GoKawiilAs I tilted the phone back and forth, admiring the iridescent artwork -- a vivid electric blue with a billow of gold inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night -- I was thrilled by the audacity of the design. I wasn't looking at the screen but at the phone's rear panel. And no, it wasn't a case.
You've probably never heard of the Nubia Z80 Ultra. This high-spec Android phone is among several devices from the Chinese company ZTE sporting a unique look, unlike anything else on the market.
I got my hands on it this month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It was just one of many phones that made me, for the first time in a long time, feel excited about this new wave of design.
To find these phones, you have to look beyond Apple and Samsung, the two brands that dominate the market. For a long time, smaller companies tried to compete with these behemoths by emulating their phones at a more affordable price. And they followed the same bland formula. Each was a uniformly slim slab of plastic or metal in black, silver or white. Dull, dull, dull. Dull to look at and even duller to review.
Sure, phone-makers sometimes took a playful approach to color -- blues, greens, pinks -- though these tame experiments still played it safe. And sadly, modular concept phones such as Google's Project Ara and Motorola's Moto Z died out before ever really taking off.
To my delight, as someone who has had many of these boring phones pass through my hands over the years, it looks like those days might be over.
It certainly has personality. Andrew Lanxon/CNET
For one, the foldable revolution has introduced book-style folding phones and a modern reinterpretation of flip phones. It feels like the first time companies have questioned what a phone can do, be or look like -- beyond the template Apple set with the first iPhone.
Over the past few weeks, we've seen a glut of new phones announced from brands big and small, making it an ideal moment to pause and take stock of the current design landscape.
Phone design: the current state of play
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