Photo credit: Martin Plaza via PCBWay, (CC BY-SA)
Tech YouTuber and, we can call him this, inventor, Marcin Plaza has built a lot of cool things. Electric mini bike, a laptop with a mechanical keyboard and custom frame, an ultrawide portable gaming system with a desktop graphics card, ultralight mouse, even a “floating” mouse. And while I could spend time telling you about how I wish the MacBook Pro was twice as thick, had a CD drive, SD and micro SD card slots, more USB, built-in HDMI, a nice mechanical keyboard, and everything else a computer should have but is now sold separately to us, this is actually a post about one of Plaza’s other inventions to make up for the sad state of the tech industry: a phone.
A phone built for everyone is a phone built for no one. Everyone’s familiar with the concept of “design by committee,” where blended ideas about a product clash and the end result is disappointing. I believe that’s why no one is passionate about technology anymore. We stacked the idea of a phone on top of itself so many times it just came out a grayish blob. Plaza decided to do something different. He set out to make a phone that he wanted, and the end result is something really cool.
Plaza built a pocketable Android smartphone with a slide out keyboard, great looks, and a unique two-tone color scheme you just never see on the market anymore. Getting a colorful phone is hard enough, let alone one that takes a risk with multiple colors! It’s pretty close to what I’d want a phone to look like in 2025, so I thought I’d pause a bit to write a little about this super cool one-of-a-kind phone.
And maybe just nudge the industry a little bit more towards devices people want, not just whatever single piece of tech might sell well. Diverse phone portfolios built by people with singular visions, not boring blobs made for the masses and no one at the same time.
A New Phone
This thing is so cool. But how did Marcin Plaza do it? You can check out his full video on YouTube, it’s an interesting watch if you’re even mildly interested in electronics repair or customization. To summarize it, a Galaxy Z Flip 5 with a broken inner screen, a Blackberry Q10, custom parts including PCBs and the enclosure from PCBWay and Bambu Lab, respectively, and a lot of hard work. Plaza needed to make the Blackberry keyboard communicate with Android as a USB keyboard with a custom PCB, as well as the top and bottom half to connect through a custom ribbon cable. Also, since Samsung doesn’t let you use the outer screen as a fully-featured phone (as Motorola does with their Razr phones), he had to install some software workarounds to put an app launcher on the external display.
With that, a lot of trial, error, and frustration later, he had his own custom smartphone. One that looked nothing like anything on the market now, but running the latest version of Android. A smartphone for him, by him. As a result, a lot of people are excited by it. Not everyone. It’s not for everyone. And that’s the point.
I do wonder how it works as a phone, the one thing he doesn’t answer in the video. We really don’t use phones as phones much anymore, do we? I was writing about this for a while before I even realized I hadn’t addressed that and neither did he. Perhaps with headphones?
Innovation is Dead Because Risk isn’t Infinite Growth
If I made my own phone, it would be something like this. Only, with a larger outer screen, touch-sensitive keys for gestures, and less obtrusive cameras (if they’re on the front at all).
Risk is an investment, and investors aren’t interested in long term investments. I know, that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Tech investors just want to see the stock value go up perpetually. Quick gains. They want larger profits each year, squeezing blood from a stone. Tech layoffs have become a yearly thing, with companies laying off their workforce and re-hiring people later, just to make Q4 look better. Investors want the illusion of results, of stability, of infinite growth in a finite world that certainly won’t become a bubble on the verge of popping. They don’t want to see new creations that might one day bring the brand notoriety, business, or shift the entire product landscape. They want dividends and buybacks to drive stock prices up. Apple once had a reputation for surprising products that mixed up the industry, such as the iMac, iPod, and iPhone. It’s been well over a decade since innovation was important to Apple.
Tech has become stale as a result. With Apple and Google having a duopoly on operating systems, and Samsung rounding out a near total control of the hardware market with them, every other phone manufacturer is getting by on scraps. Systems that keep us in our operating system of choice have enforced brand loyalty. Stale products we have to buy every year due to planned obsolescence have made innovation unnecessary. We’re stuck with this garbage because we allowed large tech companies to grow well past the limits we put in place for corporations. Capitalism unbridled is a government in itself, and it’s draining as much as it is dull, suffocating, and uninspiring.
We won’t see cool inventions like this. We’ll get a folding iPhone from Apple years later than we should have. We’ll see new form factors after people stop buying new phones for five years at a time and only buy again when they see something exciting. We won’t get adventurous tech until we demand it. Or, if you’re as talented and practiced as Mr. Plaza, make it ourselves.