These are the ugliest ducks in the smartphone world (+poll)

We often talk about the most beautiful and elegant smartphones, but of course there are also a lot of ugly ducks passed in review. In this one hundred percent objective(?) article we pick out some of these ugly ducklings. Do you think it’s the most repulsive phone ever?

Best

In the ‘the best’ series, we bring you lists and tips about the best smartphones, apps, tablets and other smart products. In this series we also ask for your opinion, so leave it in the comments below the articles. You can be the best in any category, and that’s how you can become the best in a category in which you don’t really want to be the best. In this article we discuss the bad apples from the smartphone world.

Samsung Galaxy S5: the Hansaplast phone

From the first Galaxy S phone, Samsung chose to make the back of cheap-feeling and especially thin plastic. However, the Galaxy S5 took the cake. While brands such as Sony and HTC really brought beautiful premium devices to the market, Samsung opted for a ‘plastic fantasic’ design with the S5.

Let’s go back in time. The Samsung Galaxy S3 and the Galaxy S4 were good smartphones and perhaps the best smartphones at the time. However, the devices received a lot of criticism on one point, and that was the design. The devices were not ugly, but they were very cheap for a high-end smartphone at the time. The devices both had a thin glossy plastic back that attracted a lot of fingerprints.

A bandage on the wound

Samsung wanted to solve this criticism with the Samsung Galaxy S5 and again opted for plastic with this device, but with a matte finish. However, it was not a success. The plastic back was given a kind of pricked dots and thus resembled a large wound plaster, especially with the gold variant. The chrome side of the device was very fragile and caused peeling and quickly dents.

A positive point about the design of the Galaxy S5 was that the device, for the first time in a top device from Samsung, was waterproof. At the time, however, there was not yet the technology to design this in a convenient way. This resulted in an annoying cover for the USB port that you had to pry open all the time to charge the phone. After the S5, Samsung chose to take a different course. The company decided, among other things, that the high-end devices had to get a more premium look. This change in the design of the flagships started with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha, which received an aluminum frame from Samsung. The successor to the S5, the Galaxy S6, then received a glass housing with an aluminum edge. It was the first smartphone from Samsung that got a really premium look.

Google Pixel 3 XL: you can land a plane on that notch

Google wanted to follow the trend at the time with the Google Pixel 3 XL. This trend started with the Essential Phone and became big with the iPhone X from 2017. We are of course talking about the notch, or a notch at the top of the screen. However, we can say that one notch is not the other, and so Google proved all too clearly. It came with a gigantic notch that took up a lot of screen space, especially vertically.

Soon there were brands that poked fun at this notch. For example, Samsung came up with a number of Twitter reactions in which it ridiculed the Google Pixel 3 XL. For example, according to Samsung, you could land a plane on the notch of the Pixel 3 XL.

Vomiting under your breath

“A clincher that made me throw up under my breath.” These are the words Claudia used during her unboxing of the Google Pixel 3 XL. The notch was therefore the first thing that caught her eye, as can be read in the review of the Google Pixel 3 XL.

Google itself also realized that not every user would embrace the notch. That’s why the company chose to build in a function in the settings that allowed the user to hide the notch. However, this function ensured that the screen area next to the notch would be black. This resulted in a gigantic screen edge at the top, which you could not get very excited about. Google was enthusiastic, and included the screen edge in the design of the Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL.

Pablo Escobar Fold 1: magic with money and gold

If you say Pablo Escobar, you say smartphones. However…? At least that’s what Pablo’s brother, Roberto de Jesus Escobar Gavira, thought. He wanted to honor his brother by naming a smartphone after him. He therefore transformed the Royole FlexPai into the Escobar Fold 1. However, he still conjured something up, or rather something away. The price of the Escobar Fold 1 was about 800 euros lower than the Royal FlexPai.

The Royal Flexpai, released in 2018, was the first smartphone with a folding screen. The screen of the device was 5.4 inches and you could open outwards, giving you a large 7.8 inch screen. Roberto Escobar was very impressed with this phone and decided to buy a shipload full of it and give it his own twist. For example, he gave it a layer of fake gold on a device, something our editor Sebastien didn’t really like. The device also got a gigantic logo on the back. This one was unfortunately not very subtle and therefore not very beautiful.

Not just gold that glitters

Let’s go back to magic for a moment, because Roberto probably got something done. In all likelihood, you did not receive the phone at all after ordering. This is how it was read at the time in a tweet from Marques Brownlee (SMBHD). In this message, he states that he thinks only journalists would receive the smartphone. Maybe people could have put some question-cons to the co-founder of the ‘Medellink cartel’?

Do you agree?

Do you agree with our choices? Let us know in the poll below. And/or do you have another phone that you don’t like to peep at? Leave it in the comments below this article.