Ayayayay I’m your little butterfly
Ever owned one of those plastic toy phones back in the early 2000s? They were everywhere. They were made in China and comes with a fake keypad, is powered by triple-A batteries, and has that weird little ringtone. You know the one, the one that goes ayayay I’m your little butterfly, ayayay I’m your little butterfly.
Well, HMD, the brand behind the Android-powered Nokia phones, is making the phone a reality, not a toy anymore. This was announced during this year’s Mobile World Congress. Green, black, and blue make up the colors of the sky, but pink is the main theme of the Barbie phone. It’s quite late since the Barbie movie was released about a year ago. Still, the phone is more attributed to the toy line rather than the film, despite the promotional materials found in its website.
We discussed the Itel Flip One, a retrofuturistic concept of the flip phone. Samsung also made a flip phone like it before. Yes, before the Z Flip series, called the Galaxy Folder. Now, it’s HMD’s turn. Are flip phones making a true comeback? Well, these types of phones—phone that lack the Android ecosystem, are called “feature phones”. They do have a name.
The HMD Barbie phone is presented as a “real phone without social media”. The phone features just basic calls and texts. No apps, no bloat, none of the modernist stuff you see. You also get a physical keypad, the nostalgic T9 type. Oh, too young? Well, the T9 keyboard is what the oldies used back in the day. It consists of a keypad ranging from 1-9, and to type out the other letters, you press the same keypad multiple times. It isn’t so hard, and it’s tactile too.
Although it is a feature phone, it feels modern thanks to its colored 2.8″ QVGA LCD. It also has a 1.77″ secondary cover display. This isn’t new, but it was rather novel back in the 2006 as only a few flip phones like the old Motorola Razrs have them. The experience is similar to the first Galaxy Z Flip. The Barbie phone runs KaiOS, which was also used on the Nokia 8110, aka the “banana phone”.
As for connectivity, it at least has Bluetooth 4.2, 2.4G Wi-Fi, and GPS. It has a large 4GB storage with support of up to 32GB using a MicroSD Card, which is nothing sort of unimaginable. It also features a whoppingly large 512MB RAM.
By the way, these are what’s inside the box. It is as pink as you can get, and you also get more stuff inside than your average Android smartphone. It also has several stickers so you can customize it the way you want it, just like in the old days. Yes, the battery cover is also customized. It is just as pink as the phone itself.
The phone has a 5MP camera. Truly the retro experience. Back then, MPs weren’t a thing and so having a camera, even if it’s just 2MP, was seen as mind-blowing. Nobody knew what phones were going to be capable of in the future. The battery capacity is 1450mAh and it is removable. As per EU standards, the phone charges via a USB-C port. It uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 215 chipset, talk about old chips!
And yes, we agree with The Verge. This phone does go hard.
Source: HMD
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