Japanese design agency Balmuda has announced that it is discontinuing sales of the compact phone. According to Reuters, the company disclosed that the cessation of sales was due to issues that were not disclosed but are said to be related to compliance with Japan’s technical standards.
The short lived compact phone was announced by the company at a press event in Tokyo in November. The straight forwardly titled BALMUDA phone technologies, a new division of the agency previously known for stylish, premium home appliances like air purifiers and rice cookers. BALMUDA toaster in particular has a cult following in Japan.
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CEO GEN TERAO said on stage that he felt that smart phones have gotten too big and unwieldy in recent years, so the BALMUDA phone was designed with compactness and elegance as the primary goals.
It has a very sharp 4.9-inch 16:9 1080p exhibit and is roughly comparable to a 4.7-inch IPHONE SE; the exhibit is slightly bigger and the phone is 2mm wider, but the smaller bezels mean its 15mm shorter.
SPECIFICATIONS
The BALMUDA phone is a full 13.7mm thick at its thickest point, but the back panel tapers down heavily toward the edges. There is a single large camera with a 48-mega pixel sensor in the top right corner, and a similar-looking cutout in the top left houses a finger print sensor. The 8 mega pixel SELFIE camera is housed in a hole-punch cutout at the top right of the screen.
The phone specs generally mid-range. The processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 and there is 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
The battery is just 2,500mah which will hopefully be offset somewhat by the lower-power processor through we’ll have to test for ourselves to see. The phone does thankfully have wireless charging.
