
Blloc – A Minimalist Smartphone - state
https://www.blloc.com/
======
petee
Minimalist smartphone, so I find it ironic that they decided to go 180 degrees
opposite with the website-- another way too animated frustration fest.

Scrolling three times only made the words smaller, and the links don't go to
the phone itself...took a minute to figure out that i need to scroll furiously
to make any headway and actually see the phone

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thecrumb
And after scrolling for 5 minutes discover it isn't supported on my carrier
anyway :(

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robotbikes
So this is a Android phone with a monochrome minimalist skin and its setup to
work by defaukt without Google services setup. I think it is a cool concept
but I wish it was smaller, the 5.8" screen seems overly large for a phone
focusing on minimalism. I wonder if the code for the theme is being shared
anywhere.

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JohnJamesRambo
The phone is too big. A 5.8 inch screen is way too big for this minimalist.
iPhone SE size would have been perfect.

~~~
dicknuckle
The battery size doesn't make up for the size either. My Pixel 1 XL is 5" with
a 3450mah battery while the Blloc is 5.8" with a 3000mah battery.

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gqcwwjtg
If you like the greyscale and use an iPhone, you can set it up with color
filters and toggle it with the power button in accessibility shortcuts.

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dang
A thread from 2018:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16914772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16914772)

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farisjarrah
Maintaining an operating system is hard, like real hard. Monumentally hard.
Them trying to roll their own android distribution does not inspire much
confidence in the project. I'm really hoping a company can just come out with
like... just a basic phone with hardware kill switches on the radios and ships
with LineageOS as a default. Seems like there would be a decently sized niche
for that market.

~~~
harshalizee
Wouldn't LineageOS suffer from the same problem ?

~~~
farisjarrah
That's the point though, the device manufacturer wouldn't have to maintain
their own Android fork. They could rely on and work with the the LineageOS
team to get a consistent version of AOSP on their devices and then the
hardware manufacturer could just focus on making the hardware as good as they
can(which is also a monumentally difficult problem, even for Google and
Samsung). LineageOS is already made and kept up to date by community
maintainers, adding new device support for LineageOS would be orders of
magnitude cheaper and easier then developing their own Android fork.

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Mathnerd314
[https://shop.blloc.com/pages/networks](https://shop.blloc.com/pages/networks)

In the US it has 1 Sprint LTE band and a few 3G bands with AT&T / T-Mobile.

In Germany where the company is based all networks are supported, and in
consequence most/all of Europe since the bands are standardized.

Perhaps it's interesting to someone in the US with Project Fi but the target
is primarily Germany/Europe. Also it doesn't ship to the US:
[https://shop.blloc.com/pages/faq](https://shop.blloc.com/pages/faq)

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kerkeslager
The comments in this thread highlight the risks of using the word "minimalist"
for marketing.

Minimalism means so many things. Just looking at clocks as an example, it
could be:

1\. A lack of lines: [https://imgur.com/JLHhp8Y](https://imgur.com/JLHhp8Y)

2\. A lack of material: [https://imgur.com/kfF2lb9](https://imgur.com/kfF2lb9)

3\. A lack of branding: [https://imgur.com/ZkuuICZ](https://imgur.com/ZkuuICZ)

4\. A lack of size: [https://imgur.com/TLgrf5v](https://imgur.com/TLgrf5v)

5\. A lack of structure:
[https://imgur.com/LoGBK5x](https://imgur.com/LoGBK5x)

6\. A lack of possessions:
[https://imgur.com/WSuR1Hg](https://imgur.com/WSuR1Hg)

7: A lack of technology:
[https://imgur.com/KDOmoTl](https://imgur.com/KDOmoTl)

...and many more. Each of these types of minimalism has a community built
around it which disagree if you say something is minimalist that doesn't fit
their ideology. Examples:

1\. A lack of size:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21289101](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21289101)

2\. A lack of possessions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21290867](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21290867)

I'd argue this phone obviously fits some definition of minimalist, though it's
a bit hard to describe what's been removed (a lack of noise or visual
complexity, perhaps?). But because it doesn't fit some people's definition,
they get alienated and defensive.

Minimalism is obviously a highly-effective design strategy, but marketing
yourself as minimalist explicitly opens you up to a lot of criticism. The
criticism actually doesn't make much sense, but it's pretty hard to explain
why.

Imagine if this guy: [https://imgur.com/BRCJlIB](https://imgur.com/BRCJlIB)
had marketed the iPhone as being minimalist. The hypocrisy of a minimalist
selling a consumerist object! But, the iPhone actually was minimalist in a lot
of ways, just not that one.

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jonathanwall
There's a bigger UI here that that I've been thinking about for a while that
seems very interesting to me - and that's putting all the apps UI into a
single timeline view. That teamed up with some helpful AI / ML to surface what
you need at the right times would be super interesting.

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axolttl88
Sounds a bit like what Apple are doing with the Siri face on watchOS. It
surfaces what it believes are relevant tiles/cards in a timeline based on your
interests, appointments, interactions, current location, and daily activities.

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kerkeslager
When is this slated to be available in the US?

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chenzhekl
That reminds me of Windows Phone.

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amac
Smartphones help people do more. Why would anyone buy one to do less is not
that clear to me.

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m-p-3
Not necessarily do less, but focus on what is important to them.

~~~
limomium
Chatting about news and weather in monochrome, apparently.

That's all the impression I got from this presentation, anyway.

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Wowfunhappy
If you're going to go minimal, you don't need much screen. Maybe it's just
because the monochrome UI reminds me of my Pebble, but, I kind of wish this
was a standalone smartwatch.

There's no reason a watch (with some guts in the strap) can't make phone calls
and take pictures. Heck, even for light reading... I wrote an RSS Reader for
my Pebble thinking it would be useful under rare circumstances, but I've found
myself using it much more than I'd expected. For most things, I still move to
different devices, but isn't that the point?

