Summary
It’s a bad time and maybe also a great time to make a new smartphone.
The Enough Phone is made by and for people fed up with big screens
It’s a little phone with a big challenge ahead of it.
It’s a little phone with a big challenge ahead of it.
Brennan Jordan and Austin Boer are two-thirds of the trio behind the Enough Phone, a small phone that will run your choice of stock Android or the minimalist OdysseyOS. They’re currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, and just a day after launching, the project is over halfway to its 599. “We don’t want to be charging as much as we are,” says Boer, “but as a startup you can only do so much.” They’re a self-funded operation and want to keep it that way, he says, so they can choose their own priorities. Outside funding would change the dynamic and might put pressure on them to shorten their promised five years of software support or cut other costs.
As it stands, the project is on schedule. According to the Kickstarter page, it’s in the production tooling phase, with plans to ship phones to customers in May 2027 — though a footnote says that the RAM shortage’s “ripple effects across the entire electronics manufacturing industry” could still throw a wrench in the works.
Prospects for small phone fans (disclosure: I am one) were bleak even before the chip crisis. Apple’s last Mini was released five years ago, and there’s no indication of another one in sight. Asus’ Zenfone used to be a nice, small-ish Android option before the company made it bigger and quit selling it in the US. Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky made a lot of noise about launching a small phone, but has since shifted priorities. And there’s Unihertz’s Jelly Max — certainly small, but its specs lag behind a modern midrange phone.
Boer sees this gap as an opportunity, even in the midst of a global RAM crisis. “Nobody was doing it, and we’re kind of seeing why — because it’s not the ideal time to start. But that also kind of makes it the ideal time to start, because no one else is doing it,” he says. “Let’s just do it ourselves.” Enough is enough. At least that’s what they’re hoping.
Most Popular
- Anker’s new window-mounted camera monitors the outside of your home from within it
- The touchscreen MacBook Pro is a winner
- Xbox overhauls its PC, web, and cloud apps with a faster design
- Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM
- Sam Altman addresses RAM comments: People should ‘put as much as they want in their computers’