on what is important to them.

limomium 6 years ago | | |

Chatting about news and weather in monochrome, apparently.

That's all the impression I got from this presentation, anyway.

Wowfunhappy 6 years ago |

If you're going to go minimal, you don't need much screen. Maybe it's just because the monochrome UI reminds me of my Pebble, but, I kind of wish this was a standalone smartwatch.

There's no reason a watch (with some guts in the strap) can't make phone calls and take pictures. Heck, even for light reading... I wrote an RSS Reader for my Pebble thinking it would be useful under rare circumstances, but I've found myself using it much more than I'd expected. For most things, I still move to different devices, but isn't that the point?