In a world where the foldable phones might soon take over, one person opposes this. “A non-rectangular phone for non-rectangular people.” These are the words of Christina Cyr, the founder, and CEO of dTOOR and Cyrcle Phone. Back in august of 2016, she launched a campaign “The Cyrcle Phone” on Kickstarter and a month later the project was successfully funded with over $10,000.
The circular phone was an idea nobody really needed. Many people were at first confused about why this idea even existed. From the very beginning, mobile phones had a rectangular shape, so why is someone trying to change that? The people behind Cyrcle Phone want to change the idea that smartphones have only one shape. They think that the circle is a much better shape than the old and boring rectangle.
Image: BBC
The very first prototype of Circle Phone wasn’t impressive. It was just a small electronic device in a plastic round shell, but it was enough to get the needed funds and start working on the real one. For the next few years, it was very quiet about this project, but it returned back with new information at the CES 2020. Christine Cyr showed the world the newest version of the Cyrcle Phone and it actually looks better than one would expect. It’s now a fully functional phone in the testing phase. It features a large circular LED display, front and back camera and even two headphone jacks. On top, it has a protruding front camera and on the bottom, it’s flat, so it can stand by itself on a flat surface. Cyr says that because of its unique shape, it has many advantages. According to her, it’s easier to hold in hands and better fits in the pockets. Cyr also announces that the future versions of Cyrcle Phone will feature even more improvements, e.g. support for two SIM cards and a retractable camera.
Image: BBC
Christine Cyr says that this design was created with millennials and people from the generation z. Young people always look for new and interesting things and the Cyrcle Phone was made to look unique and stand out from the crowd. It uses the Android operating system, but there’s a problem with that. All modern operating systems and applications were made to work on rectangular phones and because of its specific UI, it can’t be properly used on Cyrcle Phone. Everything has to be changed to work with its unique design.
This product doesn’t have a set release date, but the people behind it suggest a possibility of launching it later this year. Maybe in the future people will come out with even more bizarre ideas for smartphone designs.
References:
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-51043488/ces-2020-cyrcle-phone-is-round-and-has-two-headphone-jacks?intlink_from_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Ftechnology&link_location=live-reporting-map
[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1662021259/make-your-own-cyrcle-phone/description
[3] https://www.cyrclephone.com/cyrcle-phone
In my opinion this idea is very interesting but I don’t think it’s going to replace or even be a threat to a classic smartphone soon. However it has many interesting features.
I agree with a commenter above. It seems cool and its features can be useful and stuff, yet I would not say that the circular phones will come to us anytime soon as there is basically no demand for them. The phone market is saturated enough, and unless the circular phones bring something “out-of-this-world: there are not too many chances of their success.
Actually, the phone itself looks like some sort of gadget from Totally Spies.
While it definitely is an interesting thing to read about, circular phones have literally no potential, nobody is going to force themselves to re-ajust for phone this shape just because “rectangular phones a boring”, come on. Creators clearly didn’t think it through. Great article though!
The idea is very interesting but I believe that ordinary rectangular phones have more advantages, for example: the screen size is larger, there is no need to develop new special applications, etc.
It’s definitely interesting but i don’t think that the shape is very practical.
As a child, I watched the Jetix channel, which showed various cartoons. One of them was the “Totally spies” cartoon about spy girls. And they had exactly the same communication devices. I think the creators were inspired by this idea. Although this is just a guess.
As for use, I think in everyday life it will not be a very convenient device. However, if a girl gets into an emergency situation where the robbers take away her phone so that she can’t call for help, having such a device she will be able to send the “SOS” signal with her geolocation to the appropriate services for assistance. I don’t think the robbers would have thought of taking such a thing from a girl.