"Today's smartphones are too simple in appearance and design."
At the new product launch conference on November 16, 2021, Gen Terao, founder of BALMUDA, a trendy home appliance brand known as "Japanese Jobs", said.
Indeed, looking back at the mobile phone market in those years, in addition to the "folding" of this expensive new form of products, other mobile phones are the same 6.x-inch screen, straight body, nearly 200g weight and stacked camera parameters of the rear camera module, you are difficult to find a completely different from the new machine on the market, let alone any new product design at all.
SO BALMUDA THOUGHT, IF THERE ARE ALMOST NO POWERFUL, COMPACT AND UNIQUE SMARTPHONES ON THE MARKET, THEN WHY DON'T WE MAKE ONE?
(Source: BALMUDA)
So, at the new product launch conference that day, BALMUDA Phone was officially unveiled to the public.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT, DESPITE ITS LONG HISTORY, BALMUDA IS PROBABLY BEST KNOWN FOR ITS RELATIVELY EXPENSIVE PRODUCTS SUCH AS ELECTRIC FANS, TOASTERS AND ELECTRIC KETTLES, WHICH HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOBILE PHONE INDUSTRY OR EVEN THE IT INDUSTRY.
So, what happens when a modern design company wants to get involved in the smartphone market? When the spirit of minimalism and whim are mixed, what kind of product will be created?
And this is the story of BALMUDA Phone.
The desire to explore the unknown
"I was the first to raise my hand."
── In "Another Story About Smartphones" on BALMUDA's website, Takafumi Takada describes the origins of BALMUDA's mobile phone business.
(Source: BALMUDA)
"The reason I came up with this business was because I wanted to keep trying new things, and because I was very sympathetic to the smartphone concept proposed by President Terao."
Specifically, BALMUDA President Gen Terao said, "The size of human palms and faces has not changed in 100,000 years, but have smartphones become too big in the last decade?" At some point, you will find yourself being used by your smartphone, does it feel like the master-slave relationship is reversed? "That's it.
On this basis, Balmuda's newly formed IT division began to think about how small smartphones would change people's lives.
IT CAN BE SAID THAT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, BALMUDA HAS HAD A CLEAR PRODUCT CONCEPT FOR ITS FIRST MOBILE PHONE, WHICH IS VERY RARE.
(Source: BALMUDA)
However, BALMUDA itself has no experience in manufacturing mobile phones, and at the time of the outbreak of the epidemic, there was no way to travel across the ocean to China to find OEM companies, so in order to make this mobile phone, BALMUDA finally found Kyocera (Kyocera).
Kyocera is one of Japan's longest-established manufacturers, having been making mobile phones since 1989, and they were also the manufacturer of the world's first phone with a camera and the first smartphone with a dual-screen design (see Kyocera Echo for details), but at the moment of 2021, their phones are not even in the top five in the Japanese market.
BALMUDA, which has no production capabilities, hit it off with Kyocera, which has no market.
（图源：shawease）
Finally, BALMUDA Phone was released on November 17, 2021, signing a contract with SoftBank to be launched in Japan, and the recommended price of the device at that time was 104,800 yen, which was about 4,896 yuan if converted to RMB at that time.
At the time, the iPhone 13 mini had a bare-metal suggested selling price of 86,800 yen.
Perhaps it is because of the brand tonality, or the cost of small factories cannot be suppressed, such abnormal pricing seems to indicate the future outcome of BALMUDA Phone.
It's unique, but useless
Now, it's time to take a look at BALMUDA Phone.
As Gen Terao said, BALMUDA Phone claims to be a design-oriented product, which is also in line with the brand's own development strengths.
And the first point of this feature is reflected in the color.
(Source: Lei Technology)
The white back, the white body, and even the bezel of the screen are standard white, and the black edge on the inside of the screen is even more pleasing to the eye than Meizu's nondescript front.
If you want me to say, this kind of design can be called pure white, so to speak, pure tonal aesthetics.
The second point is reflected in the special design of the fuselage.
(Source: Lei Technology)
If today's mobile phones are tablets of different sizes, then the BALMUDA Phone is a bionic pebble.
There is no straight line on the whole body, instead it is a curvature design that conforms to the human palm, as well as a plastic back cover with a special texture, and the Logo etched in the middle has a strange sense of delicacy.
What are the benefits of this design?
It should be an extremely comfortable one-handed holding experience, the plastic back cover with special textures, the overall touch has a rather heavy frosted feeling, like a feeling of touching straw paper, neither the greasy feeling of the ordinary plastic back cover, nor the cheap feeling of concave when pressed, the curve that fits the palm perfectly is really quite comfortable, and the products on the market are completely different.
(Source: Lei Technology)
Of course, if you're willing to go back a decade, you can still see where the inspiration for Balmuda Phone came from.
Personally, I caught a glimpse of the Palm Pre, Microsoft Kin One and others on this phone. If Palm finds its design inspiration in ostrich eggs, Balmuda is more concerned with avoiding straight lines, making every effort to incorporate slanted curves in every angle of the phone, but several products are essentially the same.
But in any case, it is unique today.
The third point is reflected in the size of the whole machine.
On the front of the BALMUDA Phone, there is a 4.9-inch FHD+ 60Hz LCD screen, which is about 69mm× 123mm× 13.7mm horizontally.
You may not be able to tell by looking at the numbers, but in short, this is how it compares to a standard 6.5-inch phone.
(Source: Lei Technology)
And this is the contrast between it and the traditional ultra-small phone Rakuten hands.
(Source: Lei Technology)
The short and chubby fuselage has formed a completely different look and feel from the mobile phones that are now generally 20:9 upwards. The huge front camera opening in the upper right corner of the LCD screen, and the rear single camera/fingerprint power button on the back are not things that serious manufacturers may have thought about, as for the small LED breathing light on the side of the rear camera, it makes people have the illusion of going back in time.
Judging from the exterior design, this is indeed a very delicate little phone.
In addition to the exterior design, BALMUDA has also incorporated some of its own into the system.
Unlike the native systems that are common in Japanese factories, the BALMUDA Phone has a custom lock screen and system interface.
First of all, the lock screen is the time and personal calendar, and then there is a custom color tie interspersed with it, and every time you unlock the phone, the animation of the entire system interface transitions from the tie to the sides, which is very distinctive.
(Source: Lei Technology)
On the home screen, there is not only time, but also personal information such as weather, owner, birthday, mobile phone, etc., just like an electronic business card.
(Source: Lei Technology)
You can swipe left/right along the tether to launch the corresponding custom function.
(Source: Lei Technology)
Next, it's time to talk about the BALMUDA Phone's full-screen widget interface, just swipe the desktop from the right side to the left, and you will enter the following interfaces in turn.
Scheduler: A daily schedule that may be used by busy business people.
(Source: Lei Technology)
Time & Weather: An exceptionally elaborately designed clock that can be switched between functions by clicking on the options in the four corners, but it seems that the weather company can't use it in the country.
(Source: Lei Technology)
Notes: Important notes that may be used by busy business people.
(Source: Lei Technology)
Caldulator：就计算器。
(Source: Lei Technology)
In addition, BALMUDA has also added detailed textures to many system applications, and also made a wave of repainting of many icons, such as a flashlight is a kerosene lamp, Relax mode is a recliner, etc., which is quite interesting.
(Source: Lei Technology)
However, these unique advantages were eventually buried by the barren hardware configuration.
Perhaps because of the constraints on the supply chain, the processor of Balmuda Phone is Snapdragon 765G, which is a mid-range chip released in 2019, 1*2.4GHz A76 large core + 1*2.2GHz A76 mid-core + 6*1.8GHz A55 small core CPU architecture, in this era of all-large core processors, it looks really a bit nostalgic.
Antutu's overall score of 41W points is 33%-40% different from the most common Snapdragon 778G mid-range machine that year.
(Source: Lei Technology)
Hm... It's not that it can't be used.
In daily use, based on the concise animation of the native system, the operation experience is still good.
However, if you open the app continuously, the 6th-7th app will be stuck, and the 6GB of RAM will naturally not be able to retain too many background apps.
In terms of games, "Genshin Impact" and "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" are not mentioned, and the average frame rate of a high-quality "League of Legends Mobile Game" is 59.86 frames, which is not a big problem to cope with light game loads.
(Source: Lei Technology)
But here, there is another point worth complaining about.
That's the BALMUDA Phone, the horizontal grip feels really scary, your palm can only touch the very narrow side, as long as you play for a short time, the game will not be acceptable.
In terms of images, the 48MP single camera of the suspected IMX586 sensor is the same level as the iQOO Z9 Turbo / OnePlus Ace 3V with high EQ, and the focus ability of this thing is not even very good at scanning codes, except for daytime imaging at a moderate distance.
(Source: Lei Technology)
In terms of battery life, although the Snapdragon 765G is quite power-efficient, the 2500mAh battery is really not good.
As for PD 3.0 (18W) wired fast charging and Qi (below 5W) wireless charging, it can only be said that it is just an addition to talk about winning or not.
Waited for 20 years for a lover
结论是,BALMUDA Phone是一款彻底失败的产品。
According to official information, due to poor response, the BALMUDA Phone was discontinued just a few months after its launch. In the ensuing period, the most common place for this product was in the telecommunications office in Japan, and as an affordable and compact smartphone, it was sold in clearance for smartphone novices unique to the Japanese market.
If the user buys it according to the contract, the phone can be acquired almost without spending money.
(Source: engadget)
Two years later, in May 2023, BALMUDA announced the end of its IT business on its official website, although they will continue to provide after-sales and accessory services for BALMUDA Phone, but this also means that we will not be able to see the 6-inch version of the phone and the BALMUDA Tablet that we conceived earlier years ago.
Interestingly, on May 16 of the same year, Kyocera, which is responsible for OEM BALMUDA Phone, also announced that it would officially withdraw from the consumer-facing mobile phone business, although they still retain the service for corporate customers, but from the perspective of the fact that it is difficult to compete with manufacturers such as Sharp, Sony and even Xiaomi in the Japanese domestic market, this service is basically the after-sales business of BALMUDA Phone.
According to Gen Terao, BALMUDA Phone was like a "lover who had been waiting for 20 years" to realize the dream of becoming famous as a rock star in the computer startup generation at the time.
(Source: BALMUDA)
Perhaps, just as BALMUDA was once called the apple of small household appliances, Gen Terao also hopes that he can change the market ecology again and again by creating products like Apple founder Steve Jobs, which is why BALMUDA Phone must be different, and at the same time, it must be able to fit in your pocket as a product for daily use.
That's why, after nearly 80 prototypes were tried by BALMUDA's IT product department, they finally finalized the BALMUDA Phone's compact, one-handed small body, which curved to fit the palm of the hand, with a simple system interface design to make it more convenient for users to use.
(Source: BALMUDA)
Judging from Gen Terao's speech, they are still very confident in this product.
But what Gen Terao didn't see through was that the BALMUDA Phone was essentially just a premium product made by Kyocera and based on the Android system.
Even in the Japanese market at that time, there was no place for this product, regardless of Google, Sharp, and even the iPhone 13 mini was even much better than it.
Perhaps, the second-hand price of about 500 yuan nowadays, and the general product positioning of toys, is the most suitable location for this product.
"We're not trying to cater to the market, we're going to create the market."
Terao Gen once said so.
But judging from the results, sometimes it doesn't seem like a bad thing to go with the tide, and there is a risk of falling into pieces.
Judging from the results, perhaps the greatest value of the BALMUDA Phone is that it has become a footnote in the history of smartphones, telling everyone not to do anything against the sky.
It's just that for consumers, it will be a little regrettable to miss such a unique manufacturer.
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