😻 Samsungs Cardboard Cat Houses , Alternative Smart Phones, and Blog on Bear

Have you ever bought an alt phone?

Jun 01, 2020

What’s up everybody! Another week has passed with a whoosh - and here we are in June.

On a personal note, My great grandmother passed away from COVID-19 complications last week. Please keep me and my family in your thoughts and prayers. She was 99 years old, and we were very excited about her upcoming birthday.

I’m very grateful that we got to see her on Zoom a few weeks ago and show her our sweet little daughter. Her great great granddaughter! 😊

I will always cherish the sweet memories I have of her. When we were younger my brother and I went to her house once and played trivial pursuit. The 80’s edition! That was a lot of fun.

Well, let’s dive into this week’s topics, shall we?

🐈 Samsungs Cardboard Cat Houses

We’re all guilty of this. We buy some shiny new TV. We lovingly unbox it, and then we (usually) chuck the box. Another cardboard box sacrifice for the greedy landfill gods.

Well, Samsung is introducing a few ways for you to repurpose cardboard boxes from its “lifestyle tv” lineup - including a cat house!

It actually looks pretty good for a repurposed cardboard box. There’s also this neat little Entertainment center solution. Definitely an ecology conversation starter!

Notice how each of these boldly display the product? Yeah. We see you Samsung. I think it’s a pretty cool solution, and I hope more companies take note of this. We rely on cardboard so much for packaging - why not make it easy and fun to reuse? It’s an easy PR and marketing win - and it’s cool!

Read the announcement at the link.

📺😸📦

📱 Alternative Phones

I read an Engadget article by James Trew last week about the world of Indie phones. It’s a fantastic thought-provoking article. You should read it here. Here’s a little sample.

Something that in recent years inspired smaller companies to make more niche phones. But when was the last time you saw someone with something like a Nextbit Robin, a Yotaphone or a Fairphone? Despite these alternative companies struggling to find a place to sell their phones (or an audience to buy them) there’s a rising trend of individuals picking up the baton. What if you or I wanted to make a phone? Is it even possible? Maybe, but not without many, many challenges.

He goes on to talk about several interesting and new alt phones - and the difficult challenges (manufacturing, audience) that go into these kinds of projects. I’ve always been fascinated by alternative cell phones. They have so much friction they have to overcome to get in your pocket. For example . . .

You have to convince someone to try a new phone they’ve never heard of
You have to find digital risk-takers within 1 and sell to them
You have to find a niche within 2 and pitch the differentiating factor for your product. What is the unique value that you offer?

Over the past 10 years, I’ve been fascinated by this scene - and have taken part a few times.

I had a Nextbit Robin - and it was a beautiful phone. I still have it - and it still works! However, it only lasted a year with poor battery life and overheating issues.

I honestly considered buying the Frank Phone - but didn’t because I was sketched out. It turned out to be pretty scammy.

I had a LG G Flex 2 - a very unique curved phone. This phone died hard after a year.

After my poor G Flex 2 and Robin died, I was done with pursuing the alternative phone space. Despite the conversations that my phones would often generate, I was sick of them dying. Ever since, I’ve been a little more careful about how alternative I go. I currently have the One Plus 7 Pro, and I love it.

Here are three newish I think you should check out if you get a chance.

The BoringPhone - a Smartphone without an app store. Great for kids!
The Zero 18 Blloc Phone - A Smartphone made for those who love Minimalism and BW. They’ve released a Minimalist launcher too!
The Light Phone 2 - The most minimalist smartishphone ever.

🐻 Blog on Bear

Ever since Medium turned itself into a “Walled Garden” where you had to pay to read the good articles, I searched for an alternative platform to blog on.

Well, I discovered Substack - and here we are. 😄

I discovered a pretty cool blogging platform the other day called Bear. It’s minimalist, loads super fast, and is solely focused on content. Here’s the author’s blurb.

There is a website obesity crisis. Bloated websites full of scripts, ads, and trackers slowing your readers down every time they try to read your well crafted content. Bear is all you need to build a fantastic and optimized site or blog. It works perfectly on any viewing device. All you need to focus on is writing good content. Source

I for one really hope that we see more projects like this. We need to step away from the bloated ad riddled websites of the 10’s. I look forward to writing on it when I get a chance. Check it out at the link. Let me know if you start writing on it!

Maybe I’ll start a Copywriting blog, but inspired by the Onion. Hmmmmmmm…….

🐻📝

🐙The Land of Random

*Opens the Filing Cabinet* Let’s see what we have today . . .

Kawaii Product Design

I’m all for it. Let’s go. No more utilitarian product design. The prettier and more Kawaii, the better. This is a fantastic article about the current state of product design.

Kawaii Product Design