this may look like a BlackBerry from 2017 but it’s very much a product of 2025 this is the MP1 the first product from a new company trying to minimize your dependence on your devices and after a few software updates it might represent the best option for some people to disconnect without totally divorcing from our modern digital reality dumb phone is upon us and for a while now I’ve been eager to explore what it means to disconnect in the way a lot of these products promise to allow mostly the target customer is looking for an escape from the most addictive apps on their phone your Instagrams your Tik Toks your Bumbles now for years iOS and Android have offered tools to cut back on such opiates but those restrictions are easily bypassed by those like me with less discipline than we might like to have it’s a bit like an alcoholic putting a lock on a liquor cabinet but always keeping the key in their pocket for the hardest core of disconnectors there are products like the Light Phone 3 I’m still waiting on and when that box lands on my doorstep I’m going to dive with both feet into the first true phone detox of my life but for many folks those phones go too far cutting them off not just from social media but also from utilities like e tickets authenticators QR code readers and messaging apps this is the gap in the market the minimal company looks to fill with the MO1 a review sample of which I’ve been using on and off for about a month under the surface it’s an Android 14 smartphone that does Android smartphone things but it introduces just enough friction to make it a tool instead of a toy on the screen side that means dumping a full color display for the stark simplicity of e-aper here a monochrome 4.3 in touch panel with a pretty low 800x 600 resolution the philosophy behind it makes sense while text really pops on e-aper images are drained of all their vitality and video is essentially unwatchable the intention is to create a panel that’s ideal for getting things done and unsuitable for anything else but in reality I think this display is the phone’s Achilles heel while it may look like an Amazon Kindle its pixel density is lower making text less crisp that means important details like red receipts or toggle switches or street details they all kind of disappear in regular use making messaging and system settings and maps harder to use it’s also prone to ghosting the after images left when you scroll or turn a page which means you need to refresh it more often now to be fair to minimal it was thoughtful in trying to address this there’s a dedicated button that will force refresh the screen kind of like a windshield wiper and if you hold down that button you’ll get a panel that lets you control the backlight and refresh speed you can set it to slow for better image quality and fast if you’re doing a lot of scrolling but because it’s essentially just a sheet of capsules full of pigment refreshing the display is inherently distracting you get this flashing between black and white that’s the very opposite of minimal and the static nature of e-aper means an always on display is useless it’ll just sit there with outof-date information until you refresh it i wish Minimal had gone with a reflective LCD for this screen instead something like the one Daylight developed for its DC1 tablet I covered last year but Minimal says it favored e- in for its efficiency and added friction the company didn’t want the same friction to come to typing though so it fitted a full querty keyboard to the MO1 yeah disclosure i have a company it’s backlit the spacing is solid the travel and feedback are good the only physical miss is a mushy spaceb bar that flexes too much in the center i speculate this as a result of Minimal only using two switches beneath the space bar instead of three the much bigger stumbling block is the keyboard software the Minimal folks decided to use a custom input method to interface with Android instead of something off the shelf like Gboard that gave them the freedom to lay out the buttons the way they want it but it also meant they needed to implement a custom autocorrect engine and boy the result so far is is not good it can’t keep up with me when I’m typing at my usual 60 words a minute and it’ll often decorrect properly typed words into typos very annoying if Minimal can update that software fast enough and you can get over the mushy spacebar this could become quite a capable messaging machine or pocket writing deck those updates will need to be numerous and they’ll need to be fast my current MO1 is beset by bugs nfc payments don’t always work especially in the New York Transit system i’ve missed a train thanks to this the phone forgets my screen refresh preferences every time I wake it up and the principal reason to use e-aper battery efficiency was nullified during my testing because of a bug that drained power much faster than it should have this number of misses would be an instant product killer if I had less faith in the company to fix them and I do think Minimal did itself a disservice by putting phones into reviewers hands in their current state but I’ve had my unit for a bit longer than most so I’ve been able to see the speed with which Minimal can ship updates when I first unboxed it over a month ago it was essentially unusable and it’s grown immeasurably in just those five weeks i asked the company about the bugs I’ve mentioned so far and most are due for fixes in the next update slated for early June down the road subsequent software will introduce new features like dock mode and a notification indicator of sorts normally I’m not so accommodating to a company that ships a review product in an unfinished state but this is a different situation than say a Samsung review minimal is a very small company and there comes a time in any startup when you’re forced to ship what you have to be clear that context does not change my current conclusion i would not say that the MO1 is worth buying today but if Minimal continues patching problems at the rate it has been if it hits that early June target for the fix on most of these bugs I think that by the time the next batch of phones ships in July it will be worth buying i just hope Minimal maintains its pre-order pricing until then because $400 is much more palatable than $500 and it’s not just upgrade elacrity i really feel like this thing has been built by a fellow phone nerd for example Minimal didn’t need to add 15watt wireless charging but it did ditto the 3.5 mm headphone jack and the micro SD slot which single-handedly undermines the company’s more expensive storage option if the minimal company is able to stick around until 2030 it’s promised 5 years of software updates too though I do wonder how feasible that’ll be with a chipset from 2022 minimal even struck a deal with Dbrand for a limited batch of custom skins which even if Dbrand weren’t a how smudgy this thing likes to get yeah it’s an imperfect product but it’s a thoughtful one too regrettably no amount of thought will give the phone anything more than 4G LTE which makes it slow to hotspot and gives me further pause about its long-term prospects and uh I don’t think anything at all can save these cameras which are certainly some of the worst you’ll find on any phone in this price range or otherwise i took the MO1 to a movie premiere and on a quick overnight to Rhode Island for a family function using it to document the Amtrak ride bar hopping with my cousin and some scenic wanderings along the way and the best thing I can say about the result is that uh it made me very glad I also had a Pixel 9 Pro Fold and iPhone 16 Pro along but the trip also highlighted why I can’t just dismiss the MO1 because I think it could be the perfect let’s call it a diet phone for those beyond the help of screen time limiters but unable to give up the utility of Uber or the ear candy of Spotify or the chance to dive into a digital book the MO1 could be like diet soda or I don’t know herbal cigarettes a phone that provides just enough friction to make the real addictive stuff and feed-based social media less appealing and because it’s Android you can still customize it to a great extent you’ve probably noticed in much of this footage I’m using Niagara Launcher instead of the stock minimal home screen it runs perfectly fine even using it for the short time I did I got a small peak into the world of presence companies like Minimal are pedaling and while I’m still just as obsessed with the gadgetry and g whiz of smartphones as I was in 2005 paying attention to the way my mobile makes me feel over the past few years has convinced me that phone addiction isn’t a fictitious problem recently I was phone and I find that I usually don’t remember any of it maybe one particular meme or fun fact will stick in my brain but most of it just blends together into a haze of bad feelings i feel trapped like I’m walking through an endless barren field if your phone has you feeling like you’re walking the same field and you’ve got the liquid assets to splurge on a new gadget to help you escape you have no shortage of options but I don’t think many if any of those have the potential the Minimal phone does i’d still recommend waiting until after that June update to order because there’s a lot that needs fixing but if minimal gets there I think the MO1 could indeed be the best dumb smartphone on the market or diet smartphone we decided to call them diet smartphones i’m sure that’ll catch on follow my socials at Captain2 this video was produced following five weeks with an MP1 review sample provided by Minimal but as always the manufacturer had no copy approval rights or early preview of this video and it provided no compensation in exchange for its production if you’d like a peak time from Michael Fischer thanks for watching and stay mobile my friends