From Samsung to HTC: The worst Android phones ever made

There’s no scarcity of great Android phones, however I’d argue it’s actually onerous to purchase a very unhealthy cellphone as we speak. Certain, some units may need mediocre cameras, less-than-great efficiency, or ho-hum battery life, however that’s nonetheless a far cry from the worst Android telephones of all time. 

What are the worst Android units ever made, although? Properly, we put our heads collectively and got here up with an inventory! We tried to take a number of components into consideration, together with crucial/industrial reception, defects, and our personal opinions.

This record is in no specific order, however did we miss any apparent selections? Tell us within the feedback!

Purple is famend for its film cameras, so individuals had been fairly excited to listen to that the corporate was engaged on a smartphone. It wasn’t a generic, paint-by-numbers cellphone, both. It packed a curious 3D show, the flexibility to shoot 3D photographs/movies, and pin connectors for quite a lot of deliberate add-ons.

Sadly, the Hydrogen One was a significant industrial and important flop upon launch. On the time of its launch, we bemoaned the system’s pixelated 3D show, mediocre battery life, excessive price ticket (particularly given it used the earlier 12 months’s silicon), and underwhelming digicam high quality. It’s additionally value noting that the deliberate add-on modules by no means got here to fruition. Ouch.

It’s not all unhealthy, as we praised the precise 3D viewing expertise, the construct high quality, and the distinctive design. However the Hydrogen One served as a cautionary story for upstart smartphone makers.

We owe many trendy smartphone improvements to Palm, equivalent to wireless charging with magnets, a card-driven multitasking system, and gesture-driven interfaces. Sadly, Palm was bought to HP, which then determined to get out of the smartphone sport and bought the Palm trademark to a TCL-affiliated firm. The primary and solely system because of this association was 2018’s Palm Telephone.

The Palm Telephone’s solely promoting level was that it was a tiny Android smartphone. We don’t imply a small or compact phone, however truly tiny due to that 3.3-inch show. What’s worse was that you just couldn’t initially purchase this cellphone on a separate plan, solely being out there as an add-on to your present plan. It additionally initially required pairing to a separate smartphone, along with your texts and calls being forwarded to the smaller system. Simply, why?

Both manner, the Palm Telephone clearly didn’t dwell as much as the trailblazing Palm of yore. However no less than it had an IP68 rating for water and dirt resistance, proper?

All of us consider Amazon because the e-reader, pill, and streaming gadget firm after we take into consideration its shopper tech merchandise. However the firm additionally had a short however costly foray into the smartphone world.

The Hearth Telephone was Amazon’s first smartphone, and it was yet one more cellphone that supplied glasses-free 3D. The system even packed a bunch of infrared sensors on the entrance so it might observe your head to alter perspective on the display screen. This so-called Dynamic Perspective characteristic was cool for viewing on-screen icons and different UI parts at completely different angles, however it had no actual function. So why add it within the first place?

The Hearth Telephone additionally lacked Google companies, which wasn’t as large of a deal as it’s now however was nonetheless a significant downer. Toss within the $650 off-contract price ticket and preliminary AT&T exclusivity, and you’ve got a recipe for failure in 2014. It’s no marvel Amazon misplaced a reported $170 million on the venture.

2011 noticed the launch of not one, however two 3D telephones from main producers, as each HTC and LG hopped on the bandwagon. Nonetheless, the HTC Evo 3D was the extra poorly obtained system. That’s largely as a result of a glasses-free 3D display screen that supplied a really slim viewing angle. This implies you’re a blurry mess in case you weren’t wanting on the display screen from a really particular angle. What’s the purpose of a 3D display screen on a smartphone when it doesn’t work properly? Not less than there was a 2D/3D toggle, so that you didn’t need to take care of the 3D display screen in case you didn’t wish to.

The remainder of the cellphone was a mixture of mid-tier and flagship, that includes a succesful Snapdragon S3 chip, 1GB of RAM at a time when that was lots of reminiscence, 1GB of expandable storage when telephones just like the Galaxy S2 supplied 16GB, and two 5MP rear cameras for 3D photographs.

Smartphones are rectangular slabs, however I do recognize it when firms attempt to change up the shape issue. Sadly, the Cyrcle Telephone wasn’t the change we had been in search of.

The identify implies that we’re a round cellphone however the Cyrcle Telephone was extra of an egg or elliptical form. In saying so, prototypes in 2020 certainly had a extra round design. Why this form, although? Properly, the corporate behind the handset didn’t give any good causes past saying, “it’s a non-rectangular cellphone for non-rectangular individuals.” 

The remainder of the cellphone is a mixture of finances and intriguing, although. It had a 3.45-inch display screen (800 x 800), Android 10, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, an unnamed Snapdragon 4G processor, and a 13MP digicam on the back and front. The system additionally supplied microSD storage, two headphone jacks, USB-C and micro-USB ports, and a detachable battery (albeit 2,000mAh). All that for a really helpful value of $999. Oof.

Is that this the most effective worst cellphone on the record? It’s powerful to argue when framed like that. Google’s first Tensor-powered Pixel units had been great camera phones for the time, had quite a lot of AI options, and featured a particular design. 

The principle cause the Pixel 6 collection is on this record after a lot inside debate is the horrible connectivity. Many Pixel 6 homeowners suffered from horrible reception even when different telephones loved a fantastic sign. And what’s the purpose of a cellphone if the cellphone half seldom works? We additionally took umbrage with the very long time it took to hop from mobile to Wi-Fi and vice-versa. This isn’t 2006, Google. In reality, colleague Rita El-Khoury mentioned it had the worst signal and reception of any phone she had ever used. The unusual factor about this saga is that this problem didn’t have an effect on everybody, as our personal evaluations on the time had been very constructive.

Google’s 2021 telephones additionally had unhealthy fingerprint scanners, with gradual studying speeds and a disappointing recognition price. However no less than this received a bit of higher with subsequent updates. Toss within the Tensor chip’s overheating woes, and the Pixel 6 collection makes for a irritating expertise. 

We are able to’t have an inventory of the worst telephones ever made with out together with a cellphone that fairly actually caught fireplace. The Galaxy Be aware 7 is definitely Samsung’s greatest tech failure, as two battery-related faults resulted in a number of dozen telephones catching fireplace or exploding.

It’s no marvel Samsung recalled the cellphone. The corporate even issued updates that finally bricked the system for security causes. Even airways banned the Galaxy Be aware 7 from flights — what number of cellphone producers can brag about that?

It’s an actual disgrace as a result of the Galaxy Be aware 7 was well-received previous to this saga, providing a extra helpful S Pen, a nifty iris scanner, microSD storage, and water resistance for the primary time within the collection.

HMD World licensed the Nokia identify again in 2016 for Nokia-branded smartphones, and the corporate made an enormous deal about what number of workers and executives had been former Nokia workers. So when the corporate introduced the Nokia 9 PureView in 2019 with a penta-lens digicam, expectations had been excessive that this might be a religious successor to the good Nokia telephones of yore.

Sadly, the Nokia 9 PureView was fairly a catastrophe at launch. The most important promoting level was the penta-lens digicam, consisting of three 12MP monochrome cameras and two 12MP coloration cameras. This setup was presupposed to ship photographs with extra granular depth results (e.g. for portraits) and higher HDR. Nonetheless, our personal testing on the time revealed extraordinarily inconsistent image high quality, glacial digicam app efficiency, and poor low-light pictures.

It additionally didn’t assist that the cellphone’s in-display fingerprint sensor was unhealthy. In reality, it was reported that the scanner might be spoofed with chewing gum. The cellphone additionally shipped with the earlier 12 months’s flagship silicon, which isn’t a nasty factor by itself however did compound issues. We had been glad to see HMD strive one thing completely different however had been sorely upset with the completed product. In reality, I’d argue that HMD nonetheless hasn’t recovered from this debacle, because it hasn’t launched a flagship cellphone since.

The HTC Thunderbolt was the primary 4G LTE cellphone within the US again in 2011, and that was an enormous deal owing to the know-how’s sooner knowledge speeds and lowered latency. Sadly, the Thunderbolt had horrible battery life when utilizing LTE.

Wired famous on the time that the HTC Thunderbolt delivered simply six hours of battery life when looking the online and checking emails with lowered brightness. CNET mentioned that related utilization (together with cellphone calls) noticed the cellphone hit 15% by mid-to-late afternoon, whereas heavier utilization noticed the cellphone die in three or 4 hours. Streaming video through LTE? Then PC Mag reported that you could possibly anticipate just below two and a half hours of juice. Compounding issues was the truth that you couldn’t initially disable LTE and persist with 3G.

The latest entry on our record of worst Android smartphones is HONOR’s bizarre foldable cellphone, which was launched a 12 months in the past. The V Purse is successfully a clone of HUAWEI’s Mate XS telephones, that includes an outward-folding display screen and a skinny design. Half of this show additionally serves because the smartphone display screen when folded. Up to now, so regular.

The large problem, nevertheless, is that HONOR determined to show the system right into a literal purse. The corporate added straps to the foldable so it might be carried like a handbag, whereas additionally providing appropriate wallpapers to match. HONOR even added digital charms to the display screen to intensify the fashion-first method. 

It was actually an attention-grabbing thought, however one that ought to’ve stayed on the drafting board. The most important problem is that outward-folding foldable telephones aren’t protected against scratches within the first place owing to their plastic screens, but HONOR thought it was a good suggestion to let individuals carry it like a handbag. So we wouldn’t be shocked if the display screen will get quite a few scratches when carried like this. It’s not waterproof, both, which doesn’t bode properly when carrying it in a rain bathe. The cellphone launched in China for ~$850, which sounds cheap till you notice that it ships with the previous Snapdragon 778G chip, a mid-tier twin digicam system, and no wi-fi charging.