We’ve all heard of the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy… but what about Amazon’s Fire Phone or the HTC Facebook Phone?
No?
These quirky gadgets are just a couple of examples of how innovators have tried – and sometimes failed – to use wild ideas to stand out from the crowd.
Today’s most popular smartphones are all about sleek design and smooth functionality. But there was a time when companies seemed to just throw crazy concepts at the wall, hoping something would stick.
The Fire Phone, for instance, came with a 3D-style parallax display that no one really asked for. Meanwhile, the Facebook Phone made Facebook your entire home screen, whether you liked it or not…
Another weird and (not so) wonderful smartphone idea was the OnePlus 7 Pro, with its James Bond-style pop-up camera. Then OnePlus did it again with the 8 Pro’s accidental X-ray filter, which was swiftly disabled once people realized its potential for mischief.
Also, let’s not forget the bulky dual-screen Kyocera Echo – or the LG Wing phone, where a second screen flipped out like a holy cross. Or the “build your own phone” DIY attempts, like Google’s Project Ara and Motorola’s snap-on mods, which expected us to want to endlessly customize every component of our phones.
If you haven’t heard of these, it’s worth checking them out online.
To be fair, while these experiments may have flopped, they were still born out of bold creativity. Innovation comes with both risks and rewards. Just think about all the ideas that have worked out.
As business owners, it can be a fun lesson in trial and error, right? Sometimes it’s the strange ideas that lead to a breakthrough, and sometimes they’re just good stories to tell.
Did you ever own any of these devices? What smartphones do you and your team use today?
#SmartPhones #FailedIdeas #Innovation