The Dead Smartphone Tier List

just look at this thing it's probably banged this probably was a hit in the boardroom $150 no way I know that you just said the Humane AI pin is the worst product you've ever reviewed so far I think this is the worst product I've ever reviewed so far all right David how long have you been reviewing phones 15 years also a long time for me too I don't remember but just a lot of phones we've seen in and out lots of good ones which is fun but also lot the bad ones so in this video we're specifically going to take a look at 12 discontinued smartphones Sharp Aquos Crystal I right I love this phone this I I I give the Aquos Crystal a lot of credit for basically being the first the first thin bezel phone like this is the first one that got me and a lot of my audience really thinking about oh what if bezels are smaller yeah I mean the bezels are insanely thin for 2z are that I agree yo they remember you would have to do this to get to like a normal phone look at that contrast because upside down it's in the normal spot I think this was like a $400 phone I guess $6.99 $649 150 no way this go this one go I love this one I could use this one today wait really for years after this came out we talked about bezels that's true I think we should do a tier list we should do okay I'm going s tier for this I'm between A and S Maybe maybe we should leave room for more s tier later I feel like you're supposed to reserve s tier for like the ones that really deserve it okay so let's go a tier I'm going to say a tier for this yeah oh next bit Robin so next bit doesn't exist anymore and this is the only phone that they made yes and this has a lot of the hints of the Razor phone design yeah but the gimmick with this one was cloud storage cloud storage yeah I really liked the idea of everything in the cloud all the time and you would just kind of pull it down when you need it and just kind of cycled through I think basically if it was better executed it could have had more impact but because of how not good it was it's probably kind of like a middling I love yeah the texture is nice I mean there's a lot of fun things about it on three what tier is it okay 1 2 3 C tier if the Aquos is a tier there's no way this is B right it has yeah but it had a really really clean version of Android I remember the UI was really amazing B middling B tier B tier all right next it Robin Razor phone Raz phone see this is basically a premium next with Robin same buttons this is metal yeah was the Robin metal too I don't think uh it was plastic it's funny cuz this was back in the day where gaming phone meant we sacrificed some things to make it good at gaming where the couple I mean there's only really the Rog phone at the top of the Heap today and now it doesn't even like this phone's 1,400 bucks and it's just everything and that's of course good at games I remember the vibration this phone being unbelievably bad like the worst I've ever like it sounded like it was broken yeah even that you can probably kind of tell yeah but when it was like actually buzzing well when you get a phone call if your alarm went off or something it would be like yeah I want to give it points for originality and I'm a I'm obviously a sucker for high refresh rate 1 2 3 B nice okay oh my wait we do have the first one oh God the surface Duo and the surface Duo to and the duo 2 I know that you just said the Humane AI pin is the worst product you've ever reviewed so far I think this is the wor prodct I've ever reviewed so far and you know why because the digitizers in the screen didn't really work they would just only accept your touches like every 100 touches or something like that and the software in general was a buggy mess I mean you can see it already yeah it's like rough it was rough it was rough the hardware was like pretty amazing like the fact that the USB port is barely smaller than the actual phone itself right is insane but I remember I think I wanted to title this like fundamentally fla or something like that because yeah yeah because you can use it open but then it's awkward to use open and then the other thing was they're like oh but you could use it like this but that's an aspect ratio that literally hurts to use for with one hand yeah can you even see that it's a slanted camera bump so that when I fold it over it just perfectly hits like that I feel like I want to separate it once again into Hardware a tier and software lowest possible tier right but I feel like we got to average that I don't even know if the hardware a tier though because it's it's something that's like experimental but I remember I dropped this once and it completely shattered okay you ready um yeah I'm ready all right three two one D ah that color is fire this color is amazing this is the essential phone G1 this possibly some of the greatest Hardware it's made of ceramic it's pretty fun this might have been the same year or two as the aqua cryst this is okay A little later but the same idea where it's like we want you to think you're getting a bezeless phone just ignore the chin just don't look down there that's totally fine and they do this this cutout which I I feel like was only like a one-year thing I saw this like little Notch cutout straight down the tear drop why did it fail oh cuz it was it didn't have a headphone jack yeah and it didn't really have good it was a Sprint exclusive that's why it failed oh that's that's such a shame I know that's such a shame yeah I don't remember the cameras being good either the cam yeah the cameras are mediocre I will say the the the team that was supporting this phone they updated it like every single month they pushed out like major updates and they kept supporting it even after the company went under for like 2 years which is really cool honorable this was a phone that had the Pogo pin attachments so they had a 360 camera that you could attach to the top yeah they made like two or three things right they made two I believe there was that one and then there was one that was a it was a jack a headphone jack yes I remember that it was a headphone jack that attached me of the Pogo pins if a phone that looked like this that had full like no bezels at all came out today I would freaking love this with today's Tech this would be an awesome form factor yeah is this kind of an icon this is like a really I think this phone's fairly icon so Central phone to me is a great episode one it's a great start and I'm excited for episode 2 when essential phone 2 comes out hopefully has one or two more distinguish in features at that price range that AR that's so sad cuz we never got a phone to one two 3 S tier s tier s tier H I do think this phone is extremely iconic yeah I'm going to go with s because at the time there was like basically besides the Aquos there was no phone that had this high of a screen to body ratio the ceramic feels freaking amazing and I just always wished we would get a second one anytime we get stuff like that where they didn't have to do it yeah the ceramic one of those things I just got to reward them for that yeah all right all right s tier s tier all right what's [Music] next ah oh how could we forget to mention that this video sponsored by Ridge so Ridge is making a wallet that also can attach to your phone via magnets but if you don't have a phone with mag safe or actually just cuz this works stronger you have the strengthening tray that you attach to the back of your phone with adhesive and then this attaches strongly to the back with that tray also versatility has always been important to Ridge so theyve kept it in mind if you already have a ridge wallet you can buy just the outside plate to replace the outside plate of your Ridge wallet to add mag safe compatibility so you don't have to buy a whole new wallet you just get the plate and you have this compatibility good to go they don't run discounts on this stuff a lot but I believe there's a 10% off code if you use MKBHD that's your way to get less than full price which is sick nice so shout out to Ridge and shout out to the colors I really do like that color aspir oh Nokia 1020 wow okay I reviewed a yellow 1020 it's almost weird seeing when that's not yellow yes this camera was amazing there's still videos that get put up on YouTube these days of people taking photos of this versus like a full-fledged like mirrorless camera and it's competitive do you think that this started the era of bigger sensors and higher resolutions in smartphone cameras the same way I think that the aqua crystal started thin bezels no okay because I think that they tried this and that was the reason it didn't win because at that point in time all people wanted was a thinner phone and then later people were like but I want cuz this is before social media was huge also look how bad that screen is it's like no it doesn't really matter how good the camera is if the screen is terrible you know what's funny about this UI this looks like a UI that would be on like a dumb phone now because it's like everything is text and it just gives you a few options yeah yeah so this is the pr mode in the in the camera and if you swipe out to the left you get all the sliders at once which is good UI this UI is really really good manual focus slider manual shutter speed manual exposure manual white balance Google just put out a pro camera mode UI on the pixel 8 Pro and it's not nearly this good that's pretty depressing this is intuitive three two one B cuzz this wasn't the case of the company did something wrong it was like they did something right before before it was right throw it in B fine throw it and B all right Blackberry priv you remember that quick was the priv yeah yeah yeah so cool right this is the only one that doesn't work so we can't turn it on in blackberry's world not enough people they probably had like a like a board meeting and they were like okay see how like slab style phones are taking off we made one and it's still a Blackberry this probably banged this probably was a hit in the boardroom yeah other cool things about this phone the keyboard worked as a trackpad so you could swipe your finger around and it would like show the thing moving on the screen also sick they were really trying they here they did cook with this phone in my opinion they were like we people like slab phones we gave it to them people like Android phones we gave it to them people like carbon fiber and bottom mounted headphone Jacks and thin bezels and front face and speakers we gave it all to them but people like blackberries so we gave him the keyboard we gave him the trackpad we gave him the Blackberry hug we gave him that big fat logo and gave him an AT&T exclusive just like a Blackberry should be and uh it kind of they over a index the Blackberry part I think that was the thing I think that probably failed because not enough people actually wanted a keyboard on their phone I think it's easy to forget how bad the performance of this phone was and that really was a a bummer for it because everything else about it is so good and since it doesn't turn on we can't see the performance yeah three two one C I knew you're were going to say c yeah I think you're probably right A C to your phone oh God oh God uh D yep okay no it's a hydrogen yeah a hydrogen one and the titanium hydrogen oh man every time I hold this I I you could really just kill someone with it oh it still turns on I remember when I reviewed this I was like I want this phone to be good so bad Red's making a phone they could do something amazing here so many disappointing things number one it's just huge like we thought it would be big because you can use it as a viewfinder for your red camera or have some special Hardware to do that it never did that it's just a gigantic phone two we thought that there would be modular camera accessories or like some sort of attachments for it you were supposed to be able to attach lenses from other phone from other camera manufacturers directly to this camera I think there might have even been like Silicon like a sensor involved too because these are just like regular Sony camera sensors that's what these pins were for they were bad yeah like a red it's red yeah they were b a horrible camera so that was also disappointing then it had like all these pins here which we thought were going to have all these accessories and there was a solid couple of months where we were like I wonder when the accessories are coming and they never came they never came and then on top of all of that this screen they decided to do this crazy like 3D holographic effect which when has that ever gone well look it was neat for the two things that were actually shot for it it's not going to translate it's not going to translate but I think that any time that you release a product with distracting you with a a gimmick being its entire point of the device it's just going to be the of the device this never got an ecosystem to support how cool it could be this never got an ecosystem to support how cool it could be and this never got an ecosystem just support how cool it could be but as I've gone down through the list now you've probably noticed there aren't really a whole lot of overwhelmingly positive things to say about this $1,295 phone $1300 I told you it was expensive D tier I think it has to be D tier D tier D tier where do you find these so this is the flex P this is The Royale Flex pie but this was the first folding phone technically this hinge was tough I'm going to open it and you can listen to it that sounds like I broke it oh my God in a way though oh oh oh is thisone literally dying uh I don't are those all dead pixels you see those black spots yeah I think that's like I think it's dying parts from where the screen has gotten broken from when you folded it too many times oh my gosh if we're rating this on like an actual device of like how much would I recommend it to someone I feel like the answer is obvious no this is one of the only ones we've had on this so far where truly not a single person should ever spend money on this I don't even know what it costs but no one should buy this I think it was over $1,000 you should take the hydrogen over this for sure as far as like impact on like folding phones today maybe that bumps up a little little we being nice no never mind I don't know I think it has to be D2 I think it's a D2 yeah all right we got one more left and this looks a lot like an LG Wing this how LG was on their deathbed this is like one of their last phones how bold is that yeah you're like 3 months from dying and you're like I think I got it yeah so you can use it as a regular phone just like this but then the second form factor because you want it to be versatile is a t-shape for some reason yeah but now you just end up with this uh what do I do with this question yeah wow mhm so I I did come up with a use case for both screens if I could just show you guys please all right so maybe this is what this phone was meant to be good for or maybe wait a second maybe this phone is good for two different people to use cuz in theory I'm watching the video at the top and you're playing the game at the bottom but when you my game did it pause your game yeah no again Android is not made for these weird UI and every time a company would do something like this it just wouldn't really work you know what I will say about this phone I got to give a credit we made a video about this phone and it for a couple months was the most viewed piece of content that I have ever made that's pretty dope we made a Tik Tok it had 35 million views dang oh there was also dual record recording I'm sorry I have to show this there's a selfie there's like a you could see selfie and the other one which just just look at this thing just look at this thing the fact that this is a phone just look at me holding this phone look at this what are you doing man oh nothing just just using my phone just gimal moding insane um all right we got to read it wow as the last one I'm tempted to be generous because this is this is a crazy phone ready okay okay yeah three two one c d b b how much did this thing cost 9.99 oh it's a C I'm so I mean c sounds fair for this one yeah okay we'll leave it at that see this was fun if you agree with our tier list which let's be real it's a tier list which means people will disagree uh but leave a comment below where we should have put the phone that you disagree with yeah I think that's it cool thanks for watching thanks for watching bye

Channel: The Studio

Views: 907,749

Keywords: MKBHD, The Studio, Sharp Aquos Crystal in 2024, Nextbit Robin in 2024, Razer Phone in 2024, Surface Duo in 2024, Essential Phone in 2024, Nokia 1020 in 2024, Blackberry Priv in 2024, RED Hydrogen in 2024, Royole Flexpai in 2024, LG Wing in 2024

Id: APA5IES2fEU

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024